Is Russia Fascist? by Marlene Laruelle

Author:Marlene Laruelle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cornell University Press

Regime Theory and the Neo-Totalitarianism Fallacy

Another aspect of the debate to be debunked is related to the use of the concept of totalitarianism.12 The totalitarianism theory, established by Hannah Arendt in her 1951 book—even if the term was largely used before her by scholars describing Italian Fascism and by writers such as George Orwell—states that totalitarianism is a novel form of government that cannot be considered a higher degree of authoritarianism but is instead one of a kind.13 Yet many scholars of fascism explain that if the concept of totalitarianism works for Nazi Germany—and for the Stalinist Soviet Union—and was aspirational for Mussolini’s Italy, it does not apply to more “moderate” fascist regimes such as those that existed in Spain, Portugal, or Latin America, which combined a more traditional authoritarian regime with a military junta in power, nor to the late Soviet Union.14 With the exception of Nazi Germany, the majority of fascist regimes were not totalitarian in practice—they did not exercise full control of every aspect of individual life, and instead showed some “loopholes” in their totalitarian aspirations.

In all cases, Nazi-style totalitarianism, southern European- and Latin American-style military authoritarianism, and Stalinism, these parallels fail to work for Putin’s Russia. Totalitarianism uses a system of terror to subjugate mass populations and seeks to dominate every aspect of life as a prelude to world domination. Today’s Russia offers no indications that would qualify it as a totalitarian state: no system of terror is in place, no mandatory indoctrination exists to subjugate the masses, and no mobilization mechanisms are present. Definitions of today’s Russian regime as totalitarian thus do not rely on scholarly analysis but belong to media hype, such as, for instance, Masha Gessen’s The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia,15 or to the politicized labeling of Russia as fascist, such as that advanced by Snyder or Alexander Motyl. This label is based on a fallacious logical triangle: if Nazism and Communism are equally totalitarian and if the Putin regime is neo-Stalinist, then Putin’s Russia equals Nazism through its revamped Stalinism.

The Putin regime focuses on outlawing liberal opposition and invites citizens to be busy with their private lives and individual well-being, permitting as many free spaces as possible for nonpolitical expression in order to avoid resentment, which could become a driver of antiregime mobilization. These features are classic for authoritarian regimes, which limit themselves to gaining and then keeping political power, requiring the observance of certain rules, and allowing limited liberties as long as they do not challenge political domination. One can thus question whether Putin is, as Motyl asserts, “a dictator.” Motyl supports his claims of Russia’s alleged dictatorship by relying on Freedom House scores, a choice that hardly makes his allegations incontrovertible—the advocacy institution divides the world into just three categories (free, partly free, and not free), a classification that is too restrictive to be meaningful.16

The Polity IV project offers a much more granular ranking for capturing the nature of the Russian political regime by “examining concomitant qualities

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