The Idea of War in Russian Political Thought after 1991

Abstract

As time passed, in Russian political thought after the collapse of the Soviet Union, militarism or even an apology for war came to the fore. The aim of the study was to detect the most important models of this trend, taking into account the timeline of the Crimean events in 2014, and to attempt to explain its background in the absence of significant military threats to Russia from the international environment. Four main models of post-Soviet militarism have been distinguished: a) the rational model, pointing to the effects of military action in the modern world; b) the dualistic model of a clash between the traditionalist Russian civilization and the corrupt and expansionist West; c) the fatalistic concept of war as an inevitable aspect of the maturation of societies; d/the revivalist model, where war is treated as a device of social mobilization.