Putin Propaganda Works Because It Plays to National Bolshevism of Today's Russians, Pastukhov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Apr. 21 – In the 1930s, Moscow’s promotion of communist internationalism with its core notion that the transformations that Russians were going through would open the way to the transformation of everyone else, Vladimir Pastukhov says. Now, instead, the Kremlin is focusing on national bolshevism, on the way in which isolates and elevates the Russian people.

            Many analysts have assumed that the materialism and consumerism of the Russian people would serve to immunize them against ideology, the London-based Russian analyst says; but it has turned out that such Russians are also “greedy for isms,” just not the isms that worked with their parents and grandparents (polit.ru/news/2023/04/21/pastuhov/).

            Today’s Russians, Pastukhov says, are “vulnerable” not to “International Bolshevism with its expansive goals and plans to make all mankind happy but rather for National Bolshevism which intends only to make” the residents of Russia happy. Having cars and appliances isn’t enough; such people too “need to feel greatness.”

            Such feelings can be generated if “your army defeats someone so that from now on we will be able to threaten the world.” Consequently, what Putin has offered and what this class of Russians want turn out to be similar, with each supporting the other rather than being in conflict as many had thought.