In Moscow's Shadows 240: Frankenstein's Putinism

Or, 'Team Russia and the Undead Ideology Project' 

Can you create an ideology that is custom-engineered, poll-driven, focus grouped, workshopped and marketed? The Presidential Administration's Alexander Kharichev is certainly trying, suggesting the Kremlin's concerns about the future.

I also discuss Marlene Laruelle's excellent book Ideology and Meaning-Making under the Putin Regime (Stanford UP 2025), and the link to Jeremy Morris's comments on it is here.

The podcast's corporate partner and sponsor is Conducttr, which provides software for innovative and immersive crisis exercises in hybrid warfare, counter-terrorism, civil affairs and similar situations.

You can also follow my blog, In Moscow's Shadows, and become one of the podcast's supporting Patrons and gain question-asking rights and access to exclusive extra materials including the (almost-) weekly Govorit Moskva news briefing right here. 

Transcript

Cold Open And Warning

MG 0:00

What happens when a modern political technologist tries to bring together monks and Frankenstein? Can then you stitch together an ideology from palms you've scavenged from palmist graves? Well, there's someone who's trying to give it a go. Hello, I'm Mark Galliotti, and welcome to my view of Russia in Moscow Shadows. This podcast, of varying length, frequency and format, yet always reassuringly low production values, is supported by generous and perspicacious patrons like you, and also by the Crisis Exercise Software Company Conductor. Be warned, this is a bit of a dense and wonky episode today, looking at ideology and how it can be constructed. And usually I end with book reviews, but I'm going to buck the trend this time and start with one, noting Marlene Ladawell's Ideology and Meaning Making Under the Putin Regime, Stanford University Press 2025. Ladawell, who's a political science professor at George Washington University in Washington, DC, and who has done sterling service pushing back against the whole Putinism is just fascism caricature, in her book argues that insofar as Russia does have an ideology, it's not something that's clearly codified, let alone monolithic, but instead marked by five main characteristics. And I should note that for some reason that number, number five, is going to feature a lot in this episode. Anyway, what are the five broad characteristics? First of all, ideological flexibility. The notion that the regime doesn't rely on this kind of monolithic codified ideology, there is no lit little red book of Putinism, but rather a collection of what's called floating signifiers. And this called bricolage, in other words, you're just bringing together a kind of a mosaic of these pieces. And it allows for all kinds of contradictions, ambiguities, and adaptations to evolving contexts. Now, a cynic, and more on this in a moment, might wonder if this really makes it an ideology. I'm less convinced that we can really call it that, but maybe that's one for the ontologists to decide. Secondly, what's called co-creation of meaning. In other words, it's not just simply driven by some kind of word from the Kremlin, but rather a process of co-creation involving both the narratives coming from the state and how society responds to and in some ways even maybe leads that. So this is also being shaped from below. Yes, now be aware, this is not saying that Putinism is just simply the reflection of Russian culture, which after all is just one step away from the whole what's happening in Ukraine, etc., is just simply an expression of the primal id of the Russian people, and all Russians are therefore to blame for everything that Putin does. But nonetheless, it is certainly an interactive process in that the Kremlin does indeed look at what society seems to want and tries to play to that as it also tries to lead it. In a very nice parallel, Laruel writes, As in jazz, there is an established common theme or point, but each authorized player is allowed to improvise at will. Then going on, there is both ideological opportunism and stability in the core set of beliefs. Because after all, there are all these political and ideological entrepreneurs who are kind of pitching their ideas and hoping that it gets some kind of resonance both in the Kremlin and in society. But what sort of ideas are they? Well, the third point is that there is this civilization state narrative. In other words, there is this core notion that Russia is a unique, separate and traditional power. So it is not the same as Western liberal universalism, and it is something, nor is it just simply an Asian state, it is something that is Russian. And so a lot of this is actually about what's called unlearning the West. In other words, reversing the worst elements of 1990s Westernization in order to bring back what is distinctively Russian. Fourthly, ideal sorry, instrumental usage. Sometimes ideology does indeed drive policy. But sometimes it is, in fact, I would say much more often, it is just simply invoked retrospectively to justify and to legitimise what has been done, and sometimes there just seems to be no real connection between the two. You know, it's worth noting after all that for quite some time Putinism has been talking the language of deep social traditionalism and conservatism, but at the same time, in practice, a lot of what's happening in Russia is still relatively liberal. And finally, number five, the degree to which this is a syncretic process, that it actually borrows from all sorts of different traditions. Whether we're talking about deep Russian orthodoxy, whether we're talking about czarist practice, whether we're talking about Soviet practices as well. So you have any everything from the one hand Russia as some kind of anti-fascist, anti-colonial force, very much drawing on both Marxist-Leninist propaganda, but also particularly around the Great Patriotic War. But at the same time, Russia as the Katechon, the shield against evil, the final defender against the Antichrist, which is, of course, you know, notion this notion of it being as a cradle of Russian Orthodoxy and a defender of traditional values. So, you know, as I've mentioned in the past, we know what really strikes me is the degree to which Putinism simply sees Russian culture and history as this buffet from which it assembles the meal that it wants to eat there and then. Laroel draws on Putin's own addresses and the words and writings of all kinds of official and paraofficial figures, including a lot of these entrepreneurs that I mentioned, insider influences, church hierarchs, you name it. It is, I have to say, not always the easiest read. I mean, it's got a density of end notes, it's quite striking, but it is an undeniably important book. It's nuanced, and look, I certainly don't for a moment want to say it's sympathetic to the regime, but it certainly issues the kind of glib condemnations and the moral caricatures. It tries to dig into not just how the regime tries to frame and sell itself, but also actually how it sees itself. At the same time, without in any way undermining the value of the book, I would note a very useful note that came from Jeremy Morris in his excellent post socialism blog, and I'll leave a link to the relevant page in the programme notes. Anyway, he writes In the conclusion, Ladawell argues that Russia has moved toward a much more rigid ideological structure, and has an official ideology, but at least to this reader, the book, with its repetition of the terms repertoires and plasticity, seems to argue for something different. Perhaps the word ideology is inadequate here. Can an official ideology be entirely negative, based on resistance to the West and promoting an all-powerful state? And I think that's actually a, you know, in my opinion, a pretty fair comment. You know, what is an ideology? And the whole question of is there truly an ideology to this system? Which to me, an ideology, firstly, it's something that really ought to be transferable. In other words, it you know, when you have an ideology that is nationally, culturally linked and exclusively so, is it really an ideology? But also an ideology should f shape and constrain political decisions. In other words, is it really an ideology when it always justifies what you want to do? It's really an ideology and an ideology with meaning and purpose, and indeed weight, when it actually stops you, when we'd love to do this, but it's not in line with whatever it is, Patrushev Putinism or whatever else, and therefore we can't do it. And I'm not convinced that as it were the ideological constraints on Putinism are really visible. And therefore, whether it really has an ideology beyond this kind of an inchoate mix of nationalism, free market capitalism, authoritarianism, statism, revanchism. And that's really, I think, at the heart of what I want to talk about in the bulk of this particular episode. I want to profile a figure who I think has had insufficient attention paid to him, and who seems, in a very postmodern, as I say, Mad Men Meets K Street, that's the Washington, DC street, famous or infamous as a dense for its density of lobbyists and advocacy groups, if they if that uh particular reference escaped you. Anyway, in this kind of Mad Men Meets K Street Wayne, trying to develop an ideology for late Putinism. And this person is Alexander Dmitrievich Kharychev. Now, you may well not have heard of him. Indeed, I mean it's really quite striking. I mean, this is a guy who doesn't even have a Wikipedia page in Russian, which I was quite surprised by. But anyway, he is the head of the presidential administration's department for the monitoring and analysis of social processes. It always had these really snappy titles. And this falls within the bureaucratic empire of first deputy head of the presidential administration, Sergei Kiryenka. And in practice, whatever its title, the department's real role is managing election campaigns for the Kremlin, for pro-Kremlin candidates in the regions. Haritchev has a particular degree of expertise there, and just generally developing the state's ideology and its doctrine. Now, Haritchev spoke at the latest Congress of the New People Party, which is this uh relatively recent invention amongst the systemic, i.e., fake opposition parties, which it's very hard to really know what it stands for. It tends to stand for, hey, we're new, we're young, we like robots and progress and contactless payment and all sorts of things like that. But anyway, it is clearly an attempt to break out of the previous sort of model of opposition parties. Anyway, this was the Congress at which they unveiled their manifesto for autumn's Doomer elections, which I'm trying to think from memory, it's called something like, you know, twelve steps towards a Russia you'd like to live in. And one of the questions and areas of discussion was whether Kharychev speaking there represented the fact that New People were still a much smaller party. I mean, Kiryenko had gone and spoken at the Communist Party's Congress, for example. So was it just simply a kind of a downgrade for them? Was it that Kiryenko was just simply busy and Kharychev was just a stand-in? Or does it say something that it was specifically Kharychev who spoke at the New People Party? And my my suspicion is that it does say something, especially as it follows from a string of well publicised events and articles, in which Kharychev is trying to develop his notion as a distinctive civilization, European in its origins in many ways, yet followed its own unique evolution, and one that can bind together tradition but also modernity, which is obviously the kind of thing that new people want to hear. Now, Kirianka in general has pushed a very, I'd say, managerial approach to governing Russia. It's all about, you know, KPIs, key performance indicators, it's about brainstorming sessions, and probably before we know it, God help us all, mission statements. But the point is that this all feels rather hollow. It's all very well when things are working fine. I mean, people are willing to excuse a lot when there is prosperity and tomorrow looks rosier than today and such like, but of course, that's not the case now. So that's when I think that the hollowness begins to become a problem, particularly given that what's happened has been a break, a breach of the old social contract. The social contract, which after all again said, look, so you stay out of politics, Russians, and we will ensure that your life gets better. Well, Russians are not and haven't for a long time been willing to actually believe that that's a guaranteed reality. And the new dependence on traditional social values and defensive patriotism, well, it's all very well, but the point is that there seems to be some perception that what there is is the need for some kind of ideological underpinning to try and make this real, to try and make this appeal to people, and to therefore actually breathe some life into, again, the the state's relationship with society. And that is not Kiryenka's forte. Kiryenko, as I said, is much more of a manager. He's he's not got like his he lacks his predecessor Surkov's capacity to think in more, I would suggest, conceptual ways. So instead, I think for on this ideological question, I think that Kiryenka is relying on Kharychev. Now, Kharychev is a longtime associate of Kiryenko's. Let me just give you a I mean again it's quite actually hard to get a proper sense of Kharichev's biography, but as near as I can piece it together, he was born in 1966. He studied at the Kostroma Higher Military Command School for Chemical Defence. He worked in the Ministry of Defence all the way through until 2001, during which time he took a degree, I think, in psychology, from St. Petersburg University. So it's quite hard to get any sense of what he did at the Ministry of Defence. Some suggest that that means he was an analyst in GRU, military intelligence. I'm not convinced about that. It's possible since we don't have counterinformation, but I don't think so. Anyway, in 2001 he left the Ministry of Defence and began working as a political technologist and pollster, which again probably suggests that his job at the MOD was was not intelligence. Technically, he was working in the office of the Presidential Plenipotentiary Representative to the Volga Federal District through until about 2006. But in this time, he was also working with Kiryenka on this new party, the Union of Right Forces, the SPS, which was meant to kind of be a, again, you know, as an opposition party, it was meant to be socially liberal, economically conservative. And it was headed by Kiryenka, and it included figures who then became sort of generally regarded as opposition figures, real opposition figures, like Baris Nemtsov, who was assassinated, Yeegor Gaida, Anatoly Chubais, in other words, very much people associated with the kind of, well, I would say disastrous, liberalization of the economy in the 1990s. So that was through until 2006, when he was recruited by Vladislav Surkov into the presidential administration as deputy head of the domestic policy directorate. However, the two men never really saw eye to eye, and they certainly sort of fell out, such that in 2009 Kharychev left the presidential administration and began working in the private sector. First for the oligarch Viktor Vexelberg, his Russian utility systems conglomerate. And then in 2013, Rosatom. Now, Rosatom was by then headed by none other than Kiryenko, and Kharychev was brought in largely to head up its political lobbying. In 2016, Kiryenko left Rosatom to go to the presidential administration, and the next year, 2017, he invited Khharychev to join him, going back to his old job of Deputy Head of Domestic Policy Directorate. Then, 2018 to 2024, he was head of the Department for the Support of the Activities of the State Council. Now the State Council is this body that brings together representatives from all the regions. So it's very much regarded as the kind of connector between the president and the regions. And this plays to the fact that in Kharychev's lobbying and pollster career, again, he very much worked on regional politics. So that was through until 2024, and he's now head of this department for monitoring analysis of social processes. So Kharychev is essentially a lobbyist, a political technologist, and a pollster. In fact, he chairs the board of directors of Vitsyom, the government owned polling agency. But it's clear that he likes to think of himself as a scholar and a philosopher. And he has been working for some time on this notion of a distinctive Russian civilization, and one that in a way therefore generates with it a certain sense of an ideology. In 2022, and apologies I'm going to be going through some of his writings, but I think it's important to see how they evolve and build on each other. In 2022, he co-wrote this article called, and yes, there's another snappy title coming up, The Perception of Core Values, Factors and Structures of Russia's Socio Historical Development, which reached the, frankly, rather banal conclusion that Russian civilization was based on the individual, the family, society, the state, and the nation in an ascending hierarchy, a sort of pentarchy of values. Now, in and of itself, that's pretty obvious, except, of course, the fact that the individual is the building block, but nonetheless at the bottom of the process, whereas the nation is right at the top. But to a large extent one could say this, surely about most societies. No, he needs to dig a bit further if he's going to say something distinctive about Russia. And next year, in 2023, he co-wrote this article called The DNA of Russia. See, which is a actually rather snappier title, for the Atlitz Vzlyad. And he outlined indeed this DNA of Russia project, which is this exceedingly well-funded government project, through all sorts of focus groups and polls and other such surveys, meant to create some kind of scientific, I would say pseudo-scientific basis to understand, define, and thus defend Russia's unique civilization. After all, as the article went on, it's no secret that not only history, but also the value-based and cultural portrait of Russia over the past thirty years, has acquired a strange, sometimes downright unscientific character, thanks to the efforts of armchair professors and alternative experts. Sometimes such narratives lead to ideas recognizing Tartary, i.e. the Tatars, as the ancestral home of the Russian state, or to yet another description of our country by the contrarian method, even employing false dichotomies like we are the Scythians. In other words, what he's more saying is don't listen to all these um, you know, what do you what does he call them? Armchair professors and such like, who are just trying to spin pseudo theories about Russia's origins and Russian culture. No, no, no, no, we are doing it in a scientific way. Of course, to be perfectly honest, Khalichev counts as one of those alternative experts, but never mind. And the article concludes with the warning It was not our consumption or our industry that was at risk, it was the very identity of Russians, the Russian worldview itself. So again, already basically saying A, there is something distinctively Russian, and B, that it is at risk. And his co-author in this article, incidentally, was a longtime associate and also an associate of Kiryenko's, Andrei Palossin, with whom Kharychev had worked at Rosatom, and who went on not only to become the deputy provost of Ranepa, which is the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, and very much kind of the cradle of Kiryenko's notion of being able to build a new class of loyal managerial technocrats. But also, Polusin was the lead curricular designer for this course called The Fundamentals of Russian Statehood, which had become a was to become a required course for all first-year university students from 2023. So they're very much the beginnings of an attempt to actually have a kind of formalized national patriotic curriculum at universities. Then moving on, in the spring of last year, 2025, Harichev publishes an article in the notebook on civil education called Civilization Russia, in which he again states Russia's, you know, or rather recognized, I think it's fair to say, Russia's roots in European civilization, but says that it's followed this unique path of development. To develop something he calls value-based sovereignty. Now, what does this mean? Well, look, there's a lot of talk these days about technological and economic sovereignty. The idea that your country cannot be dependent on foreign technology, foreign apps, foreign sources of crucial assets and the like. Well, this this is that the value-based approach. The idea that Russia cannot just simply slavishly ape the values of others. It actually has to be true to its own. And the idea that follows is that Russia has what he calls a special form of statehood. And that is that society shares its common commitment to certain values, paternalism, centralized authority, the personalization, and indeed the sacralization of state power, that there is something sacred about the state. And it's not that the individual certainly doesn't matter, no, not at all, but that that individual willingly subordinates himself or herself to the collective. It says For us, spiritual values matter more than material comforts. We need a transcendent goal, even if it remains just out of reach. We choose faith, putting spirituality first. Our core values are service, compassion, and self sacrifice. With people of vision, not calculation. As the old adage goes, Russia defies rational understanding. One moment we're building the kingdom of heaven on earth. Next it's communism, or a Europe that stretches from Lisbon to Vladivostok. So the idea is that Russians Russians are not the cold calculating machines of Western civilization. They are passionate. They believe in things, even if those things are actually seem to be completely unachievable. But the point is that that's who they are, and in the name of these grand causes, they are willing to sacrifice themselves because they want to choose faith. And that faith could be Marxism-Leninism, it could be Russian Orthodoxy, it could be the role of the Tsar as a divine right monarch, or well who knows quite what today it means. I'll come on to that in a moment. But then this notion, though, is also always under attack, not least by the West. And that attack does not necessarily mean the Teutonic knights riding into Russia, or indeed Hitler's legions. No, it is also under attack by, again, cold Western rationality. And it's not the West's fault, bless 'em. Bless us. You know, we're not the aggressor so much as a victim. We've fallen prey to rampant individualism, transhumanism, bit of a bugbear, again, I'll come on to that in a moment, and other forms of decadence. But still, the fact of the matter is that for the moment the West has been captured by these anti-humanist viruses. So the question is, how can Russia resist? The only reliable barrier, he goes on, against such scenarios is the principle of we. The more people drawn into this collective we, into Team Russia, and I must admit I had to hold down my gorge reading that. Anyway, into Team Russia, the stronger our society becomes, and the harder it is to destroy our country. But what really is we? Okay, let's take a break, and then in the second half I will follow this through to try and operationalise it more, and to try and talk more about what are the drivers behind this desire to basically create some kind of new ideology. Just the usual mid-episode reminder that you're listening to the In Moscow Shadows podcast. Its corporate partner and sponsor is Conducto, which provides software for crisis exercises in hybrid warfare, counterterrorism, civil affairs and the like. But you can also support the podcast yourself by going to patreon.com slash inMoscow Shadows. And remember that patrons get a variety of additional perks depending on their tier, as well as knowing that they're supporting this peerless source on all things Russian. And you can also follow me on Twitter at Mark Galliotti or on Facebook, MarkGaleotti on Russia. Now back to the episode. So you're still with me? Splendid. So I ended up with this question, who are we? And it's no coincidence, that happens to be the title of another article that then Kharychev published later last year in the journal Gosudarstva, the state, published by, coincidentally, Ranepa and the DNA of Russia Project. And in it and in subsequent speeches, Kharychev doubles down on this claim of Russia as having a distinctive civilization in which the collective and collective sacrifice is key. He said there's no point in arguing which is better. Different civilizations develop their own value systems over centuries. But I believe that collectivism, if we consider it collectiveness, teamwork, is a remarkable competitive advantage. The future certainly doesn't belong to individuals, but to real teams. Again, it's this interesting kind of mix of the ideological and the managerial coming out. And to this end, he cites studies which purportedly, and I have serious doubts, claim to demonstrate that Russians do indeed have a different set of values to Westerners. For Russia, the core values are patriotism, collectivism, high moral ideals, unity of nations, compassion, the priority of the spiritual over the material. But for the Liberal West, it's human rights and freedoms, life humanism, civic responsibility, creative work. To be perfectly honest, as I say, I seriously question that there is anything like this kind of distinctiveness. It is just convenient for the Kremlin to try and stress this notion that Russians believe in again collectivism and patriotism more than individual rights and the like. So the civilizational code of Russian values is again, this is where we start to get the fives. Idealism and faith over rationalism. They believe, they don't need to have it proved. The collective over the individual. Formative normativity versus moral normativity. Now what on the earth does that mean? That essentially truth and justice, the spirit of laws, matter more than the letter of the law. So in other words, it just you've got to feel that you're doing the right thing, regardless of whether technically it is codified and rationalized. Fourth, independent over dependent development. Essentially, Russians will not accept subordination. You're not the boss of me. And finally, this is one it took me a while to get my own head round. Positive freedom versus negative freedom. Not so much kind of freedom from specific restrictions as the freedom to do things, will. Essentially the idea that Russians are creative and resilient, but perhaps not so accustomed to systematic work. And he gives the following example. So again, it's almost this. If you go back, I don't know if you've ever seen the film Alexander Nievsky, 1930s, and you know, quite quite a brilliant piece of not just cinema, but also cinematic propaganda. And the fascinating thing is clearly this is meant to be a sort of a parable for the Second World War against the Germans, the Nazis. And you have the Teutonic Knights who are invading, who are, on the whole, ruthlessly disciplined, they move in ordered, serid ranks. Whereas the Russian defenders are proud and mighty, but they they do not have standardized equipment, they are much more kind of uh individual warriors. When they move, it's more as a sort of a mob rather than anything else. But ultimately they win, they beat the disciplined unity of the Teuton Knights. I think this is in some ways the essence of what he's saying. That kind of Russians have the freedom to be individuals in the service of the collective. Which sounds a bit circular to me, but hey, Hadishhead didn't ask me. But anyway, these five values face what he calls five key challenges as a civilization. And I think this is important because they do really directly speak to the inner fears of the Kremlin. First of all, divisions and conflicts based on social, economic, national, cultural, and political contradictions. And look, a lot was made of the fact that Khadychev actually invoked the threat of civil war. And yes, this led to a few columnches in the West. But nonetheless, when it comes down to it actually looking at his text, it's not really that he's making a serious warning that Russia specifically faces it, but just simply that there is a process of fragmentation taking place. And that you know Russia knows perfectly well where that can lead. He says we've endured this in our history at least twice in the 17th and 20th centuries, and this is when basically the fracturing of the country leads to it becoming incredibly vulnerable both to external as well as internal pressures. And it could happen again. It's uh what he calls a risk or rather a perpetual challenge and threat embedded in every social system. But the point is, what's the answer to this challenge? Well, the answer is the formation of a united and cohesive society with an ideological basis. So what he's basically saying is if Russia doesn't have an ideology, then it lacks the protective device against the possibility of this kind of fragmentation, which could be ethnic fragmentation of the Federation, however unlikely that is, but it also could be fragmentation of the unity of the Russian people and their will to continue to support the state. Secondly, loss of sovereignty, that Russia just simply becomes a dependent vassal of others, which is ironic, given that in many ways Russia is much more likely to become a vassal of China's in this case, because of what Putin has been doing, than it ever was before. But he claims that had the special military operation not been launched, quote, then perhaps it would have been possible to state the fact that Russia would have lost its political sovereignty within a certain period of time and not a very long one. But of course it's you know the heroism of our guys, the guys who show that, as he puts it, there are people who value their homeland more than a party in the Maldives. Surprisingly specific example. But anyway, that's what's shown that Russians will be sovereign. And so the answer to this is not only actually having a strong sovereign policy, but also the development of patriotic attitudes amongst young people in particular. In other words, the poor bastards you intend to send to go and fight in the name of that sovereignty. Thirdly, well, if you're going to have young people fighting, what do you need to worry about? The fifth, sorry, the third threat is depopulation, the abandonment of family and children. And Khadychev, I think, in some ways rightly calls this a global issue, global problem, stemming, although he says it stems from the impact of the globalist experiment, a virus infecting thinking with an inadequate and ill-conceived construct. And what is this virus? Well, child-free propaganda, LGBT thinking. I mean, remember, in Russia, the quote unquote global LGBT movement, as if anything like that exists, is actually technically recognised as an extremist and force and banned. Anyway, so the answer is this kind of demographic crisis, the destruction of our people. So there's a need to popularize family values, and indeed, you know, a fashion for large families. Bit of a hypocrite in that apparently he is married with two children, but nonetheless, he believes that films shouldn't be made, for example, about families with just one or two children, but only about those with three or more. Because yes, that's absolutely going to turn turn the corner on Russian demographics, seeing films with people with large families. The fourth threat, loss of trust in the government and the collapse of the political system. Now again, the crucial thing there is exactly that basically what happens is that people are no longer therefore willing to submerge their own interests into a collective as outlined by the state. The answer, and this is actually very kirienkoite, is meritocracy, increased efficiency, more effective governance of state institutions. So the answer is not democracy, the answer is not inclusion and letting people feel that all their views actually get fed into what happens at the top of the system. No, the answer is delivery. And to be honest, on this, I mean Harychevi is pointing to a problem which I think we can also we can see throughout the West as well, is that democracies are seen as not delivering. And if democracy cannot reform itself, then people may well look for alternative forms of delivery, and if that means more authoritarian or populist leaders, then so be it. But you know, they are worried about public services, about the economy and such like. So, you know, from this point, what Khalichev is recognising is exactly that there is a I wouldn't say a crisis, but a problem in Russia, that people are not convinced anymore that they can guarantee guarantee in the government's capacity to deliver. And the answer is indeed to start delivering. And that means efficiency, not changing the policy, but doing it more effectively. And finally, dehumanization, transhumanism, and the retreat into the virtual world. And the point here is this notion that humans become the subjects of consumption, that they become in effect products, and in the process they abandon all agency. I mean what he says is we need patriots, not couch potatoes, but active ones ready to take responsibility for themselves, their families, and their country. Well, that's all very well. The idea is that basically instead of just losing ourselves in fantasy worlds, flirting with AIs, playing video games, and even maybe sort of trying to reconstruct our own bodies and the like. Instead, the person of the future that has to be educated has to be educated with active patriotism, creative work, commitment to service and the like, all these Russian traditional norms. But above all, that they're willing to do something about it. So inevitably, the implication is that the current, shall we say, global trends are very negative ones for humanity as a whole, for Russia in particular. And therefore something has to be done about it. But of course, to do something about it, you have to understand what Russians, who Russians are, the kind of typologies there are. And in January of this year, Hardychev delivered a keynote at the Knowledge State Forum, where he talked about a whole year-long research process of polls and focus groups. And incidentally, I mean remember how much money is being spent on this. There's a lot of people who are benefiting from what some might think to be an entirely fruitless exercise. But never mind. Anyway, this year-long process that broke Russians down into five groups, guess what? Again, five as ever. The first group, 31%, so almost a third of Russians, essentially of the older generation, particularly those who grew up in the Second World War or the immediate aftermath. And the idea is these are people who dream of a great Russia. A Russia that has to be best in war, in economics, in sports, in science, in whatever. So you have a great Russia group who essentially are nationalistic. Then you have a second group, 24%, with a clear bias towards women, are those who desire a comfortable Russia. So these are people who, you know, they want a Russia that doesn't have traffic jams and potholes in the streets, but rather, you know, clean courtyards and entryways, polite police officers, decent health care and education. You know, basically, again, they're looking for delivery, but delivery and things that matter to them, and that's almost a quarter of the population. Then thirdly, we have supporters of a just Russia, and this is 16%. That's not the party called a just Russia, confusingly enough, but the idea is that these are particularly older people who demand an end to inequality. So again, in some ways, these are people who still have as a carryover of certain sort of Marxist-Leninist notions, that sense that what matters is justice. Then 13% are the kind of techno-optimists who are favoring sort of a modern Russia. And, you know, they're looking for smart homes and flying cars and all that kind of thing. And then there's a 12% of the population, mostly young people, for whom it should be about Russia, a land of opportunity, who, you know, they value self-fulfillment and travel and respect for their rights. So it's not opportunity collectively but individually. So, okay, to summarize that, you know, we we got about a third who are the kind of nationalists, Russia should be great. We have about a quarter who just simply say, look, let's just make Russia comfortable. But then there's also 13% who are the sort of the modern Russia people. And in some ways, I would say that they are actually much the same as the comfortable Russia folk, you know, because they they they want the smart homes, as I say, and then they want the technology. And that technology is very much about making life easier and more fun. So if we put those together, 24% comfortable Russia, 13% modern Russia, that's 37%. So actually, that is the largest block in some ways. And then finally, if you put together the just Russia and the Russia land of opportunity, so that's 16 plus 12%, 28%, just over a quarter, in some ways are more values-based. So we've got the nationalism base, the comfort base, and these are more values-based. It might be that they what they value is that sense of justice and equality, or maybe that they value personal opportunities for self-fulfillment, but in some ways, again, it's it's it's more about these kind of intangibles. And the interesting thing is to a degree one can map this across to the political spectrum of the systemic opposition. Because clearly, you know, that was created in order to appeal to Russians. So, you know, a great Russia, Liberal Democrats in particular, but also the communists. The comfortable Russia, well, in some ways it's united Russia. Where, for example, you know, if we look at the uh Russia land of opportunity and also the modern Russia group, the new people are meant to appeal to that. So, you know, to a degree, it's clear that this kind of understanding of the Russian population is already factored into the managed political system. But the point is, addressing all of this depends to a great degree on resources. Everything from successful war fighting and showing that you're a you know great Russian power in that and in leading age science, let's say, to things like good health care and a broader sharing of opportunities, it all needs resources, and resources are what's lacking and likely will lack for some time to come. You know, remember these statistics about you know 40% of your average Russian's income is now going on food, and the fact that, yes, I mean the economy is scheduled to grow this year, GDP is meant to grow, but by less than 1%. You know, with the war going on, and indeed even after the war is over, reconstruction, the probably limited and slow lifting of sanctions and so forth, you know, it's going to mean that there is going to be a lengthy period of resource scarcity, at least as regards the masses. And hence this growing sense within the Kremlin of a need for an ideology to fill that gap. Even though it's worth noting, the Russian Constitution explicitly prohibits a state ideology. But watch this space though. I mean, back in 2022 at the World Russian People's Council in Moscow, Sergei Mironov, the leader of a Just Russia Party, actually proposed repealing that ban. And we'll have to see how that goes. I mean, at the time Mironov said, how can we live without a state ideology now? We are fighting for the Russian world. We speak of the importance of all traditional faiths in Russia, especially orthodoxy. We speak of patriotism. The president never tires of speaking about this. This notion that actually what you need is an ideology that can bind all these elements together. So there is clearly a project underway. And it's something driven by, and I will show my independence of thought, by offering up not the magic five, but four reasons for it. The first one is instrumental. It is very much driven by the need to justify, and this is again going back to Laroelle's point, justify various policies. For example, the demographic issue, that sense that Russia needs to repopulate, and to that end, Russians need to feel it is not just a personal life choice, but an actual moral duty to have large families. Secondly, I mean, it is clear that what has been done is that the ideology is meant to fit within existing strands of opinion so that it can actually sort of try and take the elements that are useful. So we have Lev Guminov's notions of passionarnost, the idea that each distinct ethnos, each distinct civilization has its own nature, and that Russia's is marked by a unique fusion of Slav and steppe nomad cultures that prevented its conquest and colonization from Western. And Europe, which is then built on in Alexander Dugin's Eurasianism. And I've mentioned in the past that the idea of Dugin as Putin's brain is nonsensical, but it's worth noting that Hardychev calls him a very popular and truly remarkable philosopher. So again, all of this is just simply trying to emphasize Russia's uniqueness, but above all, Russia standing in contrast to Westernisation, that Russia has to resist Westernisation. The third and crucial driver of this whole thing is indeed this sense of anime, this sense of Russians feeling, I don't know how to put it, morally stranded, that they no longer know for sure in what they can believe. You know, Putin's personality cult has certainly peaked and is now almost actually becoming a matter of fun. The special military operation and the increasing tide of blood splashing across the country means that it becomes all the more important when you combine that with the hardships that people are facing now and the greater hardships that are yet to come, that people have some sense of belief that they know why they are suffering this, why it is actually a good and transcendent thing, that through this fire they are getting somewhere where they want to be. And the fourth and final point is that this is opportunism, that this is driven by a need to please Putin, to give him something that he thinks he needs, and also to say the right things. Because after all, Kharitzev is not the only one of these ideological entrepreneurs pitching some kind of notion of what Russia is and what Russia needs to be. Last year, for example, the Hawkish political scientist Skaraganov led a team which produced a report with its own snappy title, Russia's Living Idea Dream, the Code of the Russian Citizen in the Twenty First Century, which again tried to codify Russia as a distinct civilization, including the line that Russians are a god-bearing people, which is drawing very much on Dostoevskyan thinking about the idea that Russians have a kind of unique relationship to the spirituality. Which, considering that Kataganov is also the guy who actually says Russia ought to launch a nuclear attack on Europe just to teach them a lesson, I think one one could suggest that there's there's very little turning of the other cheek going on there. Or rather, you know, the unique relationship is indeed much more unique than we thought. But the point is exactly other people are trying it. Khalichev's advantage is A, that he is a presidential administration insider, and B, that he does have a lot of money, frankly, at his disposal. I don't know how much of it, let's be blunt, sticks to his own fingers. I think he's actually genuinely committed to this project, but nonetheless, you know, again, from his point of view, this is what is going to make and break him. This is what his his mentor and patron Kiryenka has charged him with, and therefore he ha he really wants to actually produce something that works. The thing is, though, Putin's regime has really been post-ideological. It has been driven, despite the attempts at sort of putting a little veil over it, essentially by the notion of delivery. The old social contract. So any ideology that is created is certainly not going to be organic. And in that respect, given that whatever it is, it's going to have to be invented, remember, it can't even be just purely anchored around Russian Orthodoxy, because this is a multi-confessional land empire with a very large Muslim population that needs to be incorporated. I can't help but wonder in that respect if the political technologist Kharychev may have an edge. Because precisely he will be offering something that is engineered, pole driven, focus grouped, workshopped and marketed. It may not be real, but it may well be slick. But I don't think it's going to work. I think Russians have acquired a pretty highly evolved bullshit detector by now. And everyone likes to be told that they're a special nation and a special people with a grand destiny. But that doesn't buy you a burger at Kursnoy Tochka. What matters is how you feel when prices are high, when wages are under pressure, when another election has been stolen, and when you come to realise how many of the people you're at school with have come back from Ukraine in zinc boxes. In some ways, though, I have to say I feel much more warmly about the Kharichevs of this world than the Karaganovs, because I feel a lot safer with the plausible cynics than with the cold eyed ideologues. This has after all been one of Putin's rather minimalist saving graces. He doesn't really believe in anything beyond power, comfort, security, and ego. Now, fortunately, Harichev's Frankenstein's monster of an ideology, stitched together of scavenged body parts from other thinkers, ideologists and the like, is unlikely ever to have the kind of grip on people's imaginations, agency, and dreams that true ideologies demand. But it's a telling sign that the attempt is being made, that the Kremlin believes it needs to build some kind of an ideology to carry it through the tough times to come. So, it's alive? No. It's at best undead. It's going to be an artificial construct maintained not by genuine faith, but the need to tow the party line. And in that respect, well, congratulations, Kharychev. You risk recreating, in essence, if not in creed, Moribund late-stage Marxism-Leninism. And we know just how well that worked out. Well, that's the end of another episode of the In Moscow Shadow Podcast. Just as a reminder, beyond this, you can follow my blog, also called In Moscow Shadows. Follow me on Twitter at MarkGaleotti or Facebook, MarkGaleotti on Russia. This podcast is made possible by generous and enlightened patrons, and you too can be one. Just go along to my Patreon page, that's patreon.com slash inMoscow Shadows, and decide which tier you want to join, getting access to exclusive materials and other perks. However, whether or not you contribute, thank you very much indeed for listening. Until next time, keep well.