Ruscism

Usage

The word has gained popularity among Eastern Europeans and Western academics since Russia started the full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, who observe that supporters of Ruscism in Russia (and among the Russian diaspora) tend to reject democracy and see the Russian race as so superior that they are entitled to invade Russia's former colonies. They also miss the Soviet Union (1922 – 1991) for its vast territory and sphere of influence, which stretched from East Germany to Far East Asia.

Current situation

In Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories, traces of Ukrainian culture and identity have been systematically erased, e.g. Holodomor memorials replaced with Russian monuments, which has been seen by critics as "a classic example of how the oppressor uses imperial symbols to mark the space of the oppressed".

Particularly, 40,000 Russian citizens of Russian, Buryat, Tuvan and Caucasian origin had been brought into Mariupol by summer 2023. Similar to this also happened in Crimea after its 2014 Russian takeover, where a million Russians had been brought in by Putin's regime.

Neo-Nazism

Some Ruscists are also Neo-Nazis, including the Wagner Group, Russian Imperial Movement, Aleksei Milchakov, and Yan Petrovsky, who has been sentenced to life imprisonment in Finland on March 14, 2025 for his war crimes in Luhansk committed on September 5, 2014.

Alexander J. Motyl

American historian Alexander J. Motyl said that Ruscism had the following features:

• Statism and hypernationalism
• A hypermasculine cult of the supreme leader
• General popular support for the regime and its leader
• An undemocratic political system, different from both traditional authoritarianism and totalitarianism

Timothy Snyder

In a May 2022 article, American historian Timothy Snyder pointed out that:

[m]any hesitate to see today's Russia as fascist because Stalin's Soviet Union defined itself as antifascist [. ...] Because Soviet anti-fascism just meant defining an enemy, it offered fascism a backdoor through which to return to Russia [...] Fascists calling other people 'fascists' is fascism taken to its illogical extreme as a cult of unreason. [...] essential[ly] Putinist practice [. ...can be called] schizo-fascism [...] fascism disguised as a struggle against fascism.

Francis Fukuyama

In July 2022, Japanese-American political scientist Francis Fukuyama said that Putin's regime in Russia looked like Nazi Germany because they both feature extreme nationalism, though Russia's one is "less institutionalised and revolves only around one man Vladimir Putin".

Slavoj Žižek

In February 2023, Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek said:

[t]he ideology of people around Putin, and Putin himself, seems quite clear-cut. It's Neo-Fascism. They don't use this term, but the entire framework of Russian imperialist views — with the right to aggressively expand the state borders, the internal politics with regard to oligarchs, etc. — this mindset is the core of what we would call Neo-Fascism.

Oleksandr Kostenko

As early as March 2014, professor Oleksandr Kostenko (Ukrainian: Костенко Олександр Миколайович) said:

Ruscism is an ideology [...] based on illusions [. ...] manifests itself, in particular, in violation of the principles of international law, imposing its version of historical truth on the world solely in favor of Russia, abusing the right of veto in the UN Security Council [. ...in domestic politics] violation of human rights to freedom of thought, persecution of members of the 'dissent movement', the use of the media to misinform their people, and so on [. ...] a manifestation of sociopathy.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy

On April 23, 2022, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that the new concept Ruscism will be in history books:

This country will have a word in our history textbooks that no one has invented, which everyone is repeating in Ukraine and in Europe – 'Ruscism' [. ...] The word is new, but the actions are the same as they were 80 years ago in Europe [. ...] if you analyse our continent, there has been no barbarism like this. So Ruscism is a concept that will go into the history books [...] small children around the world will stand up and answer their teachers when they ask when Ruscism began, in what land, and who won the fight for freedom against this terrible concept.

Larysa Yakubova

In April 2022, Larysa Yakubova (Ukrainian: Якубова Лариса Дмитрівна) from the Institute of History of Ukraine wrote in her article The Anatomy of Ruscism:

Russia has not reflected on the tragedies of totalitarianism and did not decommunize its own Soviet totalitarian heritage [. ...] the major reason for the [...] rapid development of Ruscism in modern Russia [. ...] will remain until there is a global condemnation of communist ideology as well as its heir – Ruscism and Putinism.

Andrey Piontkovsky

Political scientist Andrey Piontkovsky argued that Ruscism is similar to Nazism, with Putin's speeches reflecting similar ideas to those of Adolf Hitler.

Grigory Yudin

Sociologist Grigory Yudin emphasized the importance of the "social atomization" and "depoliticisation" of Soviet society during the "Era of Stagnation" and later under Putin, followed by Russian society's mobilization to invade Ukraine in 2022. Yudin said that historical fascist regimes atomized the societies to mobilize them, adding that:

[t]he image of general popular support for Putin is false [...] used by Putin to threaten the elites and the people: the elites fear that 'the people' will support repressions against them, while individuals of the atomized society fear that if they express their disagreement, they will alone confront the non-existent "people masses".

Stanislav Belkovsky

Political scientist Stanislav Belkovsky argues that Ruscism is a form of fascism disguised as anti-fascism.