Russia and Modern Fascism

Dr Ian Garner is Assistant Professor at the Center for Totalitarian Studies at the Pilecki Institute in Warsaw. He is also an adjunct faculty member in War Studies at the Royal Military College, Canada, Fellow at the Centre for International & Defence Policy, Canada, as well as lifetime fellow of the Royal Historical Society in London. His books include Stalingrad Lives: Stories of Combat and Survival (Mc-Gill-Queen’s UP 2022) and Z Generation: Into the Heart of Russia’s Fascist Youth (Hurst/Oxford UP 2023). He regularly writes for major media outlets including the Globe & Mail, National Post, The Guardian, Foreign Policy, and UnHerd. Dr Taras Kuzio is Professor of Political Science at the National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy. He is the author and editor of 24 books, including Russia's War on Ukraine: The Four Roots of Putin's Invasion (Cambridge University Press 2025, with Michał Wawrzonek), Fascism and Genocide: Russia’s War Against Ukrainians (ibidem 2023), Russian Nationalism and the Russian-Ukrainian War (Routledge 2022), The Sources of Russia's Great Power Politics (E-IR 2018, with Paul D’Anieri), Putin’s War Against Ukraine (University of Toronto Press 2019), Ukraine: Democratization, and Corruption and the New Russian Imperialism (Praeger 2015). David Satter is an American journalist and historian best known for his books including Darkness at Dawn: The Rise of the Russian Criminal State, The Less You Know, The Better You Sleep: Russia’s Road to Terror and Dictatorship under Yeltsin and Putin, and Never Speak to Strangers and Other Writing from Russia and the Soviet Union. Andreas Umland, M.Phil. (Oxford), Dr.Phil. (FU Berlin), Ph.D. (Cambridge), Research Fellow at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs in Stockholm, Senior Expert at the Ukrainian Institute for the Future in Kyiv, and Associate Professor at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.

„Putin’s regime evidently shares many striking similarities with imperial nationalism and fascism—something mainstream scholarship on contemporary Russia prefers to ignore or discard. Yet Russia’s brutal and unprovoked full-scale aggression against Ukraine has conclusively proven such anapproach to be shortsighted and mistaken. This pioneering study represents a valuable intellectual contribution to a long-overdue and honest discussion of the nature of the totalitarian regime in Moscow. This makes the book a required reading for students of Russia, international relations, and comparative politics, as well as anyone who is trying to make sense of Russian belligerence and expansionism.“—Petro Kuzyk, Associate Professor of International Relations, Ivan Franko University of Lviv