In this episode of International Horizons, RBI interim director Eli Karetny speaks with Marlene Laruelle, Research Professor at George Washington University and director of the Illiberalism Studies Program, about the rise of illiberalism in Russia and beyond. They explore how illiberal movements define themselves against liberalism, Russia’s evolution since the 1990s, and how Putin has woven together competing narratives of nationalism, Eurasianism, and conservatism. The conversation also examines the growing role of religion in Russian politics, the appeal of Russia for parts of the American right, and the eschatological language shaping Russian elites’ views of the war in Ukraine.

Please find a slightly edited version of this conversation below:

Transcript

Eli Karetny
The war in Ukraine has become the primary frame through which Western liberals think about Russia as a threat to global order—and for good reason. There is an important ongoing story about a democratic U.S. ally struggling to resist imperial domination, and a post-Trump international system buckling under growing authoritarian pressures. But a closer look at ideological currents in Russia under Putin’s leadership deepens the significance of the conflict in Ukraine and points to worrisome parallels between Putin’s Russia and reactionary forces in the U.S. and beyond.

Welcome to International Horizons, a podcast of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies that brings scholarly and diplomatic expertise to bear on our understanding of a wide range of international issues. My name is Eli Karetny. I teach politics at Baruch College and have for years been the deputy director of the Ralph Bunche Institute at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. With our director, John Torpey, on sabbatical this year, I have the privilege of serving as the Institute’s interim director, which means I have the honor of hosting this podcast.

Here with me today is Marlene Laruelle, a French political philosopher and historian of ideas who specializes in the ideological transformations reshaping Russia, Europe, and the United States. She is Research Professor of International Affairs and Political Science at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, where she directs the Illiberalism Studies Program. She has written numerous books, including, most recently, Ideology and Meaning-Making under the Putin Regime, which was published this year by Stanford University Press.

Welcome, Marlene. Thanks for joining us on International Horizons.

Marlene Laruelle
Thank you so much for your invitation.

Eli Karetny
I want to begin today by discussing how Russia fits into the “fascism debate” and the discourse on reactionary political movements. But first, can you tell us about the Illiberalism Studies Program you direct at GW? How do you understand this concept of illiberalism? The program offers a fascinating definition which, if you’ll bear with me, I want to read because it really captures in some wonderful specifics what you mean by this concept.

So you quote on the program’s website: I define illiberalism based on two components. One, a critique of liberalism, either as a philosophy or a practice, in combination with a prior experience of liberalism before backlashing against it. And two, the promotion of an alternative political project based on five criteria: (1) a belief in the primacy of executive power and majoritarianism over and against institutional checks and balances and minority rights; (2) a defense of the sovereignty of the nation-state over and against supranational institutions and international law; (3) a call for a realist and transactional foreign policy in a multipolar world based on a civilizationalist interpretation; (4) advocating for the cultural homogeneity of the nation over and against multiculturalism; and, finally, (5) demands for respect for and preservation of traditional hierarchies and values over and against those of left progressivism.

Wow. That is a wonderful definition that really captures some important ideas. So maybe you can say a little bit more about this and why—why the term illiberalism? Why not reaction or conservatism or some of the other terms being used by thinkers?

Marlene Laruelle
Thank you, yeah. The idea of that definition was to try to be as specific as possible in the relationship between illiberalism and liberalism, and to be large enough so it could encompass what is happening in the different countries. Because, of course, all the different elements of that definition can be interpreted in a very radical way or in a much more moderate way, and they can be combined differently depending on each country’s national political tradition. So I was looking for something that would have this kind of heuristic value.

And why the term? Because, for me, what illiberalism offers that, for example, populism—which has been one of these concepts very much used at least the last 20 years—does not offer is that it re-shifts the discussion not on democracy (because usually populism is debated with democracy) but on liberalism. And so it’s a way to rethink, well, maybe the issue is with liberalism, or the way it’s interpreted, and that allows a shift from regime discussion and the kind of rhetorical aspect (which was populism) or the regime aspect (which is more the authoritarianism concept) really to ideology and political philosophy. So I think that’s what that term is allowing.

Why illiberalism and not conservatism or reaction? I think it’s still an open discussion between colleagues interested in the notion. Some consider that, in fact, we shouldn’t use illiberalism; we should say antiliberalism because it has a longer tradition, or some version of reactionary would work. What I like with illiberalism is the kind of mirror game with liberalism and the fact that I use it in a very limited temporal space, right? I use illiberalism to define something that began in the last 50 years. So I don’t use illiberalism to describe the interwar period, for example. You can have conservative, antiliberal, reactionary traditions intellectually and politically, but the political moment of now, I think, is best captured by the illiberalism concept because it forces us to put liberalism into the discussion. But it’s still an open floor, in a sense, right? There are different schools debating all these conceptual articulations.

Eli Karetny
Very interesting. To what extent does illiberalism, in the way you’re describing it, grow out of liberalism—maybe differently than conservatism or reaction or populism, which need not emerge out of a liberal context? But I think, in the way you’re describing it, illiberalism does have that kind of precondition. Is that—

Marlene Laruelle
Right. Absolutely. For me, it’s important to see the backlash, right? So you need to go through a liberal experiment one way or another and then backlash. And I use that as a way to dissociate from more classic authoritarian or dictatorial regimes. So, for example, North Korea is not illiberal because it didn’t have liberalism. That said, the division is not so obvious.

I had discussions with some colleagues working on China, and I was saying, okay, China is not illiberal for me because it didn’t have the experience of liberalism. But some colleagues working on China were like, well, you know, depending on how you interpret the evolution of the Chinese Communist Party, you could say they had a liberal experience in the 2000s and then they kind of backlashed on it, and you can interpret Xi Jinping as a backlash against the liberal era. And so you see here also you would have a lot of discussion going on about that.

But for me, it’s really important to see illiberalism as a byproduct of liberalism, right? It’s because liberalism failed—or people interpreted the failure, or lived through some form of the failure—of liberalism’s promises that they backlash. And the way they backlash is still by referring to some liberal arguments, right? A lot of political figures whom we, as scholars, identify as illiberal would present themselves as kind of old-fashioned liberals, you know, the traditional, you know, the grandfathers of liberalism, before the leftist progressivisms arrived. And economically, a lot of illiberal governments are still very liberal or neoliberal economically. So you see, the relationship is a complicated one. It’s not binary: you’re liberal or illiberal. Both are really entangled with each other.

Eli Karetny
And to what extent is the international context at the core of this definition too? Because previous conceptions—political philosophies—tended to be more inward-focused, and here some of the terms in your definition are oriented toward a rejection of supranational authority, international law, the international system—if we can say the kind of post–World War II international system. So to what extent is the international space part of the illiberal project?

Marlene Laruelle
I think it’s an important element. Indeed, not everything is focused on domestic issues. The global order—discussion on the global order—has become part of the illiberal project, and a large part, I think, of attraction for illiberalism. At least in some countries, it was really the key element. We’ll be talking about Russia. Russia has been rejecting the liberal international order before rejecting liberalism as a kind of cultural project, for example. So for some countries, what they interpret as the unfairness of the liberal international system has been a core element. And that makes sense because we live in a much more globalized world than we were 50 years ago. So even those who are in favor of more protectionist, exclusivist definitions still function in a globalized system where you have to take a stance on how you envision the international world order.

Eli Karetny
So shifting to Russia and looking at the situation there—you mentioned that China is a kind of… there’s dispute as to whether or not, according to your own terms, China fits into this illiberal framework. Is Putin’s Russia a closer fit, and if so, does the post-Soviet experiment with liberalism count as this kind of full encounter with liberalism? Or is there enough of a flirtation there to count that as a kind of experience and then a rejection?

Marlene Laruelle
Yeah, I think Russia is a really good example of that because it’s probably the country—the first country—that really framed illiberalism and the rejection of liberalism in the 2000s, even before Poland or Hungary, which are usually also key case studies. Precisely because, I think, in the ’90s the radicality of the transformation that Russian society had to go through created this kind of backlash, right? Because Russia experienced, at the collapse of the Soviet Union, all the different scripts of liberalism: the change in the world order; the status of Russia becoming a weakened great power; the arrival of political liberalism; the arrival of economic liberalism, of course, which was really traumatic for every citizen; and the kind of cultural openness. So they experienced liberalism in all its versions, and then, gradually, in the 2000s the Putin regime began to complain about, first, the liberal world order; then liberalism—or liberal democracy—as kind of forcing a so-called Western model on Russia; and then the anti-LGBT backlash. They gradually expanded their backlash on liberalism to finally build, now, almost an ideological framework that refutes the majority of all these scripts of liberalism. So I think Russia is a really good example of how illiberalism has been constructed politically.

Eli Karetny
Can we get a little bit more in depth into Russia’s past—the kind of Russia’s evolution since the end of the Soviet era? Thinking here both in terms of Putin’s thinking and Russian elites more generally. Maybe you can say some more about the ideas and experience that have shaped both Putin’s worldview and the mindset of the Russian elite with respect to liberalism and the West.

Marlene Laruelle
Yes. So here it’s really important indeed to dissociate the Russian elites, maybe, and the more grassroots perception, right? The grassroots perception was really shaped—and shocked—by the arrival of neoliberalism or economic liberalization. That’s really in the ’90s; that was the big trauma. And so the society had a kind of natural reaction and kind of, you know, situational conservatism, where the changes are going so fast that you just want those changes to slow down so you can adapt. So that was a very situational conservatism in a time of big changes. It was not necessarily ideologically framed.

I think among the Russian elites that was quite different, right? For sure, the first shock was probably the loss of great-power status and the kind of feeling of humiliation that large parts of the Russian elites felt already at the end of the ’90s. Already in Boris Yeltsin’s second mandate, you had a lot of figures commenting on the loss of great-power status and how it’s problematic; also on the kind of lack of state capacity in managing the Russian Federation itself. We remember the war in Chechnya, and so on.

And then, I think, gradually it’s really the backlash against the U.S. unilateral moment. So, of course, the U.S. invasion of Iraq; recognition of Kosovo independence; the overthrow of Qaddafi in Libya—that has been the big moment for the Russian elites where they suddenly kind of lost faith—at least that’s the way they would frame it—in thinking that this liberal world order could make some room for them. And, of course, the tensions around the managing of the post-Soviet space, and already the war with Georgia in 2008; tension over Ukraine; and over the Baltic states when they joined the EU and NATO. So all these international world-order issues and the difficulties for Russia to feel it is recognized at the level they would like to be recognized, I think, were the key elements for the Russian elites.

And then gradually the regime closed also its own political space and gave less and less room to divergent opinion—the ones that were more oriented toward what they were calling in Russia modernization (that could be both economic modernization and political modernization). And once Putin came back to power for the third mandate in 2012, that’s really the moment where you see the Kremlin elaborating on this notion of Russia as the conservative power of traditional values. And then they really shift from just, you know, not being happy with the economic world, with the kind of political liberalism that pushed them for reform, and with the world order, to really framing themselves as conservative and more and more authoritarian in reducing the space for alternative opinion. But that has been a long process.

And I think that’s a key point: Putin has been in power for 25 years. He is not the same man now that he was when he arrived in 2000. I think there was a moment where he was much more optimistic about being able to regain a great status for Russia without conflicting with the West. And then gradually—and that’s something that I show in my book—they move from, you know, learning from the West to thinking you need to unlearn from the West, and then gradually you need to conflict with the West, and going to war being the kind of last stage. So over a quarter of a century, there has been a lot of evolution among this kind of Russian elites’ collective thinking.

Eli Karetny
So in this confrontation with the West, I’m really interested to hear more about this and how Putin’s thinking may have been shifting over time. Was this an evolution going on within him based on experiences, based on power dynamics? Or was this about—there’s a consistent anti-Westernism that, because of Russian weakness after the Soviet Union dissolved, kind of forced Russia to learn from the West, seek help from the West, and only when it regained some stability and some strength could it then unleash its true anti-Western face? Is that what’s happening? Or was there a real soul struggle within Russia on these questions of attitude toward the West?

Marlene Laruelle
So you would find among the scholars of Russia both schools, right? There are debates among us about how to interpret that. I belong to those who believe there was an evolution. There were moments where they really, genuinely believed Russia would be a great power—that was always the goal—but that great-power status would be regained more or less with the agreement of the West, or without too much tension. And they still wanted to learn a lot of things from the West—maybe not necessarily culturally, where they backlashed more vividly—but economically the Russian economic elites are very Western-centric and learning from the West. So I think they genuinely were hoping to make it work—the kind of normalization, Westernization of Russia. And then when it failed, they gradually moved away.

But you would have some colleagues in the field who would say, no, no, no—the anti-Westernism was there since the beginning, and they were just waiting for the moment they would have regained enough power to backfire at the West—which seems to me untrue if you look, for example, at the surveys we have of the Russian elites, where you could really identify… Of course, you always had anti-Western elites among what we call the siloviki—the law-enforcement part of the elites—where anti-Westernism was more structural. But a large part of the technocratic elites were pretty pro-Western, or at least like, “we can cohabit, coexist with the West peacefully,” for a very long time.

Eli Karetny
Thinking a little more about the anti-Westernism: you write in your most recent book how there are two distinguishable strands of anti-Westernism—one, kind of Russian nationalism and imperialism as a rejection of Western universalism; and the second, Russian conservatism as an answer to the problem of Western liberalism. Maybe you can explain each of those strands, please.

Marlene Laruelle
Yeah, absolutely. I think, globally, we could say now that the majority of the Russian elites would not believe in universalism anymore but would defend a particularistic vision of the world based on this kind of civilizationist perspective. So Western universalism would be a hypocrisy, and in fact the world should be run by different civilizations having all their own normative systems, so you cannot interfere in another civilization. That, I think, is largely shared.

The question is, where does Russia belong? Does Russia belong to a kind of European civilization—in that case, Russia presents itself as the old, authentic, conservative Christian Europe against the kind of liberal, progressivist, decadent West that has forgotten its own Christian roots? That’s one way to frame it. And the other way is to say, no, Europe is its own civilization; Russia is a Eurasian civilization, and therefore it’s not so much being the “true Europe” that matters—it’s being this kind of third continent between Europe and Asia, being open to Asia. In both cases, you have the Orthodox tradition and the legacy of the Byzantine Empire that is celebrated, but you have two ways of interpreting that.

And, in fact, the regime is playing both cards, depending on the audience, the context, the speaker—because they do not necessarily all agree together. Even now, in a time of war and decoupling with the West, you would still find members of the Russian elites who would say, “Well, we are the real old Europe, and maybe even the real old West—the conservative West.” And some would say, “No, nothing to do with that. We should be Eurasia. We should be this kind of third continent—very specific civilization.” So both exist, and they try to maintain the two lines in parallel even nowadays.

Eli Karetny
Where does Putin fit into this, and has that been a consistent answer? Has he been shifting over time? Has his position been evolving? I’m thinking here especially about the Eurasianists. How does he compare to the Eurasianists on some of these questions about whether Russia is a civilizational state? Is it somehow the inheritor and protector—I think you’ve written in the past that, according to some elites, Russia is like the inheritor or protector of European culture—or is it a civilizational state that defines itself in contradistinction to Europe? So what are the Eurasianists saying about these questions, and where does Putin fit in?

Marlene Laruelle
So, you know, Putin—because he’s the central piece of the system—has to be centrist in the way it’s framed. He is usually saying both, right? He’s still using narratives where he says we have European roots; we are legitimate actors in this broad European Christian philosophy, conservatism, and we should continue to represent that. And at the same time, he has been really using the notion of Russia as a “state civilization,” which would push him toward the more Eurasianist narrative, and especially since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine he has been very much insisting on the multinationality of Russia and really emphasizing, you know, we are specific—what makes us a specific civilization is that we have many nations living as Russian citizens, and kind of celebrating both the multinationality but also the multireligiosity of Russia—sending signals to the Muslims of Russia especially. So he really has both, depending on what he’s trying to say and in which context he’s saying that.

If you go to a lower level, you would find elites who are more clearly partisan for one or the other. But Putin says both precisely because he needs to speak to all the different audiences.

Eli Karetny
I want to ask you to say a little bit more about these two frameworks, and especially in terms of, on one hand, seeing Russia as a multinational imperial state with a strong state at the center, and, on the other hand, Russia as an ethno-national civilizational state that privileges the Russian nation, the Russian people, Russianness. Say a little bit more about these two worldviews.

Marlene Laruelle
Yes. So here also they have been both used by the Russian elites and by Putin in parallel. You can find Putin talking about precisely what I was saying—the multinationality aspect of Russia and the plurality of religions and their legitimacy—and narratives that are much more what we call the “Russian world” oriented, insisting on the ethnic Russians as being the core nation of the Russian state and also on Russia as a defender of ethnic Russians abroad. That narrative has been used, of course, against Ukraine. So you have both Eurasia and Russian world that can be used by state structures and by Putin in different conditions.

And, of course, they don’t articulate well together, right? In our vision, the way, in fact, they are articulated is that they are all under the state umbrella, right? So the perception of the Kremlin is that what defines Russia is the state, not the people. It’s the state that defines Russia, and patriotism is a statist patriotism. And inside that statism perception, you have kind of concentric circles. So if you are ethnic Russian and Orthodox, you are the core of the core of the center. If you are ethnic Russian but you converted, for example, to Catholicism or Protestantism, or you’re not a believer, you are the second circle—you’re still very legitimate, but slightly less than the other. And then it goes by concentric circles for all kinds of ethnic minorities, and so on.

What has been more recently added to this kind of pyramidal, hierarchical perception of the content of the state in Russia is that the ethnic Russians who were abroad were always considered compatriots, so they were somewhere in one of these concentric circles but not central. But gradually, especially after 2021 when Putin published this famous text on the unity of the Russian and the Ukrainian nation, you can see that this kind of narrative about Ukrainians and Belarusians being one nation with Russians got upgraded in the pyramid, right? So now this kind of irredentist aspect has been much more visible in the state narrative.

And it’s contradictory, right? If you are a Tatar or Buryat in Russia, it’s probably weird to hear the state telling you that Ukrainians are part of the Russians. But, as you know, in Russian we don’t use the same terminology. So the narrative is to say that Ukrainians and Belarusians are part of the russkiy nation (using the adjective russkiy to define the ethnic-cultural unity), but the citizens of Russia are rossiyane. So rossiyane allows for the multinationality aspect; russkiy allows for the irredentist and more ethno-nationalist aspect.

Eli Karetny
These different strands—you know, Putin’s holding them together. As you said, he’s at the center of state power, and he’s able, because of his unique status and position, to hold these really diverse strands together. What does Russia look like after Putin? Are there other figures who can hold these pieces together?

Marlene Laruelle
Oh, that’s the big question. It’s probably—when you look at the trajectory of authoritarian states, the second leader who arrives once the kind of “father of the nation” (in quotation marks) disappears has to readjust, right? Because the legitimacy is never the same. Putin will have a unique legitimacy in his legacy because he stayed in power very long, and he’s the one who kind of reframed and rebranded Russia as a very strong state, both domestically and on the international scene. Those who will come after may play either for or against Putin’s legacy, but they will have to readjust.

It will be interesting to see if the tendency will be toward the multinationality, or the tendency will be more toward the russkiy sense. And here it’s very unclear, because you don’t really see the political forces. They are probably potentially there, but these potentialities are not visible enough. And it will also depend how the transition is done, how the war is finished, and in which situation Russia finds itself at the moment when the political transition is happening. But, of course, the tension will be much more difficult to manage for the successor than it is for Putin because, in a sense, Putin is above everyone in Russia. So he had that capacity to talk all these different languages. I’m not sure those who will be succeeding him will be able to do that again. They may have to take a stance.

Eli Karetny
I want to explore where religion plays a role in all of this, first by asking you to say a few words about Christianity in Russia—the role it plays among the people historically as a kind of cultural glue that imbues society with meaning, what role it plays at the elite level. And then I want to shift and look for parallels, as you’ve written recently in a fascinating article, that shows the parallels between Christian nationalism in America and what they’re looking to Russia to learn from. So maybe say a few words about Christianity in Russian history and culture, and then we’ll look for these parallels.

Marlene Laruelle
Yeah. The Russian Orthodox Church has always been a very strong cultural element in Russian history—kind of a very long perception of Russian history. But Russia has always been multireligious, right? There were always Muslim minorities as part of the core of Russia—if you think about Tatarstan and the Volga region. Then the conquest of the Caucasus; there were always Jewish minorities. And then, when Siberia was conquered, you had a Buddhist minority. So the multireligiosity was always part of that. But with this kind of hierarchical pyramid, the Russian Orthodox Church dominates, and the others are authorized but they have to follow the line given by the Russian Orthodox Church.

In today’s Russia, the Church has a really paradoxical situation. People refer to it as an identity marker and a cultural marker of their historical continuity, so the Church is protected. The majority of Russian citizens, for example, have been supportive of the law against blasphemy—so you cannot attack the Church. It doesn’t mean that people are religious. If you look at the numbers, you have only, like, half of ethnic Russians considering themselves believers. People may identify as Orthodox, but non-believer Orthodox; only about half would identify as religiously Orthodox. And the number of people going to church is one of the lowest in Europe, right? So you have that gap between a very strong identity-cultural marker that is promoting the Church and the very low religiosity of Russian society.

To deal with that tension, the Church has no other choice but to partner with the state and gradually become a kind of junior partner of the state. They have some disagreement on some issues—especially related to, you know, memory of Soviet repression and so on—where the Church is much more critical of Soviet repression than the state would be. But more or less now, they work together in trying to enshrine traditional values and family values and patriotism in Russian society. So they work hand in hand—the state and the Church together—even if they may still have some tensions. And they work also together in foreign policy, where the Russian Orthodox Church—but also the Muslim institutions of Russia—has been very much acting in favor of Russia abroad, talking to other Eastern Christians or to Muslims abroad.

What has been happening since the beginning of the war—I mean, the full-scale invasion—is that religiosity has become more and more important. First, inside the society, you have, especially for the families who have someone on the front, fear for the loved one. So you have a lot of re-spiritualization—esoterism, kind of astrological practices; you buy talismans, you go to the church, you ask the priest to pray for the loved one on the front. So you have all these grassroots fears for men on the front that have kind of re-legitimated or given more power to the Church, but also to a lot of New Age, astrological, occult movements—so this kind of very vibrant grassroots religiosity.

And then at the elite level, you can see very visibly more and more Russian elites using an eschatological and religious language to justify the war—presenting it as an existential war, a war of those who believe against the depraved liberal, secular West. The Church itself has been gradually moving toward creating a kind of theology of the “fair” or the “holy” war to justify the conflict in Ukraine. So the Church has been producing theological arguments. And then among Russian elites, you see references to religion, to God, to dying and going to paradise. This eschatological aspect has become much more visible. It was not the case before; before, the Russian public political space was very secular, and it’s no more the case now.

Eli Karetny
And you see the war as being pivotal in this change? Because you said a few minutes ago Russian society, in terms of ordinary people’s connection to religion, is as a kind of cultural marker of identity but not necessarily in terms of belief or practice. And it sounds like the war is creating some changes in terms of how society turns—needs to turn—to religion.

Marlene Laruelle
I think so, even if we don’t really have surveys that would show suddenly, you know, a higher number of people going to church. But I think the fear—especially in the part of society directly connected, with men on the front—has led to a rise of everything that is magic or superstition, protection. I’m not sure it’s really helping the Church itself because it’s also giving power to a lot of non-traditional religious movements or New Age movements. But you can feel these para-religious or superstitious practices, if you want to frame them like that, have been on the rise.

Eli Karetny
So how does this all play into the geopolitical situation? I saw a few days ago Steve Bannon posted on his X page the following quote, which I found interesting: “Russia is a Christian nation. There is a lot of affinity between the American people and the Russian people, and that’s what the globalists hate. Secularists and atheists detest Russia and want no rapprochement with the U.S.” I’m really curious to get your reaction to this. Does this mean that Bannon represents that wing of MAGA that sees Christian nationalism as the basis for a real rapprochement between the U.S. and Russia? Or is this kind of geopolitical calculations about shared enemies—and, you know, liberalism and globalism as a kind of shared enemy—that can bring the two nations together? So is this geopolitics or cultural affinity?

Marlene Laruelle
It’s both, right? But you indeed can identify inside the MAGA diversity a trend that has a favorable-to-Russia narrative. It’s difficult to dissociate whether it’s the geopolitical argument or the genuine ideological affinity that is playing there. I would think that for people like Bannon the ideological affinity is a key criterion: they are perceiving Russia as a spiritually coherent and, you know, ideologically uncompromised polity that is showing a path that the U.S. could take—a model. That, I think, is genuinely shared.

I would say if you go higher in the Trump administration, you probably would have the geopolitical argument being more important than the shared affinities, right? So the idea that, okay, we don’t want any more of these supranational institutions; we don’t like the EU; we don’t like U.S. support for Ukraine, which is a Biden legacy; we want all these globalist elites (as they call them) to be removed. So then the geopolitical aspect is more important. But I think for part of the MAGA crowd—and you can see around some phenomena happening in that MAGA world, like conversions to Orthodoxy, the “ortho-bro” movement—really this idea that Russia has been showing a kind of metaphysical coherence that is admirable for them and that is a model for them. It’s a minority, but it’s still a pretty powerful perception or rereading of Russia for a U.S. culture that was never interested in Russia at all, globally, except to see it as its enemy.

Eli Karetny
Can you say a little more about that? Because this is a surprise—that there are segments of American conservatism, the new right, the ascendant new right, that look to Russia in an entirely different way. At least a segment of that movement looks to Russia as a model—we never would talk that way in the U.S. in the past, of course. As an ideological model, can you say a little more about that? You’ve written that Russia blends spiritual and temporal power in a way that creates a model for the new right—that American Christian nationalists especially see this blending of the spiritual and the political in a way that, like you say, has a kind of metaphysical coherence that we don’t see in the West, in the U.S., in the liberal world. So what is that model? Give me some examples of that.

Marlene Laruelle
Maybe first two sociological or historical reasons to understand how it happened, right? It really emerged during the Obama administration, at a time when the U.S. right was feeling like they were losing on all fronts. They were also afraid of losing their own demographic support in the U.S., and they interpreted the Obama presidency as being a really super-progressive one. And that’s the moment where Putin emerged with this conservatism, traditional-values narrative. So that helped—on one side they were looking at Russia and being afraid for their own vision of America.

And the second element is that at the same time the U.S. right, which was always super American-centric, began communicating with Europe. So you had more and more exchanges; the European new right was translated into English; some new-right figures from the U.S. traveled to Europe; and, of course, in Europe you already had a new right that was more interested in and knew about Russia. So I think the internationalization of the American right and the fact that they got much more connected to Europe; the fact that many of the people around the MAGA world converted to Catholicism also means that the connections with Europe are more important. And therefore, if you read European far-right thinkers, you read about Russia, right? So this very American-centrism of the U.S. right—it’s over, in a sense. They got globalized; they got Europeanized; and then they discovered Russia.

What they found impressive in Russia is indeed this idea—which in Russia is a very traditional definition of Byzantine power—that the temporal and the spiritual work hand in hand; that you can see Putin and the Patriarch talking together, being represented together; that Putin has been very vocal on traditional values and the Christian argument. They also have a vision of Russian society as very conservative and very ethno-national—which, I think, is a mistake given the diversity of Russian society—but they have been able to project onto Russia a kind of idealized, mythical Russia that they see either as a Christian nation or as a white nation, depending on whether they belong to the religious or more to the white-nationalism dimension.

And the way Russia has been playing on the international scene—communicating these notions, developing this kind of conservative soft power—gives exactly what I was trying to explain: this idea that Russia is very clear on what matters for them, philosophically and politically. You also see the connection between the Church and the Russian army—so the idea that you can use force, and force is legitimized spiritually; religion is legitimizing the use of force. That is something that I think is very attractive for this part of the MAGA world. So Russia offers all these clues that they can put together and that resonate with the Christian nationalism developing here: the idea that, for the U.S. to be once again a great leading nation, you need to say the U.S. is a Christian nation (and a white nation, more or less), and you need to change institutions and infuse them with religion—and that, they feel, is something that Russia has been doing and that Russia is more advanced at than the U.S. So I think that’s where the attraction lies.

Eli Karetny
It’s interesting to hear you describe the role that race plays in this. You’ve written that one important difference—despite American Christian nationalists looking to Russia as an inspiration—is that American Christian nationalists are more tied to race, to white identity, and they’re projecting that onto a Russia that maybe has been, in myth, a “White Russian” people, but in reality is a far more diverse body politic. So can you say a little bit more about that? There’s a kind of inversion: liberal America that’s inherently diverse, and a conservative, traditionalist Russia that we think of as white. There’s an inversion here, where American conservatives are projecting onto Russia a kind of whiteness and Russia’s actually embracing its own multinational diversity. That’s unusual and interesting.

Marlene Laruelle
Yeah, and that tells you how much all these transnational connections and mutual borrowings are all based on your own dreams, right, and not on the reality of the other countries you’re looking at. If you follow, for example, the movement of ideological immigration to Russia—you have Europeans and Americans immigrating to Russia for ideological reasons—they will always show you the “white Russia” once they are based in Russia. They will totally invisibilize the multi-ethnic diversity of Russia.

So I think Russia is playing an ambiguous card. Domestically, the Russian regime would very much insist on the multinationality because they have to speak to 20% of Russian citizens who are not ethnic Russian. When they project abroad—if they talk to Muslim countries, they will project the minorities; but when they talk to the Western far right, they are projecting their own “whiteness,” playing the role of gatekeeper of Christian identity. And indeed the U.S. far right is projecting this whiteness over Russia, which has no reality sociologically and demographically. So you can see it’s a mirror game between the two countries where they both admire and borrow from each other, but in ways that are very different from the sociological and demographic realities of both societies.

Eli Karetny
I want to turn to one Russian political thinker, philosopher Aleksandr Dugin, whom you’ve written about, as a way to better understand what’s happening. He’s been called “Putin’s brain,” whether that’s justified or not. He’s gone through his own evolution, but his thinking, I think, can hold together some of these various strands that we’ve been discussing today. I want to spend a few minutes talking about him and where this might tie into some kind of eschatological thinking—so we’ll finish off with that.

But first, with Dugin—as I said, he’s been called “Putin’s brain,” and you’ve written in a chapter in your Russian Eurasianism book—which was absolutely fantastic—that Dugin represents the Russian version of the European radical right. If you could say a little bit more about that—where he shows where European ideas have filtered through the Russian ideological landscape. I’m interested not only in his thinking as such, but his thinking about Putin, because I think you’ve also written that that’s been an evolving story. Early on, when Putin came to power, I think Dugin said something like, “Here’s our man, the Eurasian man,” and then maybe he lost some of that enthusiasm—maybe he saw Putin as being too sympathetic to the liberals or to the Atlanticists or to the West, maybe lost some hope. But then in 2014 and certainly in 2022—the Russian invasion of Ukraine—it seems like he’s really come around to becoming the Putin ideologist. So maybe say a little bit about Dugin’s thinking, how his thinking has evolved, and his changing views about Putin and where he is now.

Marlene Laruelle
I belong to those who spend their time saying that Dugin is not Putin’s brain, and that was a Western media construction that has been very useful for him but is not the reality. Inside the Russian ideological system and among actors, he is a very contested person and considered a problematic one. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t have some access, but he’s really not that close to Putin and he’s considered as someone who is precisely too pro-Western, right? What makes Dugin different from many other ideological actors is that he is someone who has embraced the Western far-right intellectual construction from the 1930s to nowadays. He is the equivalent of Alain de Benoist for the French new right. He has been introducing Heidegger, translating Julius Evola, René Guénon, René Girard—so his thought is built on European far-right intellectual legacy much more than on a domestic Russian one. On that, he has been a really impressive translator in all senses—translating literally books from different European languages to Russian, but also translating and adapting European far-right political theories to make them acceptable in a Russian context. On that he played a really impressive role in introducing in Russia an unknown, so far, European thinking, and being the face of Russia when Russia tried to talk to the European far right and now to the U.S. far right.

What is really making him now a fascinating but problematic person for the Russian ideological construct is that he very much embraced Trump. As we were discussing at the beginning, you still have tension inside the Russian perception: even when the West becomes conservative or illiberal, do they become our friends because we are all conservative Europeans or Westerners? Or do we consider Russia is its own civilization, and in that case Trump or not Trump doesn’t make a big difference? Since Trump’s rise, Dugin has been pretty pro-Trump and trying to develop a kind of communication with, still, with Curtis Yarvin. He’s trying to be seen as the U.S. version of this kind of Trumpism world, the same way for 30 years he was trying to present himself as the Russian version of the European new right.

The way he looks at Putin is always super complicated. It’s a kind of love-hate relationship from Dugin’s side, and the way he frames it now is that he says there is a “solar Putin” and a “lunar Putin.” The solar Putin is when Dugin thinks Putin is doing the right things—being tough on the West, being tough on Ukraine—so that’s the good Putin. But there is a lunar Putin, where Putin is still too shy, too pro-Western, not ready to go to full-scale war with the West. So you can see Dugin is never really happy with Putin and finds him too soft both on domestic repression and on international reaction. So it’s a complicated relationship. But I think it’s Dugin’s own relation to Putin—Putin has no relation to Dugin. He knows who he is, but he’s really not a key figure in Putin’s overview of who matters ideologically. I don’t think it’s a reciprocal relationship.

Eli Karetny
And so who are the other key thinkers, and what other ideas are, in fact, influencing Putin’s thinking and his policies? Where is there space between Dugin—becoming a full-on Trump supporter—and maybe others in Putin’s orbit that have a different view about Trump, or about the West, or about a potential rapprochement with the U.S.?

Marlene Laruelle
One key name, for example, to illustrate in parallel with Dugin would be Sergei Karaganov, who is one of the most famous Russian foreign-policy experts and really an influential one—closer to the decision-making circle than Dugin is. Karaganov, for example, has been very explicitly the one who, since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, reoriented Russia toward the Global South, saying Russia and the Global South are sharing an anti-colonial, anti-Western-imperialism narrative. We should work with what they call the “world majority” against the West. Karaganov, for example, has been very clear about—well, you know, Trump or not Trump, it’s still the U.S., and the U.S. is still an imperial or neo-imperial country. Russia should continue to move toward the Global South. That’s where the future will be happening; in any case, the West is declining and they are not our friends. So you can identify these people and this tension inside the intellectual and political landscape in Russia today. It’s not uniform on that aspect. Karaganov is a good example of that kind of divergence with Dugin’s perception on whether Russia should get closer to the U.S. or continue to move away from the West.

Eli Karetny
We promised we’d keep this to about an hour, so I want to try to close things off by coming to the question of eschatology—apocalyptic worldviews. Peter Thiel—there’s been a lot talked about recently—that he’s doing a kind of lecture circuit in the last few years in really prominent places where he’s talking a lot about the Antichrist. It’s not clear exactly what he means or what’s being said in these closed-door lectures, but he talks about the katechon. Maybe you could say a few words about what this idea is and whether it has filtered into Russian discourse. What is the katechon? What is this idea of holding off the Antichrist? The Antichrist as a spiritual concept—what’s the political manifestation of this principle?

Marlene Laruelle
Yeah. So one notion coming from Byzantine theology is indeed saying some people or some countries are the shield—the last protection before the arrival of the Antichrist, the ones who will be able to withhold the world and the traditional, logical order of the world once the Antichrist is arriving. That narrative has been reintroduced by Dugin and many others into the Russian political language. And indeed, with the war in Ukraine, the katechonic references of Russia—like the last country that is still able to keep the world as it should be—have been very much developed. In that case, the Antichrist is liberalism, globalism, progressivism—those who want to shake the system and promote extreme relativisms are the Antichrist, and the ones who keep Christianity and traditional values are the katechon power.

So that has been very much developed in the Russian tradition also because it’s coming from the Byzantine world. And then it’s arrived in the U.S. through different channels. Thiel, because of his references to René Girard and other figures, has also been playing with this Antichrist notion. And here you can see these two groups—the tech-right world and part of the Russian world—are kind of talking the same language on the way they interpret what is happening in the world. There’s this idea that we should reintroduce political theology in our everyday political language, right—that the only way for politics to work is to become theological, to have religious differences, which allow you to name your enemy as a metaphysical enemy and therefore to use violence against them. I think that’s one of the implicit, or sometimes explicit, subtexts, but also to say things are holy—you bring back the sacred, the holy, into the mundane political discussion to try to transform our societies. And, of course, the fact that both in the U.S. and Russia you have strong messianic traditions—the idea of being elected by God, to have this kind of manifest destiny—that helps the two countries, at least some actors in the two countries, to create narratives that are very parallel and seem to be responding to each other.

Eli Karetny
Just to wind this down in the context of this Antichrist idea: listening to whatever I can get my hands on in terms of Peter Thiel’s recent talks, he’s really specific when he talks about the Antichrist as an emerging totalitarian one-world state, and the holy war against this despotism, as you say, becomes justified. You have a secularist turning to the concept of holy war to justify shielding the world from the Antichrist. Is that the way that—whether it’s Dugin or others—in the discourse among Russian elites? Is the worst abomination, the worst horror that is imaginable, the emergence of a totalitarian one-world state? Or is it something more nuanced? Is it about liberalism? Is it about cultural change, dissolution of Russian destiny? What are they talking about when they see this threat?

Marlene Laruelle
I think the perception among Russian elites would be much more about trying to survive against liberalism becoming a kind of totalitarian system. I don’t think they necessarily have such visions of the world-transformation of humankind because of artificial intelligence arriving, and so on. Dugin has that because he can read the Americans publishing on that, and he is in touch with Curtis Yarvin, so he’s trying to build that kind of narrative. But I think for the majority of Russian elites who are not Dugin-oriented, it’s more about a traditional vision: we want the globalist system to collapse, and we will be the one kind of standing on our two feet and helping the world to go back to the normality it should have. So they have a much more pragmatic definition of this kind of eschatology. But Dugin and some people around him are really interested also in the technological revolution that is an important part of the U.S. right-tech narrative, and they are trying to import that also in Russia.

Eli Karetny
So how does this all come back to Ukraine? You’ve written that for many Russian elites they believe that they’re “fighting the Antichrist” in Ukraine. Of course, that’s loaded with rhetoric, but is there some deeper truth there with this discourse about the Antichrist? How are we seeing that in Ukraine? Or how do Russians see that danger in Ukraine? Because this is a different way of understanding the war in Ukraine, right? It’s not just about Russian power and a revanchist empire, or dominating our “little brothers” that we’ve always had control over. It seems like there’s something else happening here too.

Marlene Laruelle
Yeah. There is this idea that the war in Ukraine is really the quintessential moment of the globalist system—the moment where the liberal West, the Biden America, and the European technocratic Union are fighting against a katechonic power. So it has a metaphysical aspect that indeed has nothing to do with “it’s the reunification of Ukrainians with Russians.” It’s really this idea of an extreme moment where the globalist system is fighting the katechon, and therefore who will win the war will have an impact on the way the global order will be reshaped for the next decades or century. So that’s the metaphysical aspect—really like the Christians are fighting the non-Christians. And if you watch Russian talk shows, you will see a lot of that kind of religious reading of the war in Ukraine—you know, trying to say that Zelenskyy is, in fact, participating in Satanist cults that are anti-Christian. So they have that kind of interpretation of a religious war happening in Ukraine now.

Eli Karetny
Fascinating and horrifying. Thank you so much, Marlene. This has been a wonderful conversation. I really appreciate you taking the time to discuss these important matters. Thank you so much.

Marlene Laruelle
No, thank you so much for the invitation and for all the great questions. Thank you, Eli.