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Russia: Fascist or Conservative?

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Is Russia Fascist? Unraveling Propaganda East and West, by Laruelle Marlène , Ithaca, New York, Cornell University Press, 2021, $39.95 (hardcover), ISBN 9781501754135, ISBN 101501754130.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 June 2022

Mitchell A. Orenstein*
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania, USA

Extract

When I cracked open Marlene Laruelle’s new book, Is Russia Fascist?, I immediately wondered, who really thinks Russia is fascist? I was aware of Timothy Snyder’s study of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s glorification of the debatably fascist political theorist Ivan Ilyin, but fascist? Really? But Laruelle quickly shows in the introduction that this is not a canard or a straw man. Many reputable scholars and public intellectuals have drawn parallels between the Putin regime, its actions, and European fascism, including Snyder, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Alexander Motyl, Vladimir Inozemtsev, Gary Kasparov, Anna Politkovskaya, Madeline Albright, and Hillary Clinton. The term “fascism” has become part of the Western discussion on the nature of the Putin regime, even more so since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Type
Book Symposium
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for the Study of Nationalities

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References

Note

1 Orenstein, Mitchell. “Vladimir Putin: An Aspirant Metternich?” Foreign Policy Research Institute. February 12, 2015. https://www.fpri.org/article/2015/02/vladimir-putin-an-aspirant-metternich/ (Accessed June 11, 2021.)