The inheritance of an autocratic legend

pp. 35-53

in: Käte C. Langdon, Vladimir Tismaneanu, Putin's totalitarian democracy, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2020

Abstract

Langdon and Tismaneanu provide a context in which to situate Vladimir Putin and the cultural milieu of Russia by first tracing the origins of today's Russia through a brief chronological discussion of Russian history from the advent of Kyivan Rus' in the late ninth century through the fall of the Soviet Union in the late twentieth century. This chapter articulates Russia's historical legacy of autocracy and chronic security fears, which combine to award the nation's rulers a great deal of power. Centuries of tsarism, imperialism, paternalism, Communism, and oligarchism have reinforced oppressive autocratic trends in Russian culture, society, and politics, making Putinism an amalgam of the old and the new and factoring into its success today.