Putin's Wars полностью

This ultranationalist chauvinism of the party in power, however, does not appear in the official discourse of the Kremlin and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As Laruelle remarked: “So, notably, even the institutions most attached to the state apparatus can propound discourses that are regarded as relatively radical in their conceptions of national identity, and that do not correspond to the official state narrative.”^[56] This discrepancy, far from being a reassurance, is rather a reason for concern. Aleksandr Dugin, the founder of Russia’s Eurasian Movement, had already advised the Russian leaders to play a double game: “The authorities will actively and on a large scale play a double game, outwardly continuing the declaration of adherence to ‘democratic values,’ but inwardly restoring little by little the base for the global autarchy.”^[57] We may conclude that the “dynamic of change” that has taken place in United Russia during the first twelve years of Putin’s reign has moved the party farther away from its supposed center position in the direction of chauvinist ultranationalism and revisionism.

Notes

1.

Almost until the demise of the Soviet Union, Russia (then called RSFSR), unlike the other fourteen Soviet republics, did not have its own Communist Party, but fell directly under the CPSU. It was only in June 1990 that on the initiative of conservative circles inside the CPSU, a Communist Party of Russia was constituted. After the 1991 August putsch this party was banned, together with the CPSU and the local parties in the other republics. The party was refounded in February 1993 under the name Communist Party of the Russian Federation. (Cf. A. Shlyapuzhnikov and A. Yolkin, Est takie partii: putevoditel izbiratelya (Moscow: Panorama, 2008), 67–68.)

2.

Stephen D. Shenfield, Russian Fascism: Tradition, Tendencies, Movements (New York: M.E. Sharpe, Inc., 2001), 51.

3.

Quoted in Shenfield, Russian Fascism, 51.

4.

Cf. Aleksandr Verkhovsky and Galina Kozhevnikova, Radikalnyy russkiy natsionalizm: struktury, idei, litsa (Moscow: SOVA, 2009), 25.

5.

Cf. “Ksenofobnye kandidaty KPRF na Moskovskikh munitsipalnykh vyborakh,” SOVA (February 22, 2008). http://xeno.sova-center.ru/29481C8/AA109CD.

6.

Gennady Zyuganov, My Russia: The Political Autobiography of Gennady Zyuganov (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1997), 3.

7.

Nicole J. Jackson, Russian Foreign Policy and the CIS: Theories, Debates and Actions (London: Routledge, 2003), 40.

8.

Marcel H. Van Herpen, Putinism: The Slow Rise of a Radical Right Regime in Russia (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2013), 126.

9.

CPRF Platform in Election Platform of Political Parties Participating in the Elections for State Duma, Moscow, International Republican Institute, (December 6, 1995), 44. (Quoted in Jackson, Russian Foreign Policy and the CIS, 41.)

10.

Cf. Andreas Umland, “Toward an Uncivil Society? Contextualizing the Recent Decline of Extremely Right-Wing Parties in Russia,” WCFIA Working Paper 02–03 (Boston: Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, 2002). http://www.wcfia.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/555__Toward_An_Uncivil_Society.pdf.

Cf. also Andreas Umland, “Rechtsekstremes Engagement jenseits von Parteien: Vorkriegsdeutschland und Russland im Vergleich,” Forschungsjournal Neue Soziale Bewegungen, Heft 4 (December 2008), 63–66.

11.

Umland, “Toward an Uncivil Society?” 10.

12.

Umland, “Toward an Uncivil Society?” 10.

13.

Umland, “Toward an Uncivil Society?” 10–11.

14.

Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York: Vintage Books, 1997), 76.

15.

Andreas Umland, “Rechtsekstremes Engagement jenseits von Parteien,” 65.

16.

Marlène Laruelle, “Inside and Around the Kremlin’s Black Box: The New Nationalist Think Tanks in Russia,” Stockholm Paper (Stockholm: Institute for Security & Development Policy, 2009), 19.

17.