Russia’s “Fascism” or “Illiberalism”?

Abstract

This chapter explores the literature on generic fascism, on a supposed specific “Russian fascism,” and on the rise of illiberalism to posit the conceptual frames needed for the analysis of Russia. It also discusses the placement of fascism within the more general phenomenon of nationalism. The chapter views the primacy of a myth of regeneration as the driving engine that makes a vision of the world and society “fascist.” With such perspective, the chapter allows us to take into account the metapolitical dimension of fascism, which is critical for recognizing the phenomenon and dissociating it from other ideologies. It defines fascism as a metapolitical ideology that calls for the total destruction of modernity by creating an alternative world based on ancient values reconstructed with violent means. The chapter then shares the definition proposed by one of the main Russian scholars of fascism, Aleksandr A. Galkin, who characterized fascism as “rightist-conservative revolutionarism” (pravokonservativnyi revoliutsionarizm), emphasizing the revolutionary aspect more than the nationalist one. Ultimately, the chapter asserts that the terminological inflation of fascism that we currently observe obscures more than explains the structural transformations of our societies: the term illiberalism offers a significantly more heuristically helpful approach to capture the evolutions.