Ideology and Meaning-Making under the Putin Regime

by Marlène Laruelle

Much has been written to try to understand the ideological characteristics of the current Russian government, as well as what is happening inside the mind of Vladimir Putin. Refusing pundits' clichés that depict the Russian regime as either a cynical kleptocracy or the product of Putin's grand Machiavellian designs, Ideology and Meaning-Making under the Putin Regime offers a critical genealogy of ideology in Russia today. Marlene Laruelle provides an innovative, multi-method analysis of the Russian regime's ideological production process and the ways it is operationalized in both domestic and foreign policies. Ideology and Meaning-Making under the Putin Regime reclaims the study of ideology as an unavoidable component of the tools we use to render the world intelligible and represents a significant contribution to the scholarly debate on the interaction between ideas and policy decisions. By placing the current Russian regime into a broader context of different strains of strategic culture, ideological interest groups, and intellectual history, this book gives readers key insights into how the Russo-Ukrainian War became possible and the role ideology played in enabling it.

Genres: Politics

415 pages, Hardcover

Published January 14, 2025

About the author

Dr. Marlene Laruelle is Associate Director of the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies (IERES) and Research Professor of International Affairs at the Elliott School of International Affairs, The George Washington University. She previously was a Visiting Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (2005–2006). She holds a Ph.D. from the National Institute for Oriental Languages and Cultures in Paris. She has authored numerous books, including Russian Eurasianism: An Ideology of Empire (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), In the Name of the Nation: Nationalism and Politics in Contemporary Russia (Palgrave, 2009), and Russia’s Strategies in the Arctic and the Future of the Far North (M.E. Sharpe, 2013). She recently edited Eurasianism and the European Far Right. Reshaping the Russia-Europe relationship (Lexington, 2015). She is a co-PI on several NSF grants devoted to Arctic Urban Sustainability.

Reviews

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding research and analysis of what ideology is in Putin's Russia and how widespread it is shared throughout society.