Putinism beyond Putin: the political ideas of Nikolai Patrushev and Sergei Naryshkin in 2006–20

ABSTRACT

This essay adds to previous research of Putinism an investigation of the political thought and foreign outlooks of Russia’s Secretary of the Security Council Nikolai Patrushev and Head of the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) Sergei Naryshkin, with a focus on their statements between 2006 to 2020. The paper outlines Patrushev’s and Naryshkin’s thoughts regarding the United States, Ukraine, and the idea of multipolarity/polycentrism. We then introduce Patrushev’s critique of liberal values and color revolutions, and Naryshkin’s statements on the memory of World War II and Western institutions. The salience of these altogether seven topics is interpreted with reference to three classical topoi in Russian political thought: the Slavophile vs. Westerners controversy, the single-stream theory, and the civilizational paradigm. Our conclusions inform the ongoing debate on whether to conceptualize Putinism as either an ideology or a mentality.

KEYWORDS:

• Russia
• Putinism
• Patrushev
• Naryshkin
• ideology

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Pavlo Klimkin and Fabian Burkhardt for advice at the initial stage of this project, and to two anonymous readers for their helpful critique of the paper’s first draft.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. In terms of both substance and goals, our paper parallels most closely Fomin’s (2022) recent investigation into the ideas of several leading members of the Russian elite. Fomin uses formal methods of textual exploration to locate a number of Russian decision makers on a liberalism-conservatism scale. While Fomin’s study (Fomin 2022) is inclusive, analytical, and quantitative, the below investigation is selective, hermeneutic, and qualitative. Although we completed the draft of our essay before becoming aware of Fomin’s study, his and our studies complement one another.

2. For a comprehensive review of the debate on whether Putin’s regime is fascist, see Laruelle (2021).

3. Various journalistic accounts also have depicted similar inner circles around Putin, typically including Patrushev and Naryshkin as well as several ideologically unpretentious politicians with “body access” (e.g. Kirby 2022; Langton 2022; Sherwin 2022).

4. This makes them similar to former President Dmitrii Medvedev, who has also known Putin for a long time. Medvedev has, however, no professional background in the KGB or another “power organ.” He has thus insufficient home power to be considered here.

5. Moreover, Patrushev was apparently deeply involved in the September 1999 framing of the false-flag terror attacks of that month – a crucial episode in the rise of Putin (Clover 2016, 251).

6. It should be noted, however, that some commentators, such as Galeotti (2022), have recently excluded Naryshkin from Putin’s innermost circle.

7. Naryshkin (2015a) gave a long interview to the Moscow Journal of International Law in 2015 from which all text passages making up the 765 words on Ukraine entering this count are taken.

8. On the Euromaidan Revolution and after, see, among others, Bertelsen (2016) and Wynnyckyj (2019).