Russophobia, a Derivative of Putinophobia,, will End with His Departure If Putinism Becomes an Ideology, Inozemtsev Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, November 12 – Many in Russia and even more in the West have a negative attitude toward Vladimir Putin. Because he makes all the decisions for it, they often extend their hostility to him to Russia as a whole, although they seldom express the hostility to individual Russians or bearers of Russian culture known as Russophobia, Vladislav Inozemtsev says.

             Indeed, the Russian economist and commentator continues, “the most convinced Russophobes which [he] has encountered in recent years have been, however sad it is to acknowledge, Russians themselves who for various reasons have left their own country” (mk.ru/politics/2019/11/12/putinizm-i-rusofobiya-voshli-v-svyazku.html).

            But while regarding most countries, people make a sharp distinction between the ruler’s policies and the country, Russia does not have “such ‘immunity,’” and therefore the link between Putin and Russia is quite frequent.  “The reason for this state of affairs,” Inozemtsev observes, is “quite banal.”

            Over the past century, most political leaders who have defined their rule ideologically have done so by pursuing “a radical break with the past” rather than a return to it. “Fascism, communism and Nazism were ideologies ineluctably connected with the names of leaders” who sought a clear break with the pasts of their countries.  

            As a result, the end of these leaders led to a rapid change in public consciousness: “Germany returned to normalcy ten years after the end of the most horrible war in history, and the Soviet Union and Gorbachev were transformed into fashionable symbols as soon as the policy of openness and glasnost were proclaimed and real disarmament began.”

            But Putin and Russia today are different, Inozemtsev argues.  “The specific feature of today’s Russia was and remains that Putin, having changed the trajectory of the development of his country to no lesser a degree than many autocratic leaders of the past, has produced this turn without operating on any ideology or establishing any new symbols.”

            “On the contrary,” Inozemtsev says, “the Kremlin over the course of the last 20 years has emphasized that [Putin] is ‘reviving’ Russia, ‘restoring’ its historical traditions, ‘shoring up’ its traditional moral values,’ and ‘cleansing’ the great history of the country from various kinds of slanders.” That has linked him to the country in ways that other autocrats have not been.

            Indeed, Putin is so much equated with Russia that “his policies and his actions are changing the attitude of the masses not only to the regime he has established but also to the country which he rules.” This would likely continue for a long time, Inozemtsev suggests, except for one development that may undercut that chance.

            If those like Surkov succeed in introducing an ideology called “Putinism,” the commentator argues, then “Putinism cannot be identical to our country” and that in turn will mean that after he eaves the scene, “the Russian people will lose no more than the  German from de-Nazification or the Soviet from the fall of communism” and Russophobia will dissipate.

            But at present, “the world fears and at times hates that political system” Putin has been putting in place, “mistakenly equating it with Russia. The Western democracies [in fact] are seeking to contain not Russia but “Putinism as an ideology of revenge against the contemporary liberal order and a means of maintaining the practice of illegality and kleptocacy.”