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Ruscism

The modified slogan at the entrance to the military cemetery inside the Fortress of St. Elizabeth, city of Kropyvnytskyi: Nazism has been defeated — so Ruscism will be defeated too (2025) [1]

Ruscism (Ukrainian: російський фашизм; Russian: российский фашизм), or Raschism, is a new word formed by combining Russia and fascism.[2] Those who support Ruscism are called Ruscists,[2] or Raschists.[2]

Overview

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The countries of the Warsaw Pact, the main bloc of Soviet imperialism.
The Russian Empire in 1867, including Alaska.
One element of Rashism is irredentism, revanchism and a desire to restore Russia to a perceived "former glory". Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2005 called the dissolution of the Soviet Union "a genuine tragedy" for the Russian people, as "tens of millions of our fellow citizens and countrymen found themselves beyond the fringes of Russian territory", and as "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century".[3]

Ruscism refers to a unique form of 21st-century Russian state ideology that features authoritarianism, extreme nationalism and aggressive imperialism.[4]

A mosaic in the Main Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces blending Eastern Orthodox iconography with Soviet military symbolism.

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,[2][4] 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.[2][5] They also miss the Soviet Union (1922 – 1991) for its vast territory and sphere of influence,[2][5] which stretched from East Germany to Far East Asia.[2][5]

Current situation

In Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories, traces of Ukrainian culture and identity have been systematically erased,[6] e.g. Holodomor memorials replaced with Russian monuments,[7] which has been seen by critics as "a classic example of how the oppressor uses imperial symbols to mark the space of the oppressed".[7]

Particularly, 40,000 Russian citizens of Russian, Buryat, Tuvan and Caucasian origin had been brought into Mariupol by summer 2023.[6] Similar to this also happened in Crimea after its 2014 Russian takeover,[6] where a million Russians had been brought in by Putin's regime.[6]

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Speech of Dugin to Western journalists in March 2022 where he narrated that "We are not a part of the global civilization. We are a civilization by our own. We had no other possibility to prove that without attacking Ukraine".
The letter Z shown in the colours of the ribbon of Saint George, a symbol used by Ruscism's supporters.
A destroyed Russian MT-LB with a Z symbol during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Z symbol is widely used by the Russian Armed Forces.

Associations with other ideologies

Neo-Nazism

Some Ruscists are also Neo-Nazis,[8] including the Wagner Group,[8] Russian Imperial Movement,[8] Aleksei Milchakov,[8] and Yan Petrovsky,[8] who has been sentenced to life imprisonment in Finland on March 14, 2025 for his war crimes in Luhansk committed on September 5, 2014.[8]

Western views

Putin's regime in Russia is based on Ruscism.[2][5] Many scholars consider it one of the biggest threats to world peace.[2][5]

Alexander J. Motyl

American historian Alexander J. Motyl said that Ruscism had the following features:[9]

Timothy Snyder

In a May 2022 article, American historian Timothy Snyder pointed out that:[10]

[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".[11]

Portraits of Vladimir Putin as commodities in the office supplies section of a Moscow bookshop in 2006.

Slavoj Žižek

In February 2023, Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek said:[12]

[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.

Ukrainian views

20th century Communism equals 21st century Rashism (Rashizm) event by The State Archive of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance.

Oleksandr Kostenko

As early as March 2014, professor Oleksandr Kostenko (Ukrainian: Костенко Олександр Миколайович) said:[13]

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:[14][15]

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:[16]

Russia has not reflected on the tragedies of totalitarianism and did not decommunize[17] 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.

Russian views

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.[18][19]

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:[20][21]

[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.[22]

Ruscism Media

  • March in memory of assassinated Boris Nemtsov in Moscow, 27 February 2016. Sight from the inside. "Let's stop Ruscism" (Russian: "Остановим рашизм")

  • A poster against Ruscism in a pro-Ukraine protest in London's Trafalgar Square

  • Patriarch Kirill sitting alongside Dmitry Medvedev during Vladimir Putin's speech on 21 February 2023

  • Surkov giving a speech to the Nashi Youth Movement. It has been likened to the Hitler Youth (Hitlerjugend) and dubbed the "Putinjugend" ("Putin Youth").

  • Protester against the Russian government holding an image portraying Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin as Nazis with a swastika made of colours of the Ribbon of Saint George and a Russian coat of arms in the centre, Odesa, 2014

Related pages

References

  1. ↑ Ukraine officially designates Russian ideology as Rashism
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 . https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/22/magazine/ruscism-ukraine-russia-war.html. Retrieved January 15, 2023. "Three-quarters of the letters in a Ukrainian neologism from English (“Pаша”) are brought together with five-sixths of the letters from an adopted Italian word (“фашизм,” fascism) [...] The Ukrainian language has offered a neologism whose formation helps us to see deeper into the creativity of another culture, and whose meaning helps us to see why this war is fought". 
  3. ↑ Putin: Soviet collapse a 'genuine tragedy'. NBC News. April 25, 2005. https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna7632057. Retrieved May 22, 2022. 
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 * Gregor, A. James. Fascism and the New Russian Nationalism. Communist and Post-Communist Studies 31 (1) (March 1998). p. 1–15. doi:10.1016/S0967-067X(97)00025-1.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 Behind the Lines: Russia’s Ethnic Cleansing. Center for European Policy Analysis (July 27, 2023). Retrieved March 14, 2025.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 The Cultural Colonization of Mariupol: How Russia Erases the Ukrainian Memory in the City. UkraineWorld (February 29, 2024). Retrieved March 14, 2025.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4 8.5
  9. ↑ Motyl, Oleksandr. No Title (in uk). Lokalna Istoriya (March 8, 2022). Retrieved March 14, 2022.
  10. ↑ Snyder, Timothy (May 19, 2022). "We Should Say It. Russia Is Fascist.". The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/19/opinion/russia-fascism-ukraine-putin.html. Retrieved May 19, 2022. 
  11. ↑ Francis Fukuyama: Russia now 'resembles Nazi Germany' (in en-GB)Deutsche Welle. Retrieved July 23, 2022.
  12. ↑ 'What I don't want is Western triumphalism' Slavoj Žižek on Putin's expansionism, Western complicity, the denial of death, and preventing a global ultra-conservative turn. February 3, 2023. https://meduza.io/en/feature/2023/02/03/what-i-don-t-want-is-western-triumphalism. Retrieved March 2, 2023. 
  13. ↑ Kostenko, Oleksandr (March 18, 2014). (in uk)The Day (48). http://www.day.kiev.ua/uk/article/kultura/chomu-mi-stali-vorogami. Retrieved April 25, 2022. 
  14. ↑ Khmelnytska, Vira (April 23, 2022) (in uk). Television Service of News. https://tsn.ua/ato/rashizm-ce-ponyattya-yake-bude-v-istorichnih-knizhkah-v-umovnih-vikipediyah-zalishitsya-na-urokah-zelenskiy-2044717.html. 
  15. ↑ Kizilov, Yevhen (April 23, 2022). "Zelenskyy: The word "Ruscism" will enter history textbooks all over the world". Ukrayinska Pravda. https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2022/04/23/7341654/. Retrieved April 23, 2022. 
  16. ↑ Yakubova, Larysa (April 6, 2022). "An Anatomy of Ruscism". The Ukrainian Week. https://tyzhden.ua/World/254683. Retrieved April 26, 2022. 
  17. ↑
  18. ↑ No Title (in ru) (August 11, 2021)Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Retrieved February 26, 2022.
  19. ↑ No Title (in uk) (February 11, 2022)ATR. Retrieved February 26, 2022.
  20. ↑ Olaf Scolz in der Moskauer Metro Archived July 27, 2022, at the Wayback Machine – деkoder, reprinted from Neue Zürcher Zeitung
  21. ↑ Anatomiya grazhdanskoy passivnosti (Grigoriy Yudin, Boris Kagarlitskiy) (in ru). YouTube (July 12, 2022). Retrieved July 27, 2022.
  22. ↑ Sytnik, Marharyta (March 23, 2014) (in ru). Television Service of News. https://tsn.ua/ru/svit/putin-budet-zahvatyvat-novye-territorii-chtoby-prolozhit-put-k-balkanam-eksperty-356507.html. Retrieved February 26, 2022. 
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