TY - CHAP

T1 - Messianic discourses and the ideology of Putinism

AU - Suslov, Mikhail

PY - 2023

Y1 - 2023

N2 - This chapter analyzes the proliferation of messianic discourses from the religious milieu to the secular sectors of today’s Russian political elite and regime ideology. It argues that messianism is a dynamic complex of ideas that has had different iterations in Russian conceptual history. In post-Soviet Russia, conceptual innovation of messianism rests in the paradoxical attempt to combine universalism with an identitarian focus on Russian “basic values.” This new “low-cost messianism” redefines Russia’s mission as a providential task of destroying hegemonies, be that the empire of Napoleon, Nazi Germany, or, today, “West-led” globalization. The mission of destroying hegemons can imply a wide range of possible actions from total passivity (the mission of “just being”) to active military operations. But the underlying assumption is that Russia would fulfill its universal mission by simply “playing itself.” Despite its obvious religious provenience (the theory of Katechon – “retainer,” shielding off the world from the coming of the Antichrist), “low-cost messianism” is being recycled in secular contexts as a central explanatory device justifying the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

AB - This chapter analyzes the proliferation of messianic discourses from the religious milieu to the secular sectors of today’s Russian political elite and regime ideology. It argues that messianism is a dynamic complex of ideas that has had different iterations in Russian conceptual history. In post-Soviet Russia, conceptual innovation of messianism rests in the paradoxical attempt to combine universalism with an identitarian focus on Russian “basic values.” This new “low-cost messianism” redefines Russia’s mission as a providential task of destroying hegemonies, be that the empire of Napoleon, Nazi Germany, or, today, “West-led” globalization. The mission of destroying hegemons can imply a wide range of possible actions from total passivity (the mission of “just being”) to active military operations. But the underlying assumption is that Russia would fulfill its universal mission by simply “playing itself.” Despite its obvious religious provenience (the theory of Katechon – “retainer,” shielding off the world from the coming of the Antichrist), “low-cost messianism” is being recycled in secular contexts as a central explanatory device justifying the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

U2 - 10.4324/9781003462521-6

DO - 10.4324/9781003462521-6

M3 - Book chapter

SN - 9781032610153

BT - Exploring Russia’s Exceptionalism in International Politics

A2 - Taras, Raymond

PB - Routledge

ER -