Ruscism ( ), sometimes Rashism or Russism (and also referred to as Russian fascism), is a pejorative portmanteau and neologism used to describe the political ideology, social practices, and aggressive foreign policy of Russia under Vladimir Putin, characterizing the regime as neo-fascist. It combines Russian ultranationalism, neo-imperial expansionism, militarism, the doctrine of the "Russian world", state propaganda and a cult of personality around Putin.
Originally popularized in 1995 during the First Chechen War by Dzhokhar Dudayev, the term gained widespread international currency during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, leading to its designation as Russia's state ideology by the Ukrainian parliament and its formal condemnation by the NATO Parliamentary Assembly in 2023.
The term is a subject of scholarly debate. While scholars such as Timothy D. Snyder and Vladislav Inozemtsev argue that modern Russia meets the criteria of a fascist state, others such as Stanley G. Payne and Roger Griffin characterize it as an aggressive, conservative autocracy or mafia state. The Russian government rejects the term, and state censor Roskomnadzor has ordered internet platforms to censor it.
Etymology "Ruscism", "Rashism", and "Russism" are portmanteaus combining 'Russia' and 'fascism'. They transliterate the term, reflecting English, Ukrainian, and Russian pronunciations.
History of the use of the term
Chechen Wars The term, in the form Russism (), was coined and popularized in 1995 by the president of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria Dzhokhar Dudayev, who saw the military action by Russia in Chechnya as a manifestation of the rising ideology. According to Dudayev, Ruscism is:
The term was later used by the next president of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, Aslan Maskhadov, who considered Ruscism a variety of fascism, but more dangerous than fascism and having existed for the last 200 years. The Chechen news website Kavkaz Center featured a regular column titled "Russism", in which around 150 articles were published between 2003 and 2016.
Russo-Ukrainian War
The term became increasingly common in Ukrainian media after the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 near Donetsk on 17 July 2014, and the start of the Russo-Ukrainian War in 2014. It appears in the Russian-language song "That's, Baby, Ruscism! (Orthodox Fascism!)" by Ukrainian composer and singer-songwriter Borys Sevastianov.
In May 2022, the Committee of the Verkhovna Rada on Humanitarian and Information Policy supported the initiative of Ukrainian scientists, journalists, political scientists and civil society to promote and recognize the term "Ruscism" at the national and international levels.
Russian invasion of Ukraine
During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, terms like Rashyzm and Rashyst entered widespread usage across Ukrainian military, political, and media discourse. Oleksiy Danilov, Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, publicly advocated for the term "Ruscism", arguing that modern Russian militarism and destruction had surpassed classical 20th-century fascism. On 23 April 2022, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated that "Ruscism" would permanently enter global history textbooks, arguing that Russia's actions marked a resurgence of total barbarism in Europe not seen in eighty years.
On 2 May 2023, the Verkhovna Rada officially recognized Ruscism as the state ideology of Russia. According to the Rada's definition, Ruscism is "militarism, cult of the leader's personality and sacralisation of state institutions, self-glorification of the Russian Federation through violent oppression and/or denial of the existence of other ethnicities, the imposition of the Russian language and culture on other peoples, propaganda of the Russian world doctrine, systemic violation of norms and principles of the international law, sovereign rights of other countries, their territorial integrity, and internationally recognised borders".
On 22 May 2023, the NATO Parliamentary Assembly officially used the term Ruscism to describe the ideology and practices of Russia in Declaration 482, article 20. In March 2024, American President Joe Biden in his 2024 State of the Union Address explicitly drew historical parallels between Putin's territorial conquests and those of Adolf Hitler in World War II-era Europe.
Ideological influences and key figures
Ivan Ilyin Timothy D. Snyder of Yale University believes that the ideology of Putin and his regime was influenced by Russian nationalist philosopher Ivan Ilyin (1883–1954). A number of Ilyin's works advocated fascism. Ilyin has been quoted by Vladimir Putin, and is considered by observers to be a major ideological inspiration for Putin. Putin was personally involved in moving Ilyin's remains back to Russia, and in 2009 consecrated his grave.
According to Snyder, Ilyin "provided a metaphysical and moral justification for political totalitarianism" in the form of a fascist state, and today "his ideas have been revived and celebrated by Vladimir Putin".
Ilyin's book, Our Tasks, was in 2013 recommended as essential reading for state officials by the Russian government, while What Dismemberment of Russia Would Mean for the World is said to have been "read and reread" by Putin according to The Economist.
Aleksandr Dugin
In 1997, Russian thinker Aleksandr Dugin, widely known for fascistic views, published The Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia, a book believed to have garnered significant impact among Russia's military, police and foreign policy elites. In it, he argued that Ukraine should be annexed by Russia because "Ukraine as a state has no geopolitical meaning", "no particular cultural import or universal significance, no geographic uniqueness, no ethnic exclusiveness", that "[its] certain territorial ambitions represen[t] an enormous danger for all of Eurasia and, without resolving the Ukrainian problem, it is in general senseless to speak about continental politics". He argued that Ukraine should not be allowed to remain independent, unless it is a "sanitary cordon", which would be "inadmissible". The book may have been influential in Vladimir Putin's foreign policy, which eventually led to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Also in 1997, Dugin hailed what he saw as the arrival of a "genuine, true, radically revolutionary and consistent, fascist fascism" in Russia, in an article titled "Fascism – Borderless and Red"; previously in 1992, he had in another article defended "fascism" as not having anything to do with "the racist and chauvinist aspects of National Socialism", stating in contrast that "Russian fascism is a combination of natural national conservatism with a passionate desire for true changes." Another of Dugin's books, The Fourth Political Theory, published in 2009, has been cited as an inspiration for Russian policy in events such as the war in Donbas, and for the contemporary European far-right in general.
Although there is a dispute on the extent of the personal relationship between Dugin and Putin, Dugin's influence exists broadly in Russian military and security circles. He became a lecturer at the Military Academy of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Russia in the 1990s, and his Foundations of Geopolitics has become part of the curriculum there, as well as in several other military and police academies. According to John B. Dunlop of the Hoover Institution, "[t]here has perhaps not been another book published in Russia during the post-communist period that has exerted an influence on Russian military, police, and foreign policy elites comparable to that of [...] Foundations of Geopolitics."
Timofey Sergeitsev
According to Euractiv, Russian political operative Timofey Sergeitsev is "one of the ideologists of modern Russian fascism".
During the large-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, when the victims of the Bucha massacre in Kyiv Oblast became known, the website of the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti published an article by Sergeitsev titled "What Russia Should Do with Ukraine", which was perceived to justify a Ukrainian genocide. It calls for repression, de-ukrainization, de-Europeanization, and ethnocide of the Ukrainians.
According to Oxford expert on Russian affairs Samuel Ramani, the article "represents mainstream Kremlin thinking". The head of the Latvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Edgars Rinkēvičs, called the article "ordinary fascism". Timothy D. Snyder described it as a "genocide handbook" and "one of the most openly genocidal documents I have ever seen".
Russian Orthodox Church
The Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) officially deems the invasion of Ukraine to be a "holy war". During the World Russian People's Council in March 2024, it approved a document stating that this "holy war" was to defend "Holy Russia" and to protect the world from globalism and the West, which it said had "fallen into Satanism". The document further stated that all of Ukraine should come under Russia's sphere of influence, and that Ukrainians and Belarusians "should be recognised only as sub-ethnic groups of the Russians". Patriarch Kirill also issued a prayer for Russian victory in the war, and the church has punished or expelled priests who refuse to say it.
In late 2022, the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) searched churches of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) in multiple Ukrainian cities and oblasts. The SSU found manuals from Patriarch Kirill on how propaganda can be spread through parishioners, as well as pro-Kremlin literature.
Vladislav Surkov
From 1999 to February 2020 Vladislav Surkov was an influential Russian politician, often dubbed the "Grey Cardinal" and the Kremlin's main ideologist, commonly regarded as the mastermind of Putin's policies towards Ukraine. Surkov helped create pro-government youth movements, including the Nashi Youth Movement, meeting with their leaders and giving them lectures. The Nashi movement has been likened to the Hitler Youth and the Soviet-era Komsomol.
On 26 February 2020, Surkov gave an interview where he said that "There is no Ukraine. There is Ukrainianism ... it is a specific disorder of the mind, sudden passion for ethnography, taken to its extremes. ... It's a muddle instead of a state ... there is no nation".
Vladimir Putin
Russian president Vladimir Putin is known for denying Ukrainian and Belarusian nationhood, referring to Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians as "one people" making up a triune Russian nation. He said there is "no historical basis" for the "idea of the Ukrainian people as a nation separate from the Russians". Putin has repeatedly denied Ukraine's right to exist, calling the country "an inalienable part of our own history, culture and spiritual space". He claimed that it was created by the Russian Bolsheviks and that it never had "real statehood". Moreover, Putin stated that the invasion of Ukraine was an attempt to reclaim "Russian" land.
Putin has described Russia as a "distinct civilization" and said that it must be preserved and protected by "genetics and other advanced technologies". He decreed in 2019 that all Russians be assigned "genetic passports" by 2025.
Dmitry Medvedev
During the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia and former Russian president, emerged as a leading exponent of radical imperial and anti-Ukrainian rhetoric. Medvedev has repeatedly denied Ukrainian sovereignty, writing that Ukraine is "not a country, but artificially collected territories" and describing Ukrainian as a "mongrel dialect" rather than a legitimate language. He stated that Russia would permanently wage war against any independent Ukrainian state, and framed the choice for Ukrainians as integration into Russia or "death".