Ideology of the Kremlin: “Regime around Putin increasingly fascist”

Russia’s government itself is increasingly shaped by fascism, which it constantly accuses the West of, says Russia expert Meister in an interview. The country is developing into a closed society.

tagesschau.de: Russia is fighting fascists in Ukraine – the message has been repeated by the Russian leadership time and time again since February. Putin’s speech on “Victory Day” on May 9 was also influenced by this. How serious is this reinterpretation of history?

Stefan Meister: One element is the fight against fascism and National Socialism, which creates identity for large parts of Russian society. And if you – in the interests of the Russian leadership – continue this fight against Ukraine, you can create a certain mobilization in Russia.

On the other hand, it is of course highly problematic that the term fascism and its history are misused in order to wage a kind of imperial war in a neighboring country – and that as a regime around Vladimir Putin, which is itself becoming increasingly fascist if you look at fascism definitions look at.

And to accuse Ukraine of exactly that and to use it as a justification for this war and at the same time to abuse the victory over National Socialism in World War II – that is really a crude view of history and a distortion of history that is highly problematic and also opens doors for others discourses. If Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is now raising anti-Semitism allegations against the Jews in Israel, then it has to do with this historical picture.

tagesschau.de: In Putin’s world view, who does that make the allies from the Second World War, i.e. the USA, Great Britain and France, who are not parties to the conflict in Ukraine today, but have nevertheless sided with Ukraine?

Master: There’s more to come. Putin says he’s waging some sort of proxy war with the US and NATO in Ukraine – and that basically Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the alleged fascists are NATO’s and US’ henchmen. The West becomes one with these fascists, so to speak – it is therefore a supporter and uses the so-called fascists to weaken, conquer and keep Russia down.

Putin not only equates the Ukrainians with fascists – that’s the most absurd thing of all: to describe an entire people as fascists, so to speak – but in a certain respect also the West as a supporter of these alleged fascists.

“Again a negative image of Germany”

tagesschau.de: So who are today’s Germans in the eyes of the Kremlin? Despite ever-increasing differences, the deep mutual connection was invoked for years…

Master: Hard to say. There was once a very positive image of Germany and a kind of reconciliation between Germans and Russians. In principle, what we are seeing now is an attempt to reverse this: to define the Germans as opponents who also support the alleged fascists in Ukraine, and thus to undermine a reconciliation process that has already begun and to create a negative image of Germany again in Russia – which is partially successful.

In this world view, the Germans are above all the henchmen of the Americans – there is this fixation on the USA as the main opponent and the Germans, who are not strong enough to oppose this American imperialism. We can see that, in principle, different discourses overlap here and nothing really fits together. It’s amazing that people believe that.

tagesschau.de: Since the end of Soviet communism, Russia has been looking for a unifying, meaningful idea, and in the meantime has even announced competitions. Is linking aggressive wars with the past as a victorious nation an answer to this?

Master: It’s possibly what works best in Russian society. The question is: what can one be proud of in the last hundred years of Russian history? What can you build a positive narrative out of? There is the victory over National Socialism, which was the great success: as a totalitarian state, which was the Soviet Union, it nevertheless managed to defeat this danger for Europe and for Russia. That’s something most in Russia would agree with — and there’s not much else Putin is proud of in recent Russian history.

Otherwise he thinks imperially, he thinks more tsaristically and ultimately wants to restore the old tsarist empire with its sphere of influence, the “Russian world” – and he’s building on that at the same time.

“Elements of a totalitarian state”

tagesschau.de: How do you assess the fact that Soviet imagery is now increasingly appearing again – such as grandmother statues that are installed in the cities and holding the USSR flag or the Saint George ribbon not only on May 9th?

Master: This is a backward development: It becomes a closed society, pluralism decreases. Russia under Putin has developed into an almost totalitarian state in recent weeks. We’ve seen a trend towards authoritarianism since 2014, but I would say the way the media is being dealt with, the opposition and any other opinions – these are elements of a totalitarian state. You also borrow from the Soviet Union and try to pick people up at this level: These are the images they are familiar with and maybe also arouse nostalgia in the older generation – at least that’s what the elite believes and what apparently also happens to some extent functions.

Many people in polls agree, at least superficially, with this parallel world, this new reality that Russian propaganda has created. But that, too, is an element of a totalitarian state: that people say what they think the questioner wants to hear – in this case approval of the war and approval of Putin. This is also reminiscent of the Soviet Union and Stalinism – not in Russia of the 1980s, so to speak, but possibly in Russia of the 1930s.

tagesschau.de: What does this mean for the long-term development of Russian society? Where is Putin steering them?

Master: On building up an enemy image of black and white: we are on the side of truth and justice, the others are on the side of darkness. For society, of course, this means that it is pushed back into a system of bondage, even in thinking. That there will be a regression, not only economically, but also socially. That fear will increasingly shape Russian society again. And either people leave – or they adapt.

This is of course a very depressing prospect for a society that has slowly opened up, has slowly begun to come to terms with its own past and also to do justice to the victims and perpetrators. This is now being buried again by this black-and-white view of history; the traumas experienced by Russian society are being filled up instead of being worked through. And that also makes them a vulnerable, manipulable society. This cult of violence, which is inherent in this society, is also cultivated more and more. Of course, all of this makes Russia a very problematic country in Europe – with a society that has few opportunities for development.

The conversation was led by Jasper Steinlein, tagesschau.de.