Why fascists took over the Reichstag but have not captured the Kremlin: a comparison of Weimar Germany and post-Soviet Russia

Abstract

Like Weimar Germany, contemporary Russia is home to fascist actors and widespread nationalism. But unlike interwar Germany, the party system in post-Soviet Russia is heavily manipulated and civil society remains underdeveloped. This means that fascists have not had a chance to use elections or to penetrate civil society in order to build up political support. The continuing presence of a resolutely authoritarian, yet non-fascist “national leader” (Vladimir Putin) keeps the country from becoming a liberal democracy but it also, for now, makes it less likely that the regime will become fascist.

Keywords:

• fascism
• Russia
• authoritarianism
• Weimar Germany
• regime collapse

Acknowledgements

We have greatly benefited from numerous helpful comments received during our presentations at several international conferences. We would especially like to thank Lisa McIntosh Sundstrom (Vancouver) and Leonid Luks (Eichstätt) as well as the two anonymous reviewers of Nationalities Papers for their careful reading of an earlier draft of this paper.

ORCID

Steffen Kailitz http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7251-3265

Andreas Umland http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7916-4646

Notes

1. Only in these countries, fascists assumed control without the intervention of a foreign fascist force, as later would be the case with Nazi Germany’s de facto installation of the fascist, yet dependent regimes of the Hungarian Arrow Cross, Croatian Ustashi, and North Italian Salo Socialist Republic.

2. That these two fields are closely related to each other is illustrated, for instance, by the seminal contributions to both subdisciplines of eminent political scientist Juan J. Linz (e.g. 1976, 1978).

3. There are hundreds of further publications on this topic from partly prominent politicians, journalists, and publicists, who would, in a different setting, be worth considering (e.g. Starovoitova 1993).

4. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the 2009 MPSA Convention (Chicago), 2009 IPSA Congress (Santiago de Chile), 2009 ECPR Congress (Potsdam), and 2009 AAASS Convention (Boston).

5. It is clear from this conceptualization of fascism that Putin’s Russia, for all its authoritarian features, cannot be classified as fascist or even as “fascistoid” or proto-fascist, as has been repeatedly and unhelpfully argued by Alexander Motyl (2007, 2009, 2010, 2016).

6. Most of the relevant secondary literature that makes up English- and German-language comparative fascist studies is listed in the endnotes of Griffin, Loh, and Umland (2006).

7. Several dozen relevant references are listed in Umland (2009c, 2015).

8. Among classical analyses of the party system of Weimar are those of Bracher (1960, 529–558) and Neumann (1968). In Prussia, parliamentary democracy worked better than on the national level, as the Social Democrats, Catholic Center, and DDP continuously worked together until 1933. See Möller (1985).

9. In interwar Italy, too, such a mechanism was at work: the Fascist movement emerged first in the societally well-developed north, with its strong civic traditions, and only later spread to the traditional south, with its family-centered social structure (Putnam 1993).

10. Even so, given merely these circumstances in early 1933, Hitler would not have succeeded – at least not via the semi-constitutional road on which he eventually got power – without the intrigues of Papen, Hindenburg's son Oskar, and Hindenburg himself (as well as some others), who arranged for the Hitler chancellorship behind the scenes. On the significance of crucial actors’ behavior for the (in)stability of interwar democracies, see Kailitz (2009).

Additional information

Funding

Umland's research was supported by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD-Fachlektorat), Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs (Initiative on the new far-right forces in Russia), and Research Council of Norway (NEORUSS project).