Studies in East European Thought

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11212-024-09659-w

Russian pseudo-conservatism in an international context

Alexey Zhavoronkov1

Accepted: 27 June 2024

© The Author(s) 2024

Abstract
This paper presents a short analysis of the so-called ‘conservative turn’ in contem-
porary Russia. This ‘turn’ is examined in the context of the previous development of
Russian conservatism, particularly its degradation into imitational bureaucratic con-
servatism in the second half of the nineteenth century. I argue that this ‘new con-
servatism’ in contemporary Russian politics reflects this degradation and is, in fact,
a pseudo-conservatism which has no conservative core but rather an ad hoc (tacti-
cal, pseudo-historical, anti-intellectual) character. I also argue that we need to revise
our understanding of contemporary autocracies in light of this phenomenon, which is
deeply connected to the worldwide crisis of conservatism.

Keywords Russia · Pseudo-conservatism · Slavophiles · Bureaucratic conservatism ·

Autocracy

In political theory, there is no shortage of studies that consider conservatism a move-

ment without an intellectual core (or at least without an independent, non-reactive
program). However, the logical consequence of taking this path of interpretation
would be to consider liberalism similarly, given the drastic social and political trans-
formations after World War II. In doing so, we could take after scholars like Panagi-
otis Kondylis (2023), who, in a somewhat nihilistic manner, characterizes contempo-
rary conservatism and liberalism as empty labels since the end of the Modern period
in the mid-twentieth century. In my opinion, we still can use both notions due to the
absence of better options.
Nevertheless, it is also clear that conservatism has seen several major crises since
the nineteenth century due to the rapid technological developments and secularization
of Western societies. After World War II, it constantly struggled with the problem
of (re-)defining its core traits, as we can see in the example of the ongoing con-

 A. Zhavoronkov
[email protected]

1 Institute of Philosophy, Goethe University Frankfurt, Norbert-Wollheim-Platz 1, 60629

Frankfurt am Main, Germany
 A. Zhavoronkov

flict between neoconservatives and paleoconservatives in the U.S.1 The issues of the
nineteenth century are still largely unsolved, causing heated debates: What can (and
should) be conserved in the age of social and political turmoil? Should conservatism
engage itself in a dialogue with liberalism, borrowing some of its features and prin-
ciples, or should it purify itself from liberal influences to fully develop its potential?2
What is the role of natural law in the age of secularization? What is a conservative
stance towards technological innovations?
While there are significant cultural differences between conservative traditions
worldwide, not all these traditions could retain their essential elements during the
twentieth century. While the political, social, technological, and economic develop-
ments of the nineteenth century were a challenge to the intellectual core of conser-
vatism, the turbulent twentieth century presented a challenge to its very existence.
For instance, the Chinese conservative tradition did not survive during the Commu-
nist period, contrary to the repeated claims made by today’s CCP officials.3 The same
applies to the Russian conservative tradition since its gradual decay was among the
major causes of the Russian Revolution; in this regard, my diagnosis coincides with
the one by Nikolai Berdyaev (2002, 2012). In the U.S., the conflict between conser-
vative traditionalists and neoconservatives did not only split the Republican party but
also gave rise to a new phenomenon—that of pseudo-conservatism, described in the
writings of Richard Hofstadter (1965), who studied the drastic changes in the Amer-
ican political landscape on specific examples, such as the infamous Barry Goldwater
1964 presidential campaign. Goldwater’s pseudo-conservatism, which made use of
conspiracy theories, was only moderately successful at the time. However, its legacy
proved to be long-lasting because of the deepening crisis of mainstream conservatism.
During the last decade, there were many manifestations of pseudo-conservatism, be
it the political ad hoc tactics of Putin and Trump or the politics of Victor Orbán in
Hungary and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil.
We can sum up the key traits of today’s pseudo-conservatism in five points.4 First,
pseudo-conservatism understands strategy as tactics, meaning that it sacrifices any

1 The American intellectual movement known as Paleoconservatism emerged in the 1960s during the Viet-
nam War, serving as a counter-movement to Neoconservatism that supported it. Paleoconservatives view
returning to the ideological roots of American conservatism, therefore carrying on the Old Right’s legacy,
as their primary objective. In contrast to Neoconservatism, Paleoconservatism is centered on principles of
non-interventionism and anti-imperialism on the international level, as well as Christian ethics, protection-
ism, and states’ rights on the domestic level. The nationalistic paleoconservative agenda and the recent
emphasis on issues of immigration and race attract those representing the radical right, sometimes blurring
the lines between these two phenomena.
2 I think that liberal conservatism (not neoconservatism!) could do much good for American and Russian
mainstream politics, as liberalism and conservatism were historically interdependent and thus could al-
ways learn from each other. However, I do not see any indications of such an option becoming the new
mainstream—primarily because of the increasing social radicalization and political polarization (a ten-
dency equally visible in European countries), which undermine any attempts at finding middle-ground
positions.
3 For a comprehensive study of Chinese conservative concepts of the early twentieth century, see Xu
(2021).
4 Though I essentially understand pseudo-conservatism as a political ideology, this does not mean that it
cannot spawn quasi-intellectual movements of its own. Instead of instead of offering meaningful answers to
questions that are typically discussed in the framework of a conservative intellectual tradition, the latter are
concentrated on justifying particular, largely anti-conservative political decisions and actions. As a result,
Russian pseudo-conservatism in an international context

principles to political decisions that serve its interests and guarantee its survival. It
can be defined as a tactically acting, militant decisionism, with an evident, practi-
cal absence of a ‘conservative core’. Second, pseudo-conservatism avoids any com-
mitment and self-commitment since it understands both as a hindrance. Within the
framework of an ideal pseudo-conservative paradigm of action, all options should
be possible. Third, pseudo-conservatism has a pseudo-historical character, as it uses
history only for ideological decoration while avoiding a deep discussion of specific
historical problems. Fourth, instead of being oriented towards the principle of com-
mon good (as would be the case in conservatism), pseudo-conservatism is guided by
the divide et impera principle, plundering society’s resources to satisfy the momen-
tary interests of political actors. Fifth, the situation-oriented and anti-intellectualist
character of pseudo-conservatism ensures that it can easily turn into authoritarianism
and anti-nonconformism.
Given the many misinterpretations of conservatism caused by the series of crises
it has to deal with, we have to distinguish it clearly from other phenomena. Even
though conservatism can be reactive, mainly in relation to liberalism, its essential
trait is the conservation of specific social and cultural patterns while acting in accor-
dance with current circumstances and possibilities—rather than a blind fascination
with the (more often imagined than real) past, as a crucial trait of the radical right,
or the equally blind fixation on an unrealistic image of the future, a key trait of rad-
ical left movements. Fascism (like communism) is not a form of conservatism, even
though some conservative parties in Germany during the interwar period welcomed it.
As fascism had broken with the classical German tradition, establishing a dictatorial
regime that strictly controlled the public and the private life of its citizens, it hardly
met any criteria of a classical conservatism. The latter was born as an antiauthoritar-
ian ideology (supporting the principles of parliamentary monarchy in contrast to ab-
solute monarchy) during the period of the confrontation between European rulers and
the nobility in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries or coincided with late forms of
conservatism after the mid-nineteenth century, even though there are common author-
itarian traits in some instances.5 Unlike fascism, pseudo-conservatism lacks a clear
ideology, as the latter would impede its situational tactics. This trait is one of the main
reasons why the notion of pseudo-conservatism is significantly more adequate for the
description of contemporary Russian politics in comparison to the overused notion of
fascism.
When analyzing the specific case of the so-called Russian ‘new conservatism’
(which is, in fact, a pseudo-conservatism), we have to consider several crucial as-
pects. Russian history is full of turbulent episodes, marked by civil revolts, coups,
and revolutions. Consequently, and contrary to the Western conservative tradition,
Russian conservatism did not have much to conserve even at its earliest stages of
development. Moreover, its early phase was distinctly different from the Western tra-

they produce an abundance of contradictory explanations (leading to information overload), nurturing

feelings of despair and resentment.
5 I agree with Kondylis (2023) that conservative tradition does not originate in the works of Edmund Burke,
as a reaction to the French Revolution. Even though there are numerous examples to support this claim
(for instance, works of Sir Edward Coke, John Selden and Sir Matthew Hale), this viewpoint is still not
widely accepted in political philosophy and social sciences.
 A. Zhavoronkov

dition. There was no large-scale conflict between the aristocracy and the autocratic
monarch, there was no clear development toward parliamentary monarchy, and the
historical circumstances (primarily the French Revolution, the revolutions of the mid-
nineteenth century, national movements across Europe, and the crisis of the aristoc-
racy) were drastically different compared to the ones in the sixteenth or seventeenth
centuries, during the ‘golden age’ of the old conservatism.
Shortly after its birth, the Russian conservative tradition was already plagued by
many issues, either inherited from Western conservatism (given its nineteenth cen-
tury development toward anti-revolutionary reactionism and pro-authoritarianism) or
caused by internal problems (such as the underdeveloped legal system, the obsolete
serfdom system, and the growing rift between intellectuals and the government after
the Decembrist revolt). It was no wonder that (as Nikolai Berdyaev (2002) keenly
observes from the perspective of the early twentieth century) the intellectual conser-
vatism of the Slavophiles quickly degraded into shallow bureaucratic conservatism
under Alexander III, destroying its own intellectual core and manifesting itself in
a form of pure pro-governmental opportunism. Its extremely reactionary character,
coupled with attempts to preserve even the most ineffective and obsolete traditions
and structures, spelled its doom, which came in the form of the Russian Revolution. In
the USSR, there was no genuine conservative tradition of political thought, although
there were some prominent conservative thinkers like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (his
polemic with Andrei Sakharov during the 1980s can, with some reservations, be re-
garded as a dialogue between a conservative and a liberal vision of Russia’s future.)
Given the quick degradation of the intellectual conservatism of Slavophiles into bu-
reaucratic conservatism and the absence of a Soviet conservative tradition, we have
to be highly cautious when analyzing political references to Russian conservative
authors and even more so when dealing with continuity claims instrumentalized by
Russian government officials and ideologues.
While the current developments in Russia can be easily mistaken for a triumph of
conservatism, the opposite is the case. On the level of political decisions and actions
(but not on the level of formal rhetoric or of the social grassroots movements!6 ), the
so-called ‘conservative turn’—a notion still widely used in Russian studies7 —is, in
fact, a triumph of pseudo-conservatism. There are several problems with using no-
tions like ‘Russian conservative turn’, ‘Russian post-Soviet conservatism’, or ‘new
conservatism in Russia’. The first and most elementary problem lies in the method-
ology, as we should not be too quick to adopt the notion of conservatism just because

6 The rhetoric of Russian pseudo-conservatism comprises many conservative concepts that are either
adopted by many conservative movements worldwide (for instance, ‘traditional values’, ‘family’, and
‘common good’) or are unique to Russia (‘sobornost’, ‘passionarity’). This rhetoric finds resonance in
large segments of Russia’s population that continue to believe that the government genuinely cares for—or
takes deep interest in—Russian history and culture. It also finds many supporters in the European and
American conservative audiences, who are usually not very familiar with Russian political procedures
that starkly contradict it. An illustrative example of such contradiction is Russian policy on abortions.
The government’s decisions and actions are based on an etatist approach (reproduction as ‘duty’ to the
state, especially during war) instead of ‘pro-choice’ or ‘pro-life’ principles. A more straightforward ex-
ample would be how Russia handles its own cultural heritage, which is typically governed by neoliberal,
profit-oriented polices instead of principles of cultural conservatism.
7 See, for instance, Makarychev and Yatsyk (2015), Bluhm and Varga (2019), Robinson (2019), Diesen
(2021), and Shcherbak (2023).
Russian pseudo-conservatism in an international context

Russian media and officials frequently use it. Otherwise, this choice would eliminate
any chance of establishing a critical distance. The second problem is the absence
of a specific tradition this so-called conservatism would like to preserve. In Russian
official media, the justification of political action juggles between references to old
religious texts and documents, out-of-context quotations from Russian thinkers, and
admiration for certain practices and achievements of the Soviet period. The notion
of ‘post-Soviet conservatism’, suggested by some scholars as a means to overcome
this issue, does not help us, as the term is self-contradictory and does not address the
heterogeneous character of the idea of tradition (nor does it help us to analyze other
examples, such as in Western and Eastern Europe, the USA, Turkey, and China).
The third issue concerns the notion itself (rather than its use). Conservation basically
means preserving what we already have, which is suggested in some public state-
ments of Russian officials, like Vladimir Putin’s Valdai speech from October 2021
(Putin 2021). However, most proposals, decisions, and actions of Russian officials
point in another direction, one of the desperate measures needed to restore something
de facto long gone. The strategy is to choose from a vast pool of genuine or falsi-
fied historical examples to justify a specific decision—and then, if it does not stick,
to swiftly find something else. The fourth issue concerns the structure of conserva-
tive movements and their influence on the decisions of the Russian government. A
close inspection of the major political events of recent years immediately proves that
there are no organizations in Russia similar to conservative ‘think tanks’ in Western
countries, which would play a major role in key decisions, including Putin’s decision
to attack Ukraine. Instead, the goal of pro-government institutes and clubs, which
often have a short shelf life, is to a posteriori back these decisions, adapting them-
selves to the rapidly changing political climate. The fifth problem is the absence of
compatibility of Russian ‘conservatism’ with conservative traditions elsewhere. The
elephant in the room is the role of neoliberal elements in contemporary Russian pol-
itics. Moreover, many ‘conservative’ organizations and movements in Russia either
ignore or consider as their enemies many conservative movements both in Russia and
abroad (from the intellectual conservatism of Slavophiles to contemporary American
national conservatives and neoconservatives).
The problems with adequately handling the case of Russia’s contemporary ‘con-
servatism’ stem from the lack of fresh concepts and interpretations in the correspond-
ing area of contemporary political philosophy. Scholars often prefer clinging to out-
dated patterns of analysis that are not (or no longer) fitting for the description of a
new phenomenon. The rise of pseudo-conservatism, labelled by many as the revival
of conservatism, is one such phenomenon8 —which is still not acknowledged in po-
litical theory despite many recent studies on the crisis of contemporary conservatism.
Moreover, it is equally clear that the political developments in Russia and Belarus call
for a reevaluation of the definition of post-totalitarian authoritarian regimes (provided

8 Another example, also not limited to the case of Russia, is the necessity to rethink the notion of ‘middle
class’ (from a standpoint that does not only consider economic criteria) and associated concepts (such as
‘Anywheres’ vs. ‘Somewheres’). This necessity becomes even more urgent because of the ongoing crisis of
conservative parties and movements in many European countries, as manifested in the rivalry between the
CDU and the AfD in Germany. The latter trend ultimately stems from the lack of political representation
of the middle class and the erosion of the boundaries of conservative politics in recent decades.
 A. Zhavoronkov

by Juan Linz (2000) and others who are sure that the role of ideologies in authoritarian
regimes will steadily decrease, giving way to pragmatic considerations). Ideological
orthodoxy that instrumentalizes conservative rhetoric, once again, becomes a crucial
factor in backing the political decisions of authoritarian governments.

Funding Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.

Declarations

Competing Interests The author declares no competing interests.

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