Why Putin needs ideology, or why the war won't end tomorrow

Maybe I will write a book about contemporary Russian ideology someday, but maybe not.

In the meantime, I'm putting another brick in this wall - in my next article, I'm setting the stage for the future.

I argue that the question of whether Putin's regime is ideological is generally meaningless. Because early Putinism (2000-2011) was indeed rather utilitarian and technocratic, did not abuse ideology, did not pedal the victory cult, got by with the cult of Putin's personality, and relied mainly on geopolitics and general patriotism.

Instead, after the crisis of 2011, everything we know so well began: conservatism, traditional values, the victory cult, homophobia, a single textbook, memorial laws, and the militarization of schools. After 2022, the same thing squared + “Russia is a separate civilization.”

So why does Russia need all this and why should Ukraine care? The answer is simple: the Kremlin can no longer rely on the loyalty of Russians to Putin personally. And it is precisely in order to unite the people around the government again that the Kremlin had to start looking for a unifying ideology. And since Kyiv was not taken in three days and it was realized that the war was going to last, total ideologization has become inevitable. Indeed, it is difficult to persuade one part of the people to die and the other to tighten their belts for some millionaire's yacht. They need to be motivated by the defense of their traditional backyards from the encroachments of the depraved West. That is, to give them an ideology. And ideologization = mobilization.

It is hard to predict whether all this will have the expected effect. Perhaps it will end in a revival of late-Soviet-style doublethink, or perhaps it will result in a flash of genuine enthusiasm from the early Soviet era. One thing is for sure: if the Kremlin has deployed a machine of total ideologization, it does not believe that the war will end quickly and is preparing for a long confrontation. The doctrine of the besieged fortress is not introduced for no reason, because the entrance is one ruble and the exit is two.

So, in their eyes, this war is for a long time. And Putin, like Lenin, is here forever.

About the author: Serhiy Hromenko, journalist, security expert

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