Is Russia Fascist?: Unraveling Propaganda East and West

by Marlène Laruelle

In Is Russia Fascist? , Marlene Laruelle argues that the charge of fascism has become a strategic narrative of the current world order. Vladimir Putin's regime has increasingly been accused of embracing fascism, supposedly evidenced by Russia's annexation of Crimea, its historical revisionism, attacks on liberal democratic values, and its support for far-right movements in Europe. But at the same time Russia has branded itself as the world's preeminent antifascist power because of its sacrifices during the Second World War while it has also emphasized how opponents to the Soviet Union in Central and Eastern Europe collaborated with Nazi Germany.

Laruelle closely analyzes accusations of fascism toward Russia, soberly assessing both their origins and their accuracy. By labeling ideological opponents as fascist, regardless of their actual values or actions, geopolitical rivals are able to frame their own vision of the world and claim the moral high ground. Through a detailed examination of the Russian domestic scene and the Kremlin's foreign policy rationales, Laruelle disentangles the foundation for, meaning, and validity of accusations of fascism in and around Russia. Is Russia Fascist? shows that the efforts to label opponents as fascist is ultimately an attempt to determine the role of Russia in Europe's future.

Genres: Russia

260 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 15, 2021

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

[Owlseyes]

https://www.buzzsprout.com/582022/818...

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Is Russia Fascist? is a work that offers a worthy contribution to the ongoing conversation and debate about how to define contemporary Russia and project where it is heading. Regardless of what a reader might think about "illiberalism" as an answer, Laruelle offers many good analytical insights. Her command of the facts of recent Russian political history is solid and is to be taken seriously.
H-Net

In this book Marlene Laruelle not only seeks to answer the question "Is Russia fascist?" but to provide a comprehensive analytical framework for how to study the concept of fascism in the first place. In doing so, she engages with scholarship in multiple fields across the social sciences and in public discourse, which makes this book of interest not only to political scientists but to Russia watchers more generally.
The Russian Review

If you want to know what's been happening in the Russian far right, this is undoubtedly the book for you. Is Russia Fascist? provides excellent insights into the ideological state of play in modern Russia. It also does a thorough job of demolishing the accusations that Russia is a totalitarian state.
Paul Robinson

Is Russia Fascist? provides a clear, balanced assessment of contemporary Russian politics, serving not only as a sensible dissection of the status of fascism in Russia, but also as a guide to that country's problematic political structures.
Modern Language Review

Marlene Laruelle is one of the world's leading experts on Russian nationalist and far-right movements. This book provides an authoritative examination of discourses about fascism with respect to Russia. She deftly and with great clarity illuminates the use and abuse of the label of 'fascism,' both by the Russian state and about Putin's Russia. The real issue at stake is a struggle to define the future of Europe and Russia's place in it. A dazzling contribution.
Brian D. Taylor, Syracuse University

The idea that contemporary Russia is fascist is as bizarre as it is tenacious. In her wide-ranging book, Marlène Laruelle elegantly debunks it. She does so by portraying some of Russia's competing and interconnected ideological ecosystems and showing how Putin's illiberal regime seeks to co-opt and balance a wide variety of ideas and interests in the name of stability.
Mischa Gabowitsch, Einstein Forum, author of Protest in Putin's Russia

In Is Russia Fascist? Marlene Laruelle offers a nuanced and important contribution to our understanding of fascism and how the concept plays out in Russia. Laruelle is consistently one of the most insightful scholars of national identity in Russia and Eurasia, and her new book does not disappoint. It will be required reading for anyone who seeks to understand the narrative of fascism in Europe and Eurasia today.
Yoshiko Herrera, University of Wisconsin, author of Imagined Economies

A dazzling tour de force! In addition to its compelling argument about the bedeviled question of Russian fascism, in an age in which applied and misapplied labels can successfully galvanize political movements and initiatives, Is Russia Fascist? lays out a breathtakingly comprehensive exposition of the Kremlin's and the Russian polity's variegated imagination, in all its fascinating social, political, and emotional complexity.
Nina Tumarkin, Wellesley College, author of The Living and the Dead: The Rise and Fall of the Cult of World War II in Russia

Marlene Laruelle is one of theif not the most preeminent scholars working on the Russian far right. She has produced numerous works of immense authority, and continues that pattern in Is Russia Fascist?
Richard Arnold, Muskingum University, author of Russian Nationalism and Ethnic Violence

.........

one not so happy customer

Amazone

Apologetic
6/10

The book contains a citation by Roger Griffin: "So can we just leave fascism out of the discussion and concentrate on the uniqueness of the contemporary Russian state's corruption of democracy and the dangers it poses to the world peace with its expansionism and alliances?

Laruelle should have taken this advise at hart but instead she donates a complete book to the discussion.

After the 2022 Ukraine events the book even reads like an apology. There is some usefull information in it, worth three stars.

J. Bogaarts, Netherlands

[Dan McCallum · Rating 4 out of 5]

i guess not!

[grace · Rating 4 out of 5]

oh man