Putin’s Totalitarian Democracy

Kate C. Langdon is an Erasmus Mundus scholar. She studied at Vassar College in New York and Charles University in Prague.Vladimir Tismaneanu is Professor in the Department of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland, College Park, and a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, USA.

• 1. Recentering Putinism.- 2. The Inheritance of an Autocratic Legend.- 3. Enter “the Hero”.- 4. The Intellectual Origins of Putinism.- 5. Putinism as a Culture in the Making.- 6. Russian Nationalism in Education, the Media, and Religion.- 7. Russian Foreign Policy: Freedom for Whom, to Do What?.- 8. The New Dark Times.

“Sameness and difference also emerge when we compare these (or any) two books. Thus, both offer thought-provoking responses to the dilemmas outlined. … Putin’s Totalitarian Democracy (PTD) is a polemic that breaches scholarly etiquette. Plots against Russia (PAR), via an emphasis on popular culture and discourse, applies theoretical paradigms that originate in the psychoanalytical branch of cultural studies to topics usually covered within political communication, serving as a fine exemplar of the incipient discipline of critical geopolitics.” (Stephen Hutchings, Journal of Modern History, Vol. 94 (3), September, 2022)