Authors

Katharina Bluhm¹;  ¹ Freie Universität Berlin, Germany

Discussion

Recently, illiberalism as a counter-hegemonic movement against Western liberalism and the financial market-driven globalization has become a right-wing project. In Russia, this project appears as a reinvention of conservatism, which posits itself against liberalism and communism (Mannheim). The paper explores the commonalities and differences between two major strands of illiberalism in Russia: 1) the conservative neo-imperial strand that regards Russia as a unique civilization and 2) an anti-imperial nationalist conservatism. The proponents of the first strand aggressively oppose the West, while the supporters of the second hoped for a transition of Putin’s regime without a complete break with the West. Both strands are deeply intertwined with contemporary liberalism in the West and its perceived crisis. The differences between the two strands became evident again when Putin started the war in Ukraine and ended the evolutionary nationalist project.