Democracy Revised: Democratic Imaginary and Emerging Autocracy in Post-Soviet Russia

Abstract

Contemporary autocracies often maintain a connection with democracy. They do not entirely dismantle the democratic structures established within unfinished modernization projects. Instead, they emerge as “electoral autocracies” and manipulate the concept of democracy offering alternative interpretations and meanings to further their illiberal agenda. The paper delves into the revision of democracy and how the democratic imaginary is utilized in the context of emerging autocracy in post-Soviet Russia. While the post-Soviet Russian autocracy adjusted democratic institutions for its own objectives, it also intended to appropriate the concept of democracy at the semantic and symbolic levels. The rise of Putin’s autocracy is characterized by the radicalization of cultural-civilizational particularism endorsing anti-democratic illiberal arguments. Through this adaptable hermeneutic framework, the Russian authorities tend to relativize the concept of democracy, criticizing, and dismissing the relevance of liberal democracy. Simultaneously, they articulate a distinct “sovereign” version of democracy and claim that non-liberal regimes are legitimate forms of political modernity. The autocratic political discourse on democracy is intrinsically non-democratic, as the lack of intellectual autonomy, control, and closure of discourse constrain the scope of meaning. The resulting heteronomous conception of democracy presents a static and ahistorical society predestined to (re)produce a single pro-authoritarian cultural-political pattern.

Introduction

Democracy is a crucial form of political modernity, and contemporary autocratic projects often seek to assert democratic legitimacy and assimilate democratic attributes. The paper makes a contribution to the studies of contemporary autocracies by examining their semantic and hermeneutic dimensions, particularly the pro-authoritarian interpretations of democratic imaginary as their foundational pillar. The paper discusses the reinterpretation of democracy accompanying the institutionalization of the autocratic project in post-Soviet Russia. It strives to demonstrate that in Russia, especially in the post-Yeltsin era, a particularistic civilizational framework, emphasizing national and civilizational sovereignty, has been strategically harnessed for the redefinition of democracy, delegitimization of Western liberal-democratic model, and, ultimately, for the validation of the autocratic retention of power.

Contrary to the unfulfilled prophecy of the “end of history” with the expected wave of global democratization after the collapse of the USSR and the failure of Soviet modernity as the primary rival to Western liberalism, not democracies but non-democratic autocratic projects—referred to as electoral/competitive authoritarianism or “liberalized autocracy”—that adopt and use nominally democratic institutions and practices has become a widespread phenomenon of illiberal modernity (Brancati, 2014; Varol, 2014). They often inherit some democratic institutional forms (elections, party system, etc.) from previous periods of incomplete democratization and modernization that are substantively deprived of all meanings of the democratic ethos, sustaining, and decorating the non-democratic rule. There are imposed obstacles to political activities and equal participation, and electoral processes being epiphenomenal to the autocratic systems (Golosov, 2013) are not meant to change the established patterns of distribution of power nor to shape new political configurations. Contemporary competitive autocracies fail to practice essential attributes of democracy, including the rule of law, separation of powers, and autonomy of civil society.

In addition to “autocratic legalism” (Scheppele, 2018; Khalil, 2024; Garcia Holdago & Sánchez Urribarri, 2024) and various other tactics, limiting political participation, suppressing political opposition, activism, and non-governmental organizations, and controlling mass media, autocracies also conceptualize their distorted implications of the democratic imaginary and articulate alternative interpretations of democracy. The symbolic and semantic politics of emerging autocracies, the ways in which they appropriate the democratic imaginary and revise democracy in accordance with their interests, cultural-religious background, and political-ideological objectives, are not examined as extensively as autocratic institutionalism.

The paper traces the hermeneutical changes of “democracy” as articulated in official political discourses. It explores a new semantic framework for democracy that revises the previously embraced liberal-democratic model and legitimizes the autocratic orientations of the regime. The first part of the paper delves into the nature of democracy as an autonomy project that is prone to hermeneutical complexity and open to variations. It explores the genetic connections between democracy and its radical illiberal counterparts, shedding light on the nuanced aspects of the democratic imaginary. The subsequent part of the paper provides a concise analysis of the brief Westernization phase of the 1990s. This turbulent period is notable for its official pro-liberal orientations, which led to the establishment of a form of electoral democracy. The next part focuses on Putin’s autocracy when a systematic erosion of democratic institutions and principles has been accompanied by a critique of liberal democracy and the pro-autocratic revision of democracy that claims to align better with Russia’s cultural and civilizational background, sovereignty, and national interests of Russia. These developments have weakened society’s ability to hold political power accountable and have played a significant role in the tragedy of the full-scale war in Ukraine.

Democratic Imaginary: Interpretations of Democracy and Illiberal Projects

Meanings and conceptions of democracy that contemporary autocracies articulate to legitimize and constitute their regimes need to be considered within the broader context of democratic ethos, the inherent indeterminacy of the democratic project, and the openness of democratic imaginary for various interpretations. Additionally, this section briefly discusses the complex relationships between democracy and illiberal, totalitarian projects, and the common grounds and similarities they share.

Democracy is a political form of modernity that embodies its fundamental agenda: autonomy, emancipation, and self-rule. It functions as a regime that institutionalizes the principles of popular sovereignty, and citizenship through active participation, authentic representation, and the accountability of rulers to citizens. According to Castoriadis (1997), democracy as a regime aims to achieve “effective freedom” and pursue autonomy through politics. It assumes a twofold autonomy: intellectual autonomy from taken-for-granted and unproblematized meanings, and ontological autonomy from external extra-social orders (e.g., transcendental and divine) or predetermined laws, development trajectories, etc. Democracy presupposes the ontological openness of society, which, through intellectual inquiry and collective participation, philosophy, endless societal self-reflexivity, and politics, (re)defines and re-establishes its own principles of existence. The innovation of the democracy project is the emergence of an autonomous sphere of politics (la politique), where participation, competition, open conflicts, and debates on power create and reform the political framework of social life (le politique) (Castoriadis, 1983, 1997). Political self-reflexivity, integral to liberal democracy, is a modern form of humanity’s socio-historical creativity.

The monist-normative approach to democracy contradicts the substantive democratic tenets of openness of meaning and discourse, historicity, and self-reflexivity. Contemporary studies of democracy pay special attention to the cultural dimension of democracy and the intrinsic polysemy of democratic imaginary engendering varying interpretations and representations of democracy (Blokker, 2010, pp. 1–9). Following the multiple modernities thesis, which emphasizes the cultural-civilizational dimension of modernization experiences and diverse reactions to Western patterns (Eisenstadt, 2000, 2001, 2003; Sachsenmaier et al., 2002), it is possible to speak about “multiple democracies” or “varieties of democracy” (Blokker, 2008, 2010), or multiple versions of “democratic ethos,” which support the “democracies in the plural” thesis (Ferrara, 2015).

The “hermeneutical complexity of modern democracy” engenders various conceptions of democracy (Arnason, 1990; Blokker, 2008; Eisenstadt, 1998) and “ethics of democracy” (Blokker, 2008, 2010, p. 62). Representations of democracy also bear imprints of basic “antinomies” of modernity and its cultural-political problematics (Eisenstadt, 1998).

Democracy is open to varying versions and interpretations and cannot be essentialized or reduced to a singular understanding, normative model, or the supposedly universal form represented by liberal democracy. However, illiberal autocratic reflections on democracy often rely on similar critical claims against the universal applicability of liberal democracy and Western democratic standards and argue in favor of the “contextualized” implementation of democratic principles and culturally determined diversity of democracy advocating its particularistic national/ civilizational versions. They revise and frame the democratic imaginary through different “particularizing” significations.

It is worth addressing another problem of democracy—its relationship with totalitarianism, “totalitarian democracy,” which sheds important light on the genealogy of contemporary illiberal regimes and autocracies. In the words of Marcel Gauchet, totalitarian projects “situate themselves on the terrain of democracy,” which fundamentally sets them apart from the tyrannical or despotic regimes of the past (Arnason, 2023, p. 302). However, they deny the innovations of modern democracy—pluralism and divisions, breaking all societal distinctions meant for engendering and protecting autonomy, and enforcing reductions of contingency, openness, and complexity (Rundell, 2017, p. 33). Totalitarian projects appropriate from the democratic symbolic framework the concept of the “sovereign people,” implying the unity of society. However, they do not balance it with other essential elements of the democratic model, such as the “disincorporation” of power constructed as an “empty place” (Lefort, 1988, p. 17), the institutionalization of social conflict, and autonomous spheres. Totalitarianism “replaces the field of tension with the symbolic fusion of a unified society and unrestricted power” (Arnason, 1990, p. 43).

Democracy, as an emancipatory project of ontological openness and self-government, envisions “the historical society par excellence, a society which, in its very form, welcomes and preserves indeterminacy” (Lefort, 1988, p. 16). In contrast to democracy, totalitarianism is an ahistorical regime legitimized by reference to extra-societal sources or universal laws, in which there is no potential for uncertainty due to the impossibility of conflicts and reflexivity over the institutionalized meanings and established sociopolitical frameworks (Castoriadis, 1997; Doyle, 2003; Lefort, 1988).

Both liberal and totalitarian types of democracy emerge concurrently from the same intellectual foundations and political aspirations of the eighteenth century. The differences between them lie in their visions of politics and sovereignty. Modern totalitarian democracy can be described as “a dictatorship resting on popular enthusiasm,” “a synthesis of popular sovereignty and single-party dictatorship” (Talmon, 1961, p. 6). Totalitarian democracy is driven by political messianism—it postulates a singular and exclusive truth in politics and envisions a predetermined harmonious order. Parliamentary institutions and the separation and balance of powers are considered impossible as means to achieve social harmony. The undividable sovereignty can be exercised only by the people as a whole, not through a representative body (Talmon, 1961, pp. 43–46).

The Soviet project of modernity, marked by its messianic ambition to build a “new world,” can be regarded as an embodiment of the totalitarian democratic imaginary. The idea of democracy was an integral part of the Soviet project and its political rhetoric (Arnason, 1993; Aron, 1968; Priestland, 2002; Prozorova, 2022). The Bolshevik interpretation of democracy was contrasted with the Western liberal “bourgeois” model, presenting itself as a more progressive, advanced, and socially equitable alternative to the Western parliamentary system. In Lenin’s view, the historically innovative form of democracy was “proletarian democracy.” This could only be realized in a new society where the “dictatorship of the proletariat” had been established and the class division and dominance of the bourgeoisie had been dismantled. Stalin’s “socialist democracy” framework posited Soviet democracy as the sole authentic incarnation of democratic principles, arguing for a society-wide consensus that transcended class divisions, the absence of class antagonism, and the collective ownership of production means by the Soviet people following the obliteration of the capitalist class. The rationale for antiparliamentarism and a singular party system was anchored in the supposed resolution of class-based conflicts and interests, and the Communist Party as the class vanguard representing people’s interests (Prozorova, 2022).

Gorbachev’s “democratization” was seen as a “new impulse for the development of socialist democracy,” distinguished by “socialist pluralism” and a return to Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy, reaffirming the one-party system and the role of the Communist Party in the political system of the USSR (Gorbachev, 1987). The combination of democratic reforms with the assertion of the party’s prerogatives was “an attempt to square the circle” (Arnason, 1993, 124).

The Soviet campaigns for “democratization” were always a top-down initiative, serving a spectrum of goals—from legitimizing the regime and mobilizing support to confronting bourgeois class elements, encouraging managed criticism, and engaging the masses in participation in sanctioned forms of labor, professional, and societal associations, discussions about constitutions, etc. Democratic rhetoric was deployed not only to bolster national unity but also to propagate the positive image of the Soviet regime internationally, positioning it as a countervailing force and societal alternative to the Western model.

Post-Soviet Russia initially embraced liberal democracy as a key element of its early modernization efforts but later rejected the Western model as incompatible with its civilizational identity, national sovereignty, and “traditional values.” This shift occurred within the framework of an evolving autocracy designed to secure kleptocratic regime. This phase was followed by more explicit imperial ambitions and a revanchist response to the defeat in the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet empire. Following the military invasion of Ukraine, the Russian autocratic regime has increasingly displayed its totalizing/totalitarian symptoms, including the unification of political, economic, and ideological order, a fusion of power, law, and truth (in the terms of Claude Lefort), and the emergence of an uncontestable power center that “becomes an ultimate arbiter of normative and cognitive issues” (Arnason, 2023, p. 298). The regime employs “autocratic legalism” and has shifted to overtly repressive tactics toward political opposition and dissenting voices. It seeks to exert comprehensive control over domains of socialization and production of meanings—educational sphere (mandating “patriotic” and standardized state-sanctioned curricula across all levels), scientific domain (particularly in history and social sciences), mass media and cultural sector (censorship in theater, literature, cinema). In this context, Putin’s rearticulation of “democracy” grounded in a critique of the Western liberal model carries significant implications for the international order. It seeks to relativize democracy, undermining its intrinsic intent of autonomy, erode liberalism with a “rule of law” paradigm, “normalize” and entrench illiberal autocracies, and strengthen their resistance to the global democratization effort. “We will no longer tolerate criticism of our democracy. Our democracy is the best,” declared Putin’s press secretary (rg.ru, 2024).

Contemporary autocracies appropriate the formal institutional set of democracies (elections, multiparty, etc.) and manipulate their procedural aspects to claim democratic legitimacy. Such institutional setup is deficient in terms of fundamental democratic “drivers”—the realization of premises of democracy per se, such as individual and collective autonomy, self-governance, popular sovereignty, and empowerment. Like totalitarian projects, autocracies are capable of exploiting the achievements of unfinished democratic transformations, “extending them at the level of phantasy” (Arnason, 1990, p. 42; Lefort, 1986, p. 302).

Post-Soviet Russia’s Trajectory: From Democratization to Autocracy

Pro-Liberal Period: “Return to Civilization” and Democratization

Perestroika’s policy of “democratization,” “new political thinking,” and the project of a “Common European home” facilitated the exploration of paths divergent from communism. This, in turn, paved the way for a pro-liberal discourse aligned with Western values, enabling discussions on the viability of Western concepts like democracy, human rights, political pluralism, and a market economy. In 1990, the USSR signed the “Paris Charter for a New Europe,” which declared the dedication to “build, consolidate, and strengthen democracy as the only system of government in our countries” (emphasis added) (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, 1990).

The Charter emphasized supporting and implementing representative and pluralistic democracy, freedom, and political pluralism as essential elements for developing a market economy. It also stressed the importance of regular, free, and fair elections, the right of individuals and groups to form political parties or political organizations, human rights and freedoms, the rule of law, environmental protection, peaceful coexistence, etc. Therefore, the political leaders and elite of the USSR formally expressed their adherence to liberal-democratic values and principles of Western modernity. In its final phase, the USSR participated in constructing the “new Europe.”

During the early post-Soviet years, with the transition to a multiparty system as a cornerstone of democratic institutions and the first multiparty parliamentary election having taken place in 1993, the idea of the universality of the Western trajectory of modernization dominated the political discourse. Official documents and presentations, including President Yeltsin’s addresses to the Federal Assembly from 1994 to 1999, reflected Russia’s “civilizational” aspirations—to overcome backwardness and barbarism by developing institutions of a democracy, market economy, the rule of law, civil society, private property, and economic practices. It was asserted that Russia had chosen democracy at a historical “crossroads” (Yeltsin, 1994), and the post-Soviet transformations marked the transition to a “civilized” condition—the formation of a political system that met the main criteria established by modern civilization, including safeguarding individual rights and freedoms, diversity of property forms and economic activities, separation of powers, multiparty system, freedom of the press and information (Yeltsin, 1996). The post-Soviet liberal understanding of the state’s “democratization” differed fundamentally from the Soviet interpretation, implying limitations on state control and a new format of citizen-state relations. The use of state power was seen not for the self-assertion of authority but to protect every individual from arbitrariness and violence, to uphold their dignity, and to engage citizens as full-fledged partners of the state (Yeltsin, 1994). The choice of liberal democracy was perceived as an antithesis to dictatorship, stagnation, and barbarism, leading Russia to participate in a universal civilizational process, in which each country follows its own development (Yeltsin, 1999).

Egor Gaidar, “the father of ‘shock therapy’,” saw the post-Soviet period of Russian history as a unique historical opportunity to change Russia’s “special path of catching up with civilization,” and restore its unity with Europe to follow the “Western” trajectory. This transition aimed to “break the vicious circle and make the separation of power and property irreversible,” to adopt a purely rational “Western” attitude toward the state, and to secularize the state by separating it from the pseudo-religion of “statism” (Gaidar, 2009, pp. 212–328). He identified the primary risks for post-Soviet Russia, and his analysis largely foresaw the subsequent resurgence of “power-property,” “strong state,” and “statism as a special state religion,” “preserving the image of a superpower at any cost,” “reclaiming natural borders,” and “expanding territories to the limits of the USSR,” Russia’s militarization and imperial ambitions, and the creation of both internal and external adversaries (Gaidar, 2009, pp. 318–319).

The Authoritarian Turn

Three decades after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, it is evident that post-Soviet Russia has pursued a path toward illiberal modernity. The initial reception of Western liberal modernity models and aspirations for democratization has been followed by an authoritarian regression and de-democratization. This has led to the establishment of an autocratic regime with imperial ambitions.

The adoption of the first post-Soviet constitution in 1993 took place against the backdrop of a tumultuous political crisis ignited by a clash between the president and the parliament. This crisis had profound implications for the structure of authority as the 1993 Constitution itself harbored the potential for an undue concentration and monopolization of power by the president.

The roots of post-Soviet Russian authoritarianism were established in the 1990s and further solidified in the 2000s. By the 2010s, it had successfully achieved consolidation. It was able to adapt the entire set of democratic institutions created in the 1990s (elections, parliament, multiparty system) to its own needs, maintaining their form but hollowing out or distorting their content (Gelman, 2021, p. 92) This illiberal non-democratic system is marked by the concentration and personalization of power, coupled with the centralization of governance. The established personalistic political regime utilizes unfair elections (“electoral authoritarianism”) as a tool for legitimization and deception (“information autocracy”) as a means of political control (Gelman, 2021, 284).

During Putin’s period, the regime transitioned from an “illiberal hybrid” model toward more overt authoritarianism (Gilbert & Mohseni, 2011). Putin’s autocratic project commenced with the suppression and manipulation of independent media, a steady erosion of electoral rights and government accountability, and the curtailment of fundamental civil liberties. Multiparty elections are employed as a “strategy” to preserve the existing status quo and secure the regime’s survival. The electoral arena is meticulously staged and manipulated, and uncompetitive and unfair elections cannot impact the distribution of power.

The “protodemocracy” of the Yeltsin period evolved toward Putin’s “managed democracy,” the last and highest stage of which was “highly managed democracy” (Petrov, 2011, p. 35). To maintain a democratic appearance, the rising autocracy employed the strategy of “managed democracy,” wherein the formal democratic institutions lacked genuine autonomy and were incapable of impacting the state’s actions (Lipman & McFaul, 2001). In the subsequent phase of “highly managed democracy,” established by the late 2000s, the system exerted control over actors, institutions, and the rules of the game. The regime’s central formula can be described as the leader’s personal power, unrestrained by institutions, coupled with the manipulation of public perception through mass media and controlled elections. The intentionally weakened democratic institutions and practices, institutions of civil activities, were gradually replaced with state-controlled and sponsored institutional “substitutes” rendering them entirely subservient and accountable to the government (Petrov, 2011). These functional analogs to the democratic structures were devised to control various aspects of public life, resulting in a highly centralized system. Following this “substitutional” logic, the concept of democracy underwent a similar transformation—its original meaning was replaced with a revisionist interpretation aligned with pro-autocratic ideals.

The constitutional amendments of 2020 symbolized the crystallization of the illiberal pattern of post-Soviet modernity in Russia, characterized by personalistic authoritarianism, particularistic conservative-nationalist orientations, and corrupt crony state capitalism. The conception of the “post-communist mafia state” (Magyar, 2016) describes crucial features and the criminal ethos of Putin’s regime: the monopolization of power by an autocratic leader, restoration of power-property, and the establishment of patron-client relationships. Private interests replace societal interests, and state policy is driven by the logic of expanding political power and criminal enriching of the elite and leader’s close circle, utilizing legal state instruments and institutions, a monopoly on violence, and turning society into an internal colony of the state. Critique of the Western liberal democracy and articulation of an alternative, authentic version of democracy, have been important conceptual expressions of this non-liberal trajectory.

Revision of Democracy and the Rise of Autocracy in Russia

This section focuses on the semantic and hermeneutic dimension of the autocratic transformations in post-Soviet Russia, more specifically examining the reinterpretation of democracy in Russia—the articulation of particularistic premises of democracy, the meanings and concepts constituting the new revisionist discourse on democracy of the political elite.

Particularistic Turn in Russia’s Civilizational Representations

The erosion of democracy and the rise of autocracy brought about a hermeneutic shift in Russia’s self-conception as a civilization, resulting in changes to the broader semantic framework of post-Soviet modernization. The particularistic conception of civilizational identity, bound to the idea of civilizational diversity and the representation of Russia as a distinct civilization, marked a departure from the formerly predominant teleological singular-universalistic interpretation of civilization associated with Western modernity (Linde, 2016; Prozorova, 2017). The transition to the particularistic civilizational “grammar” advocating for Russia’s distinct “special” non-Western developmental path commenced in the late 1990s with Yeltsin’s pursuit of a “national idea” (Dubin, 2018, p. 245; Laruelle, 2016, p. 283). Russia was characterized as a “unique civilization,” “Russian civilization,” being among other “world civilizations.”

Following the late Yeltsin’s views ¹ , Putin introduced a “new Russian idea”: “an organic combination of universal human values with the timeless Russian values” (Putin, 1999). Russia should seek its own “path of renewal” rather than copying others’ experiences and transferring “abstract models and schemes onto Russian soil. . .. We can hope for a dignified future only if we manage to organically combine universal principles of market economy and democracy with the realities of Russia” (Putin, 1999). The “inclination toward collective forms of life,” the dominance of collectivism over individualism, and paternalism were regarded as Russia’s unique historical-civilizational heritage. Putin outlined the “traditional consolidating values”—patriotism, great power-ness (derzhavnost), social solidarity, a preference for collective forms of life that dominate over individualism, and statism (gosudarstvennishestvo) with paternalistic orientations (Putin, 1999). Statism, the “guiding and regulating function of the state,” along with the notion of a “strong state” as a requisite for upholding a democratic framework, served as crucial principles for the ideology and institutional structure of Putin’s era (Medvedev, 2008; Putin, 1999).

The development of the civilizational discourse led to the designation of Russia as a “state-civilization” (gosudarstvo-tsivilizatsia) ² , which determines the peculiarities of the Russian state (Meduza.io, 2023; Putin, 2013). This political neologism signifies Russia as “a distinctive state-civilization, an extensive Eurasian and Euro-Pacific power,” that “has united the Russian people and other nations, forming a cultural-civilizational community known as the Russian world” (Russkiy mir) ³ (MID.ru, 2023).

By the mid-2000s, “civilizational nationalism” emerged as a post-Soviet adaptation of the Sonderweg concept (Cherepanova, 2010; Dubin, 2018; Verkhovskii & Pain, 2012) and became an integral part of the official political discourse and ideological framework of the emerging autocracy of Putin’s period. The new civilizational framework portraying Russia as a “special civilization” with its “special path” targeted the mass consciousness acting as “a quarantine, blocking the penetration into Russia of “alien” liberal and democratic trends” ⁴ (Verkhovskii & Pain, 2012, 56).

This form of “civilizational ideology” was widely embraced and promoted by pro-governmental think tanks, political groups, and intellectual circles with neo-Eurasianist, Slavophile, conservative, imperialist, anti-liberal, and anti-Western views (Tsygankov, 2016). They associated civilizational identity with the specific Russian trajectory of modernization, particularly emphasizing the impossibility of achieving full-fledged democratic development in Russia and the inevitability of deviations from the liberal-democratic model.

The particularistic civilizational framework was innovative in several ways. Firstly, it elevated Russia’s status as inferior to the West, as a “civilizing” nation or “an apprentice returning to European-based ‘civilization’” (Neumann, 1996), the one that was still evolving to meet the criteria of liberalism in political, economic, and cultural domains. Secondly, it asserted that external political and democratic models should not be universally applied or taken as a reference point for Russia, thereby challenging the normative standing of the liberal-democratic model. Thirdly, within this framework, any political actions even if violating democratic principles could be identified as a national or civilizational interpretation of democracy. Fourthly, this approach enabled the assertion that liberalism and Western-type democracy are incompatible and threatening to Russia’s cultural values, traditions, and sovereignty. This particularism aimed to legitimize diverse political systems, including those that are not democratic, by emphasizing their alignment with civilizational and cultural distinctiveness, thus essentializing anti-liberalism and non-democratic political polymorphism. The concept of Russia’s civilizational distinctiveness and its “civilizational” “equality” to Western/European civilization defines its own trajectory in modernity and allows for interpretations and forms of democracy different from the Western model.

Anti-Westernism and Critique of Liberal Democracy

The acknowledgment of the plurality of contemporary civilizations coincided with the reconsideration of the “unipolar world” system and the international status of Russia as regional power established after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Critique of the unipolar configuration, along with the view of the collapse of the USSR as the “biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the century” (Putin, 2005) assumed Russia’s willingness to restore influence in the international arena and in the post-Soviet space.

The West was criticized for monopolizing and imposing its criteria for democracy as the “standard of civilization.” “The Kremlin increasingly views the Western language of democracy and human rights as a form of ideological pressure,” also “fearing that democracy promotion is aimed at regime change in Russia” (Tsygankov, 2016, 9). Therefore, liberal democracy is regarded as an issue of national security, that might put at risk Putin’s regime. The changing perception of the relevance of the Western liberal democracy for Russian society actualized and brought to the forefront such topics as the autonomy of Russian democracy, and resistance to external influences, including ideological intervention, sovereignty, independence, and self-sufficiency in domestic policy.

Russia aims to assert its position as a key actor in shaping a multipolar world, positioning itself against the Westernizing globalization trends. In addition to this, Russia has embraced a new mission of advocating and safeguarding “cultural and civilizational diversity,” ⁵ thereby opposing the universality of Western values and the “Anglo-Saxon model” (Lavrov, 2008). This approach serves to legitimize sociopolitical differences by appealing to the framework of a multi-civilizational order. The relevance of external democratic models for contemporary Russia was seen with skepticism, as Putin stated: “real democracy is not created all at once, nor is it copied from external models” (Putin, 2012). The concepts of civilizational pluralism, a multipolar world, and the recognition of alternative forms of political modernity, different from liberal democracy, have become key ideological principles for Russia under Putin’s leadership.

The analysis of Putin’s annual addresses to the Federal Assembly reveals that democracy was initially a central theme associated with the notion of distinctiveness of Russian democracy. After 2012, however, the interpretation of democracy was either reduced to the process of elections—noticeably excluding freedoms such as speech, assembly, and other democratic rights—or replaced by the concept of legality. Throughout the 2010s, democracy became linked with the concepts of patriotism, civil responsibility, and popular unity (Zakharova, 2020).

Conservative trends and traditionalism, along with nationalism, patriotism, and the glorification of historical past and cultural greatness, have emerged as critical responses to the narratives of Westernization and liberalism. The state’s close relationship with the Russian Orthodox Church plays a significant role in shaping these responses. Conservatism and a narrative of safeguarding spiritual and moral values and “cultural sovereignty” are interconnected with the shaping of Russia’s stance as an “other Europe,” an “anti-liberal European civilization,” opposing the destabilizing influence of Western liberalism (Laruelle, 2016).

Alternative Interpretation of Democracy

In 2005 Putin claimed, that “Russia is a country that has chosen democracy by the will of its own people. It has taken this path on its own and, while adhering to all universally accepted democratic norms, it will independently determine how, taking into account its historical, geopolitical, and other specificities, the principles of freedom and democracy can be realized. As a sovereign country, Russia is capable of and will independently determine both the timeline and the conditions of its progress along this path. In this, I see the autonomous nature of the democratic path we have chosen. And thus, we will move forward, taking into account our own internal circumstances” (Putin, 2005).

The conception of “sovereign democracy” presented an interpretation of democracy based on cultural-civilizational deterministic principles, emphasizing independence from external Western standards and the national character of Russian democracy (Surkov, 2008a, 2008b, 2009). The new democratic framework supposedly aligned with Russia’s unique cultural and civilizational identity, challenging the liberal criteria for democracy imposed by the West. It also demonstrated the intention to forge an alternative to the Western “political language,” introducing political discourse, philosophy, and ideology that mirror the Russian vision of political modernity. It attempted to compete within the intellectual space against transnational liberal discourse and evidently opposed the Western model of democracy while challenging the relevance of other democratic models.

According to Surkov, Russian democracy derives its essence from the Russian “version” of European civilization and is built on the “historical foundation of national statehood.” The Russian democratic model embodies and is determined by the “archetypical and ineradicable properties of Russian political culture,” and the “stereotypes of contemporary politics are reproduced from the unique matrix of the national way of life, character, and worldview” (Surkov, 2008a, pp. 81–84). Russian holism is contrasted with Western reductionism and defines the specifics of the political practice, including political integrity through the centralization of power functions, the “idealization of the goals of political struggle,” and the personification of political institutions. (Surkov, 2008a, pp. 81–84, 2008b, pp. 9–28).

These premises of “sovereign democracy” reflect essential features of Russian political culture and civilization. A strong, centralized, and personified authority, recognized as the primary initiator and guarantor of reforms in Russian democracy, mirrors a historical pattern of authoritarian modernization “from above.” It is regarded as a prerequisite for societal stability, national unity, and the endurance of democratic institutions. As Surkov assures us, “the majority views the presence of a powerful center of authority as a guarantee of the preservation of Russia’s wholeness—territorial, spiritual, and every other kind” (Surkov, 2008a, p. 83). From this standpoint, decentralization can invariably undermine Russian democracy, potentially inciting disorder and deterioration of democratic power structures. In Russian political culture, the personality doesn’t merely “displace institutions,” “the individual personality is an institution” (Surkov, 2008a, p. 84). The conception of “sovereign democracy” is personalized by Vladimir Putin (on the discourse of StrongMen see Bavbek & Kennedy, 2024). This idea was further developed and connected to the formula “if there is Putin, there is Russia; if there is no Putin, there is no Russia,” ⁶ recognizing the president as the representation of Russia and its existential condition and non-democratic “re-incorporation” of power. The constitutional amendments of 2020 strengthened the authority of the president and reiterated the stance that Russia should uphold its status as a strong presidential republic because “given its vast territory, complex national-territorial structure, and diversity of cultural-historical traditions, it cannot develop normally . . . or exist stably in the form of a parliamentary republic” (Putin, 2020).

Hence, autocratic and statist tendencies within Russian political culture are perceived as intrinsic and essential components of Russian democracy, reflecting enduring cultural and civilizational elements within the context of post-Soviet political modernity. “Sovereign democracy” presents a deterministic and essentializing vision of Russian democracy, in which traditional cultural orientations and civilizational aspects manifest and give rise to institutional forms of power and governance distinct from those in the West/Europe.

Opposition to Liberal Modernity

By the 2020s, the positions of high-ranking political officials advocating conservative and civilizational viewpoints have radicalized regarding the suitability of liberalism in Russia. This shift has resulted in a revisionist perspective toward the notion of “universal values.” Adopted during the Perestroika, in their Western neoliberal sense, “universal values” are now seen as alien and destructive. “Any attempts to standardize Russian or other values under the officially accepted “universal” ones are manifestations of sociocultural aggression, aimed at the destruction of traditional value systems in a given state” (Patrushev, 2020). The “Westernization” of culture and the imposition of foreign ideals and values challenge Russia’s cultural sovereignty (Kremlin.ru, 2021), while the dissemination or “export” of liberal democracy is perceived as a “modern form of colonization” and an extension of Western influence (Putin, 2021). Anti-liberalism as a radicalized form of Russian civilizational particularism and “civilizational nationalism” regards moral and political liberalism as an existential threat to cultural and political sovereignty as another wording to the stability of the autocratic regime.

The confrontation between Russia and the West has evolved into a global opposition between divergent versions of political modernity: the liberal versus the non-liberal, democracy against authoritarianism. Russia is positioned within the authoritarian end of the political spectrum. The Russian government representatives consider that both “Western standards” of democracy and “Western recipes regarding human rights, civil society, opposition, media, the functioning of state structures, and the interaction between branches of power” are not universally applicable. It is proposed “to acknowledge the existence of other forms of the societal organization compared to Western ones, accept them as a given, and respect them.” The world is divided into different forms of political modernity; liberal democracies and autocracies coexist as expressions of the “cultural-civilizational diversity of the modern world” (Lavrov, 2021). In some societies, the existence of Western “freedom and democracy” is deemed infeasible due to historical, religious, ethnic, and other reasons (Patrushev, 2020). As stated by Putin, “if democracy is needed by any particular nation, that nation will come to it on its own” (Putin, 2021). The articulated framework of civilizational pluralism justifies non-democratic alternatives, and democracy is now viewed as one of several optional sociopolitical forms.

The authoritarian metamorphoses within certain post-communist democratization projects, coupled with the diffusion of authoritarianism and collaboration among authoritarian regimes, underscore the viability of non-liberal models of modernity as an alternative to the Western liberal framework. Russia plays a pivotal role in this authoritarian networking, providing financial, military, and natural resources and serving as an inspiration at a semantic level of autocracy-building. Viktor Orbán declared the Western model “dead”; his proclamation of the political program of “illiberal democracy” and an “illiberal,” “non-liberal state,” characterized as a “Hungarian-version of ‘Putinism,’” positions the authoritarian Putin’s regime as a referential model (Buzogány, 2017; Magyar, 2016; Scheppele, 2018).

Conclusion

After the dissolution of the USSR, there was a prevalent perception that Europe/West embodied universal “civilized” societal forms, and the process of post-communist modernization was assumed to involve the adoption of Western liberal values, institutions, and practices. In the mid-1990s, an adaptational approach to democratization was introduced, aiming to integrate liberal democracy into the Russian cultural-civilizational context.

The rise of Putin’s autocracy was marked by the intensification of cultural-civilizational particularism, functioning as an adaptable semantic framework that could endorse anti-liberal arguments across both domestic and international contexts. The claims of global civilizational diversity and Russia’s unique civilizational identity were intertwined with the idea that liberal democracy might not be universally applicable and that non-liberal regimes are legitimate forms of political modernity.

While the post-Soviet Russian electoral autocracy adopted democratic institutions for its own objectives, it also intended to semantically adapt the concept of democracy to its own narrative, employing the hermeneutic potential of cultural-civilizational particularism. Several related components constitute the semantic framework of Russian revisionist narrative revealing its underlying pro-autocratic logic. The particularistic thesis emphasizes the society’s distinct cultural and civilizational identity and its unique developmental path, which makes previously accepted Western liberal models inapplicable. As a result, Western liberal democracy is seen as irrelevant, and there is a call for a national form of democracy. The essentialistic thesis asserts that a distinct civilizational identity correlates with a particular political culture. Inherent essential attributes or “archetypes” within the political culture, like collectivism, paternalism, statism, a preference for a strong state, and the centralization and personification of power, determine a particular version of democracy. The deterministic thesis states, that cultural and civilizational characteristics, as well as attributes of the political culture, are believed to determine the overall sociopolitical framework in an unalterable manner. Democracy might be deemed impossible in certain societies, or if it does emerge, it could manifest distinct features that diverge from the Western democratic model. The relativist thesis recognizes that various forms of democracy correlate with cultural and civilizational diversity and are equally legitimate. The anti-Westernist thesis posits that Western liberal democracy and liberalism are detrimental to traditional culture. The propagation of Western democracy, liberal values, and criticism of breaches of democratic standards are seen as instruments of interventionist and neocolonial politics that jeopardize national and civilizational sovereignty. The pluralistic thesis views the contemporary world as consisting of diverse civilizations, each with its unique patterns of political culture and values, and the pursuit of democracy or authoritarianism is shaped by these characteristics. Consequently, global civilizational-political entities are anticipated to vary along the continuum of democracy and authoritarianism. Finally, the conservative thesis advocates for resisting the adoption and negative impact of Westernization, liberal democracy, and liberalism, claiming to protect local cultural traditions and political values.

Interpretations of democracy in democratic societies and autocracies fundamentally differ. In democratic societies, discussions about democracy constitute a political meta-dimension; it is an aspect of democratic “investments of citizens” and “explicit self-institution,” a commitment to actively participate in matters that have significant implications for the collective self-institution and well-being (Adams et al., 2012). In contrast, authoritarian regimes do not offer similar opportunities and do not strive to explore the democratic imaginary to discover innovative methods for establishing autonomy. Instead, their political discourse on democracy is intrinsically non-democratic.

Firstly, autocracy tends to depoliticize society and monopolize the political discourse. The closure of discourse and the deficit of intellectual autonomy limit the horizon of meaning, and the discussions are likely to align with the narratives propagated by the ruling authorities. Consequently, the interpretations of democracy reflect the expectations, attitudes, and political dispositions of the elite and political actors who benefit from the established regime. Even when debates on Russian democracy involve intellectuals, experts, various think tanks, and discussion forums, they are often closely affiliated with the government. As a result, their perspective is constrained within the semantic framework contributing to the regime’s agenda.

Secondly, the presented interpretation of Russian democracy suggests a closed and inevitable scenario of sociopolitical development, predetermined by civilizational identity and “primordial” “essential” characteristics of Russian political culture. Putin’s cultural-civilizational determinism is another iteration of a heteronomous paradigm suggesting the realization of the unavoidable trajectory of a civilizational entity, leaving no room for human autonomy and societal creativity. This heteronomous framework portrays Russia as a static and ahistorical society destined to (re)produce a single cultural-political pattern and is similar to totalitarianism, which “designates itself as a society without history” (Lefort, 1988, p. 16). The autocratic adaptation of democracy accentuates the problem of democracy as a “regime” whose semantic and institutional variation should not hinder the fundamental intention to institute individual and collective autonomy.