Putins Totalitarian Democracy

This book studies the cultural, societal, and ideological factors absent from popular discourse on Vladimir Putins Russia, contesting the misleading mainstream assumption that Putin is the all-powerful sovereign of Russia. In carefully examining the ideological underpinnings of Putinismits tsarist and Soviet elements, its intellectual origins, its culturally reproductive nature, and its imperialist foreign policythe authors reveal that an indoctrinating ideology and a willing population are simultaneously the most crucial yet overlooked keys to analyzing Putins totalitarian democracy. Because Putinism is part of a global wave of extreme political movements, the book also reaffirms the need to understandbut not accepthow and why nation-states and masses turn to nationalism, authoritarianism, or totalitarianism in modern times.