Russian Politics 8 (2023) 331-352

brill.com/rupo

Livid about Liberalism: Putin, State Controlled

Television and Kremlin Portrayals of Liberalism

Adam Sykes
M.A., European and Eurasian Studies Program,
George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA
asykes93@gwmail.gwu.edu

Received 26 June 2022 | Accepted 21 Febuary 2023 |

Published online 15 August 2023

Abstract

Russian President Vladimir Putin has demonstrated a keen interest in questions of his-
tory and political theory over his more than two decades at or near the apex of Russian
power. These questions became particularly salient in Russia’s political discourse after
Putin returned to power in 2012 and inaugurated the so-called “conservative turn.” This
paper examines how Putin characterized liberalism between his return to power in
2012 and the start of the “special military operation” in Ukraine on 24 February 2022. It
contends that, over this decade, Putin consistently positioned himself as a moderate
critic of Western liberalism as opposed to an uncompromising ideologue, even after
the 2014 Ukraine crisis. To highlight this tendency, this paper simultaneously examines
two prominent Russian state television personalities – Dmitrii Kiselev and Vladimir
Solov’ev – who have used strident rhetoric in describing Western liberalism, notably
after the 2014 crisis in Ukraine.

Keywords

liberalism – Putin – media – Ukraine

Since the 24 February Russian invasion of Ukraine, and even before, Russian
President Vladimir Putin has become more of a symbol than a man. In the
eyes of some, he stands as a nigh Luciferian figure in the great battle between

Published with license by Brill Schöningh | doi:10.30965/24518921-00803003

© Adam Sykes, 2023 | ISSN: 2451-8913 (print) 2451-8921 (online)
332 Sykes

“liberal democracy” and “autocracy.” In part, Putin’s public remarks on the

issues of political theory and history have driven this perception. All the while,
Russia’s prominent state-controlled television networks have amplified Putin’s
remarks in a sensational manner with program hosts and guests gaily endors-
ing Putin’s own ruminations for Russian audiences. With questions of ideology
now at the fore – whether conservatism, illiberalism, or progressivism – I con-
sider Putin’s own ideological commentary about liberalism over the decade
that preceded the war in Ukraine. I contend that prior to the war in Ukraine,
Putin presented himself as a moderate critic of liberalism and that his rhet-
oric has frequently featured a factual rather than polemical character. Putin’s
efforts to appear moderate become particularly evident when contrasted with
the rhetoric about liberalism on state-controlled television. The latter acted as a
foil, sparing no effort to paint liberalism as some demonic, misanthropic force.

1 Examining Putin, Media Rhetoric about Liberalism

For Putin’s own remarks, I accessed the official Kremlin website which con-
tains a comprehensive archive of Putin’s public remarks stretching back to his
first term. I found scant remarks at the start of Putin’s third term but found
these early remarks were indicative of Putin’s self-projection as a man of mod-
eration. After his re-election in 2018, I honed in on Putin’s 2019 remark that
“liberalism is obsolete” in his interview with the Financial Times and looked
at how those mentions of liberalism persisted thereafter in Putin’s rhetoric,
unlike the period between 2013 and 2019, when they largely disappeared from
Putin’s rhetoric. In conclusion, I offer some thoughts on Putin’s 2022 rhetoric
on liberalism, noting how Putin’s wartime rhetoric has embraced some of the
more incendiary rhetoric characteristic of Russian television.
For state-controlled television coverage, I employed BBC Monitoring’s pro-
gram summaries that captured references to “liberalism” or “liberal.” I found
that BBC Monitoring summaries provided easy access to television rhetoric, for
after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Youtube and other social media platforms
suspended the official pages of Russia’s major state-controlled networks.1
Fortunately, BBC Monitoring’s program summaries of primetime Russian tele-
vision shows are easily available to Western audiences through databases such

1 Paresh Dave, “YouTube blocks Russian state-funded media channels globally,” Reuters,
March 11, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/youtube-blocks-russian
-state-funded-media-channels-globally-2022-03-11/ (accessed 25 December 2022).

Russian Politics 8 (2023) 331-352

Livid about Liberalism 333

as LexisNexis.2 Furthermore, BBC Monitoring’s team of culturally and linguis-

tically capable employees detailed segments of interest to Western audiences.
Naturally, this includes instances when Russian television personalities pon-
tificated about Western politics and governmental systems. While not exhaus-
tive, the program summaries are sufficient to illustrate continuities and breaks
in Russian television commentary regarding liberalism. I found that two prom-
inent Kremlin television personalities followed closely by BBC Monitoring,
Dmitrii Kiselev and Vladimir Solov’ev, were particularly illustrative of steadily
intensifying rhetoric on liberalism. Both of these men have defended Russian
actions and decried Western ones, entertaining their audiences with sardonic
tones and hyperbolic assertions.

2 Debating Liberalism

Ideas matter in the study of politics: they define the good life, shape aspira-
tions, and inform governance. Many in the West – whether consciously or
unconsciously – have proudly promoted the precepts of liberalism; others
have criticized liberalism. Beyond the West, Putin and other non-Western
leaders have joined the debate and offered particularly impassioned critiques
of “liberalism” and “exceptionalism.” However, Western and Russian critics of
liberalism both question the merits and hegemony of the ideology but from
different perspectives.
After the end of the Cold War, the idea of liberal democracy seemingly
dominated the American and European worlds from the Atlantic to the Urals.
This perception generated an atmosphere of euphoria and inspired political
scientist Francis Fukuyama to pen his controversial “End of History’ thesis in
1989. Fukuyama claimed that the consecutive ideological defeats of absolut-
ism, fascism, and Marxism culminated in “an unabashed victory of economic
and political liberalism.”3 Lambasted by his critics, Fukuyama five years later
clarified his grandiose assertions and said they reflected not so much an argu-
ment about the world’s “empirical condition” but rather an argument about
the “the adequacy of liberal democratic political institutions.”4 Others avoided
Fukuyama’s normative rhetoric and attempted to define terms like democracy

2 This paper relied on BBC Monitoring program summaries contained in LexisNexis. The cita-
tions of BBC Monitoring summaries contained herein provide the exact title of the summary
as published by BBC Monitoring and the date of publication.
3 Francis Fukuyama, “The End of History?,” The National Interest, no. 16 (1989): 3-18, p. 3.
4 Fukuyama, 1995, “Reflections on The End of History, Five Years Later,” History & Theory 2
no. 34 (1995).

Russian Politics 8 (2023) 331-352

334 Sykes

and liberalism more parsimoniously. Philippe Schmitter and Terry Karl exem-
plify this more theoretically prudent approach by not using “liberalism” and
“liberal democracy” interchangeably like Fukuyama. In their work, democ-
racy embodies a governance system in which citizens hold rulers account-
able in the public realm through the “competition and cooperation of their
elected representatives.”5 Insofar as they discuss liberalism, Schmitter and Karl
define it as a conception that “advocates circumscribing the public realm as
narrowly as possible.”6 Ultimately, such literature on democracy and liberal-
ism remained within the bounds of Western assumptions. Authors tended to
praise or describe the post-Cold War ascent of liberalism rather than to criti-
cize the ideology.
The optimism that reigned between 1989 and 1995 did not conclude the
debates over liberalism in the West. Liberalism may have outlasted its abso-
lutist, fascist, and communist critics, but Western conservatives contested the
unabashedly positive evaluations of liberalism even at the height of the Cold
War. In 1964, James Burnham published his Suicide of the West which posited
that the seemingly invincible onslaught of Communism, and the apparent
shrinking of the Western control and influence in the world, resulted from
liberalism. Much of Burnham’s critique is rooted in his epoch. However,
Burnham consciously analyzed liberalism as an ideology in the same man-
ner that Western liberals would analyze fascism or communism. Burnham
defined ideology as “a more or less systematic and self-contained set of ideas
supposedly dealing with the nature of reality … and calling for a commitment
independent of specific experiences or events.”7 Burnham’s example is criti-
cal because he anticipated future critics of Western liberalism – both in the
West and beyond.
Patrick Deneen agreed that liberalism’s nature is fundamentally ideological
and expanded Burnham’s analysis almost three decades after Fukuyama pub-
lished his “End of History” essay. According to Deneen, liberalism “surrepti-
tiously remakes the world in its image,” in contrast to fascism and communism,
but in the process claims “neutrality” and “ingratiates by invitation to the easy
liberties, diversions, and attractions of freedom, pleasure, and wealth.”8 This
subtlety, augmented by convictions like Fukuyama’s, has arguably hindered
ideological introspection by Western liberalism’s paramount champions. One

5 Philippe C Schmitter and Karl, Terry Lynn, “What Democracy Is … and Is Not,” Journal of
Democracy 2, no. 3 (1991): 75-88, p. 76.
6 Ibid., 77.
7 James Burnham, Suicide of the West: An Essay on the Meaning and Destiny of Liberalism,
rev. ed. (New York: Encounter Books, 2014), p. 108.
8 Patrick J. Deneen, Why Liberalism Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019), 5.

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Livid about Liberalism 335

introspective revelation, for example, would note that liberalism succeeded in

shaping humanity, yet this success uneasily coexists with a general increase of
misery and social anxiety among the general populace. According to Deneen,
liberalism’s “vehicles of liberation” whether political, economic, or technologi-
cal “have become iron cages of our captivity.”9 In contrast to the optimistic
literature of the nineties, Deneen’s account fundamentally questions whether
liberalism has truly produced “the good life” in the West.
The debate over liberalism penetrated Russian politics as much as Western.
Stephen Holmes and Ivan Krastev argued that Russia responded to liberalism’s
apotheosis in the nineties through “simulation,” meaning Russia imperson-
ated Western liberalism’s precepts even as it refrained from sincerely adopting
them. For Holmes and Krastev, this initial simulation by the Kremlin turned
into confrontation at the 2007 Munich Security Conference, when Putin threw
down the ideological gauntlet. Putin’s speech at the conference decried the
purported “duty of all mankind to strive for liberal democracy” as “Western
conceit.”10 Especially since 2012, Holmes and Krastev believe Putin has acted
upon this 2007 theme in order to “teach the West a lesson, to reveal its hypocrisy
and hidden vulnerability, and to make its defenders weaker still.”11 Such exam-
ples include propping up autocrats, like Syria’s Bashar al-Asad and Venezuela’s
Nicolas Maduro, conducting information operations against Western publics,
and, the authors would probably now add, waging a war against Ukraine’s push
for Western integration. Anne Clunan also examined the relationship between
the Russian elite and liberalism. Clunan contested the notion that Russia
inflexibly challenges all conceptions of liberalism. Rather, Russian leaders pre-
fer a liberalism that holds sovereignty supreme but fear the “wave of liberal
humanism” that accelerated in the nineties and “challenged the doctrine of
sovereign equality.”12 From this perspective, one could construe Putin’s 2007
declarations in Munich as defensive in nature.
While he certainly attacks the export of liberalism, Putin has also endeav-
ored to counteract indigenous advocates of liberalism within Russia. Marlene
Laruelle argued that Putin’s efforts have resulted in a Russian form of illiberal-
ism. Illiberalism consists of movements that “explicitly identify liberalism as
the enemy” and that denounce “political, economic, and cultural liberalism”
as represented by “supranational institutions, globalization, multiculturalism,

9 Ibid., 6.
10 Stephen Holmes and Krastev, Ivan, The Light That Failed: Why the West Is Losing the Fight
for Democracy (New York: Pegasus Books, 2019), p. 81.
11 Ibid., 103.
12 Anne L Clunan, “Russia and the Liberal World Order,” Ethics & International Affairs 32,
no. 1 (2018): 45-59, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0892679418000096, p. 47.

Russian Politics 8 (2023) 331-352

336 Sykes

and minority-rights protection.”13 Whereas Western critiques of liberalism

have remained largely in the realm of political philosophy, Putin embedded
such critiques into his governing policies from 2012 onwards. Russia’s inter-
national condemnation of liberalism and its domestic embrace of illiberal-
ism have led many in the West to question whether Russia is a fascist state.
Building off her work on illiberalism, Laruelle forcefully critiqued those who
haphazardly slap the fascist label onto Putin’s Russia. One can easily compre-
hend why many of liberalism’s defenders began perceiving fascism in Russia
and beyond. International challenges to liberalism from Russia and populist
challenges from within the Western world inspired “a new rhetoric on the
return of fascism as a never-ending threat.”14 Laruelle encouraged her readers
not to employ the fascist label and instead to view Russia as illiberal and on
“a shared continuum” that also includes the United States and Europe.
Rejecting the label of fascist does not mean that illiberalism itself represents
a holistic ideological movement. For example, illiberalism does not encom-
pass both Putin and Western conservatives like Deneen. Per Laruelle, postlib-
eralism provides a more accurate and holistic ideational grouping for Russian
and Western critics of liberalism. Postliberalism represents “an ideology whose
exponents are pushing back against liberalism after having experienced it.”15
This definition encompasses critics of liberalism who have always lived in
the postwar liberal order as well as those who lived under recently imported
liberalism after the Cold War. This differentiation is crucial because Russian
illiberal critiques matured against the unique backdrop of Russia’s “wild nine-
ties” (likhie devyanostiye). When Putin references liberalism, he tends to invoke
the “wild nineties” and thereby justify his evolving illiberal governance. Olga
Malinova designed a content analysis of Putin’s statements about the nineties.
Her findings reinforce Laruelle’s claim of a shared political continuum, for like
many Western populists, Putin frames his statements on liberal policies of the
nineties to demonstrate his “care about the people” and his ability to criticize
“‘bad’ state officials and politicians.”16 However, although postliberals perceive
similar problems, Russian advocates ultimately prescribe very different rem-
edies than their Western counterparts.

13 Marlene Laruelle, “Making Sense of Russia’s Illiberalism,” Journal of Democracy 31, no. 3
(July 2020): 115-29, p. 117.
14 Laruelle, Is Russia Fascist?: Unraveling Propaganda East and West (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 2021), p. 19.
15 Laruelle, “Making Sense of Russia’s Illiberalism,” p. 115.
16 Olga Malinova, “Framing the Collective Memory of the 1990s as a Legitimation Tool for
Putin’s Regime,” Problems of Post-Communism 68, no. 5 (October 9, 2021): 429-41, p. 434.

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Livid about Liberalism 337

Putin complements many of his references to the “wild nineties” with nostal-
gia for an imagined Soviet past and its representative, homo sovieticus. Gulnaz
Sharafutdinova observed that many ordinary Russians under Putin have expe-
rienced a renewed “sense of pride about the Soviet past” in lieu of “the shame
and repentance associated with perestroika and glasnost.”17 Indeed, many
Russians came to interpret Mikhail Gorbachev’s critique of the Soviet past as
a sort of proto-liberalism. Looking at Russia from the outside, Western liberals
certainly saw the purported revival of homo sovieticus as a political setback. For
proponents of Fukuyama’s thesis, homo sovieticus and the Soviet past did not
belong in the post-Cold War liberal era, yet Putin, in the eyes of some, some-
how achieved its resurrection.
Concern about Putin’s neo-Sovietism in Russia merged with worries about
Western populism. As a result, “fertile ground” for Cold War nostalgia appeared
in the West. More specifically, this meant “nostalgia towards the ‘autonomous’
liberal subject and, arguably, its constituent other, homo sovieticus.”18 Before
Putin supported (or at least condoned) neo-Sovietism, Anna Krylova carefully
studied the genealogy of homo sovieticus and observed a Western propensity
to define the Soviet in light of the liberal. Throughout the Cold War, students
of Soviet Russia sought after the “remnants of liberal subjectivity” and “signs of
resistance against anti-liberal” communists within the Soviet Union.19 Krylova
cautioned her readers that the liberal viewpoint remains an intellectual con-
struct that nudges its adherents toward certain assumptions. This applied
during the Cold War; it applies now in the study of Russian liberalism and
illiberalism.

3 The Russian Media Environment

Even in autocratic systems, the media plays a key role in amplifying and analyz-
ing contemporary political debates, but just as the pro-Kremlin understanding
of liberalism has its own unique context, so too does the Russian media envi-
ronment. As in the West, Russia’s mass media, in particular state-controlled
television, serves as the largest most influential medium in shaping the field of
political discourse. However, the Russian media environment does not operate

17 Gulnaz Sharafutdinova, “Was There a ‘Simple Soviet’ Person? Debating the Politics and
Sociology of ‘Homo Sovieticus,’” Slavic Review 78, no. 1 (Spring 2019): 173-95, p. 182.
18 Sharafutdinova, “Was There a ‘Simple Soviet’ Person?” p. 175.
19 Anna Krylova, “The Tenacious Liberal Subject in Soviet Studies,” Kritika: Explorations in
Russian and Eurasian History 1, no. 1 (2000): 119-46, p. 120.

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338 Sykes

as an unconscious servant of Putin. Rather, research literature on the contem-

porary Russian media environment has contended that Russian media actors
possess a high level of agency, even state-controlled media actors in league
with the Kremlin.
Russian television underwent major changes from Yeltsin to Putin. Arkady
Ostrovsky charted the courses of several Russian media entrepreneurs from
Yeltsin’s era to Putin’s. Ostrovsky wanted to show his readers how Russian
television is run by “sophisticated and erudite men who started their careers
during Gorbachev’s perestroika and prospered in Yeltsin’s 1990s” but some of
these men later transformed into Putin’s “creators of reality.”20 Unlike under
Yeltsin, Russian media under Putin became a critical pillar of regime stability,
and Putin swiftly neutered independent media moguls such as NTV’s owner,
Vladimir Gusinskiy, and ORT TV’s owner, Boris Berezovskiy. For many in the
Russian media, the Putin succession proved a deeply disillusioning experience.
Peter Pomerantsev worked at Ostankino, Moscow’s premiere television studio;
he left disturbed by how Russian state-controlled television could question the
veracity of everything yet assert the truth of reality-defying narratives. “You feel
that if Ostankino can lie so much and get away with it,” Pomerantsev mused,
“doesn’t this mean they have real power, the power to define what is true and
what isn’t?”21 More so for Pomerantsev than Ostrovky, contemporary Russian
media became an appendage of a corrupted Russian society.
Despite a corrupted and corrosive political environment, the men and
women of Russia’s media machine have more complex motivations than obse-
quiously serving Putin’s regime. Elizabeth Schimpfossl and Ilya Yablokov rein-
force Ostrovsky’s perception that Russia’s media managers are sophisticated
and erudite but go further. Schimpfossl and Yablokov contend that this politi-
cally diverse group of managers – including individuals such as Channel One
Television’s Konstantin Ernst and Novaya Gazeta’s Dmitrii Muratov – have
an important place among the Russian elite. Men and women like Ernst and
Muratov succeed as media managers because they understand the “informal-
ity” of Russian politics under Putin and instinctively navigate “the frequently
changing rules of the game.”22 Using such careful navigation, media managers
have exercised a considerable degree of autonomy even while respecting the
Kremlin’s wishes. Similarly, Schimpfossl and Yablokov accord autonomy and

20 Arkady Ostrovsky, The Invention of Russia: From Gorbachev’s Freedom to Putin’s War (New
York: Viking Books, 2015), p. 8.
21 Peter Pomerantsev, Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New
Russia, (New York: Public Affairs, 2014), p. 230-231.
22 Elisabeth Schimpfossl and Yablokov, Ilya, “Media Elites in Post-Soviet Russia and Their
Strategies for Success,” Russian Politics 2 (March 9, 2017): 32-53, p. 14.

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Livid about Liberalism 339

initiative to Russian television personalities: “Anchors and reporters who are

involved in the direct promotion of Kremlin positions usually have consciously
and deliberately chosen to do so.”23
Several scholars have studied and even interacted with the two television
personalities highlighted by BBC Monitoring: Dmitrii Kiselev, head of the
Rossiya Segodnya state-controlled media group and Vesti Nedeli host, and
Vladimir Solov’ev, Rossiya television network journalist, presenter, and host of
Sunday Evening With Vladimir Solov’ev. Schimpfossl and Yablokov managed to
interview Kiselev, and Sharafutdinova overviewed Solov’ev’s career in her dis-
cussion of Putin’s “modern media machine.” The three authors all observed that
both media men have inveighed frequently against the West and liberalism,
both as an ideology and against the purported policies attributed to it. Kiselev
perfectly illustrates how many pro-Kremlin actors purposefully migrated into
Putin’s camp. Initially, Kiselev was a nineties liberal and claimed a reporter
“has no right to be a propagandist,” but after Putin returned the presidency
in 2012, Kiselev insisted a reporter must “produce new values, educate the
Russian people, and establish new norms.”24 Similarly, Solov’ev rose to promi-
nence after the 2011-2012 demonstrations challenged Putin’s overt return to
power. Solov’ev has famously broadcasted his support for the Kremlin though
his constant reminders of how bad the liberal “wild nineties” were for Russia.25
Vera Tolz and Yuri Teper term the method through which Kiselev and
Solov’ev aid Kremlin ideological messaging “agitatinment.” Teper and Tolz
argued that this strategy began during Putin’s third term and that it has used
“media campaigns” to achieve “the virtual creation of the national community”
and to pursue the radical “othering of various ‘enemies.’”26 All the while, these
media campaigns have employed tabloid-style bombast to entertain Russian
viewers and encourage support for the Kremlin. Below, I examine several occa-
sions when Kiselev and Solov’ev used this strategy to tarnish the image of the
West and liberalism in the eyes of the Russian population.
Previous research has captured the trend of Kiselev and Solov’ev’s report-
ing, yet no one has examined their changing presentations of liberalism over

23 Schimpfossl and Yablokov, “Coercion or Conformism? Censorship and Self-Censorship

Among Russian Media Personalities and Reporters in the 2010s,” Demokratizatsiya 22,
no. 2 (Spring 2014): 295-311, p. 295.
24 Ibid., 301.
25 Sharafutdinova, The Red Mirror: Putin’s Leadership and Russia’s Insecure Identity (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2020), p. 117.
26 Vera Tolz and Teper, Yuri, “Broadcasting Agitainment: A New Media Strategy of Putin’s
Third Presidency.” Post-Soviet Affairs 34, no. 4 (July 4, 2018): 213-27. https://doi.org/10.1080
/1060586X.2018.1459023, p. 217.

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340 Sykes

the past decade. If other researchers do cover an episode, it is usually from

the beginning of Putin’s third term in reference to the Pussy Riot trial or the
so-called “gay propaganda” law. Naturally, this focus on 2012 and 2013 does not
include media coverage of Putin’s 2019 “liberalism is obsolete” interview or
Putin’s criticisms of Western liberalism at Valdai in 2021.

4 Putin Grapples with Ideology

In 2014, Vyacheslav Volodin, the then First Deputy Head of the Kremlin
Presidential Administration, infamously proclaimed, “With Putin, there is
Russia; no Putin – no Russia.”27 Volodin’s forthright statement became per-
haps the most famous piece of evidence for defining Russia as a personalist
autocracy. However, different ideas, ideologies, and motivations animate each
and every personalist autocrat. In 2021, Dmitrii Peskov, the Kremlin presiden-
tial chief spokesman, claimed that Putin adheres to ideas “that are all in the
interests of Russians and for Russians,” that “Putin’s ideology cannot be con-
nected to the West,” and that “it is difficult see how someone could be attracted
to the ideas of American liberalism.”28 According to such pronouncements,
Russia remains aloof to the ideology of liberalism, personally shielded by
Putin himself.
Putin’s first major foray into the debate on liberalism came amid the so-called
“conservative turn” at the start of his third presidential term. Right before Putin
secured his March 2012 presidential victory, massive protests rocked Moscow
over both Putin’s announcement that he would return to power and the bla-
tant election fraud supporting United Russia during the December 2011 State
Duma elections. Months after the protests subsided, Putin signed two 2013
Russian federal laws that defined this “conservative turn.” The first increased
the penalties for offending the religious feelings of believers,29 and the second
claimed to protect “children from information advocating for the denial of the

27 “Volodin: Rossiyane vosprinimayut ataki na presidenta RF kak ataki na svoyu stranu

(Volodin: Russians See Attacks Against the Russian President as Attacks on Their Country),”
TASS, October 22, 2014, https://tass.ru/politika/1525655 (accessed 19 April 2022).
28 “Peskov rasskazal ob ideologii Putina (Peskov Talks About Putin’s Ideology),” Izvestiya
Online, January 20, 2021, https://iz.ru/1113930/2021-01-20/peskov-rasskazal-ob-ideologii
-putina (accessed 7 April 2022).
29 Yulia Ponomareva, “New law protecting religious feelings divides Russians,” Russia Beyond
the Headlines, June 14, 2013, https://www.rbth.com/society/2013/06/14/new_law_protect
ing_religious_feelings_divides_russians_27089 (9 April 2022).

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Livid about Liberalism 341

traditional family values.”30 Ideologically, both laws conflicted with the most
orthodox interpretations of liberalism in that they circumscribed the per-
sonal realm.
Despite his tacit support for both laws, Putin largely remained above the
fray even as his shadow loomed large above it. In February 2012, before Putin
had claimed his March election victory, the Russian activist group Pussy Riot
staged a “Punk Prayer” calling for Putin’s departure from the political scene
in a display that many pro-Kremlin Russians considered blasphemous. At the
time, Putin offered no denouncement of liberalism and Russia’s pro-Western
liberal cadre. Instead, Russian state-controlled television seized the initiative
and decried the behavior of the young women. From celebrity journalists to
news anchors, Russian journalists played “a leading role” in defending “con-
servative values agenda,” whereas Putin waited until September 2013 to offer a
similar defense.31
Kiselev passionately denounced Pussy Riot as the jailed activists faced trial
and sentencing. During his 14 October 2012 Vesti Nedeli monologue, Kiselev
linked the Pussy Riot controversy to liberalism. Attacking Pussy Riot’s grow-
ing collection of Western awards, Kiselev denounced the activists’ stunt as
“absurd,” “just an outrage,” and a denial of “all values.”32 Adding an ironic flour-
ish, Kiselev said that the activists perhaps “were striving for a more liberal
society” but then dismissed the thought as “unlikely, since liberalism implies a
sensible moderation of freedom with some inner restraint.”33 While Kiselev’s
comment may have lacked sincerity, his assessment of liberalism did not por-
tray it in necessary opposition with a Russian conservatism. In fact, Kiselev
both presented Pussy Riot’s antics as an embarrassment to Western liberalism
and associated liberalism with moderation, implying that Western liberals
should abstain from recognizing the immoderate young women.
As mentioned above, Putin only weighed in on the Russian legislation in
response to Pussy Riot nearly a year after Kiselev’s broadcast. However, Putin
did explicitly comment on the nature of liberalism in April 2013, before he
signed the two June laws. That month, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte visited

30 Russian State Duma, “On Introducing Amendments to Article 5 of the Federal Law
‘On the Protection of Children From Information That Is Harmful to Their Health and
Development’ and Certain Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation for the Purpose
of Protecting Children From Information Promoting the Denial of Traditional Family
Values,” June 29, 2013, https://duma.consultant.ru/page.aspx?3576461 (15 April 2022).
31 Tolz and Teper, “Broadcasting Agitainment,” p. 222.
32 “Russian TV and Radio Highlights for 8-14 October 2012,” BBC Monitoring, October 16,
2012.
33 Ibid.

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342 Sykes

Russia for bilateral talks with Putin. Thereafter, the two leaders answered media
questions during a joint news conference. Rutte challenged Putin over the pro-
posed law on the traditional family and homosexuality, derided as the “gay pro-
paganda law” by many Western observers. In his response, Putin first insisted
that Russian society’s “attitude” supported the measures, thereby brandishing
Russia’s democratic credentials by implication. Indeed, Putin could reliably
insist on this point, for these attitudes had a foundation in both late-Soviet
society and grew in the decades after the Soviet collapse.34 After calling for
respecting “this attitude” in Russia, Putin then proceeded to lecture Rutte on
liberalism using themes he used at the 2007 Munich Security Conference. “If
we are talking about liberalism and democracy,” Putin lectured, “then we must
respect each other, including in the international arena.”35
At the start of his third term, Putin implied differences between Russia and
the West but he did not cast these differences as inevitable ideological con-
frontation. Putin could tolerate liberalism in the West insofar as the West’s
conception did not infringe upon Russia’s own sovereignty – as interpreted by
Putin, his closest advisors, and supporters, of course. For Putin, this tolerance
emerged from an older interpretation of liberalism: “charter liberalism.” Born
in the nineteenth century, this conception held “tolerance, diversity, and open-
ness together with agnosticism about moral truth” ought to shape the contours
of a functioning society. Additionally, this conception simultaneously empha-
sized sovereign states as the central domestic and international actors.36 This
perspective motivated Putin’s 2013 rebuttal to Rutte: Russia would not com-
ment on the “untraditional values” in the Netherlands and, in turn, the Dutch
should respect Russia’s stance on “traditional values,” thereby creating condi-
tions of respect and equality.
Despite Putin’s infrequent commentary on liberalism, Russian state-
controlled television intermittently returned to the theme: sometimes to laud
Putin’s image, and at other times, to decry the West and its alleged puppets
in Russia. In February 2014, Kiselev contrasted Putin’s liberal tolerance with
the “outrageous” remarks made by the anti-Kremlin Russian comedian Viktor
Shenderovich. Interviewed by Ekho Moskvy, Shenderovich compared Putin’s
2014 Sochi Winter Olympics to Hitler’s 1936 Berlin Olympics and he linked the

34 Laruelle, “Making Sense of Russia’s Illiberalism.” Journal of Democracy 31, no. 3 (July 2020):
115-29, http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/jod.2020.0049, p. 117.
35 Vladimir Putin, “Zayavleniya dlya pressy i otvety na voprosy zhurnalistov po itogam
rossiisko-niderlandskikh peregovorov,” President of Russia, April 8, 2013. http://kremlin
.ru/events/president/transcripts/17850 (accessed 7 April 2022).
36 Clunan, Anne L. “Russia and the Liberal World Order,” p. 46.

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Livid about Liberalism 343

final price of Germany’s “sports feat” to the atrocities of World War II.37 The
following Sunday, Kiselev rushed to Putin’s defense. First, Kiselev character-
ized Putin himself as liberal. “Every line written by Shenderovich strengthens
Putin’s image as a tolerant and truly liberal person,” Kiselev lectured, “Under
Putin, Shenderovich can continue to say anything … not only using the freedom
of speech under Putin, whom he hates, but even abuse it.”38 This commentary
directly reinforced the image of moderation and tolerance that Putin projected
during his 2013 news conference with Rutte; an image Kiselev enthusiastically
conveyed to the Russian population.
Ostensibly, Kiselev focused on Shenderovich’s comparison of Putin to Hitler.
However, the rebuke implicitly targeted the West, for the Kremlin and its
supporters bristled at Western criticism of Russian domestic policies; espe-
cially criticism from perceived “Western pawns.” Between the crushing of dis-
sent in 2012 and the 2013 federal laws on blasphemy and “gay propaganda,”
Putin’s Russia increasingly faced “Western accusations of intolerance and
authoritarianism.”39 To respond, after he had defended Putin’s liberal image,
Kiselev mocked the state of pro-Western liberalism in Russia. When one looks
at “Shenderovich and the crowd at Ekho Moskvy,” Kiselev opined, “one under-
stands why a normal liberal party is not emerging in Russia,” for they make
outrageous statements, present themselves “as liberals,” and “make liberalism
so unattractive that they literally scare away people.”40

5 Ukraine Upends the Debate

This rhetoric during the “conservative turn” did not portray liberalism in toto
as harmful. Harmful liberalism consisted of Western politicians and their
allies in Russia intervening in Russia’s internal affairs and thereby violating the
ideas of tolerance, mutual respect, and sovereignty that the Kremlin and its
allies associated with “charter liberalism.” However, days after Kiselev’s broad-
side against Shenderovich, Ukraine fell into turmoil, and that geopolitical

37 Steve Gutterman, “Satirist under fire for comparing Sochi Games and Hitler’s Olympics,”
Reuters, February 12, 2014, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-olympics-blog-nazi/satirist
-under-fire-for-comparing-sochi-games-and-hitlers-olympics-idUKBREA1B1HX20140212
(accessed 17 April 2022).
38 “Programme Summary of Russian Rossiya 1 TV ‘Vesti Nedeli’ 1848 Gmt 16 Feb 14,” BBC
Monitoring, February 16, 2014.
39 Gutterman, “Satirist under fire for comparing Sochi Games and Hiter’s Olympics.”
40 “Programme Summary of Russian Rossiya 1 TV ‘Vesti Nedeli’ 1848 Gmt 16 Feb 14,” BBC
Monitoring, February 16, 2014.

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344 Sykes

earthquake upended the Western-Russian debates about liberalism. By the end

of February, former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych fled the country
and his government ignominiously collapsed. Alarmed, Putin reactively autho-
rized the annexation of Crimea and denounced the Euromaidan revolution as
“an anti-constitutional takeover” that contradicted a compromise agreement
that Russia oversaw jointly with Poland, Germany, and France.41
With Ukraine having succumbed to “revolution,” the Kremlin came to believe
that Western liberalism had officially abandoned tolerance and respect. The
Euromaidan sealed Putin’s perception that the moderate strains of Western
liberalism had succumbed to “liberal humanism,” a form of liberalism that
reserved the right “to question seriously the democratic and humanitarian cre-
dentials of its members” and even supersede “states’ rights to nonintervention
in their domestic affairs.”42 Both the Kremlin and pro-Kremlin actors famously
saw traces of this in then Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland’s travel
to Kyiv and supposedly underhanded dealings with Ukraine’s Euromaidan
opposition.43

6 The Liberal Idea: ‘Aggressive’ and ‘Obsolete’

For the next five years, Putin, Kiselev, and Soloyev only sporadically referred to
liberalism. However, the references that did appear lacked the positive reflec-
tions on liberalism present between 2012 and 2014. After the Euromaidan,
Putin referenced liberalism during his 2016 Direct Line event. Significantly,
he focused on specific policies associated with liberalism as opposed to the
character of the political philosophy itself. That year, a questioner asked Putin
about more European students attending Russian universities. The question
implied that amid the migration crisis, Europe’s “security” had declined pre-
cipitously. Putin paid a backhanded compliment to “our colleagues,” claiming
they “are making attempts to effectively tackle terrorism amidst the compli-
cated conditions of European liberalism.”44 In this case, Putin focused on ter-
rorism but suggested that some of Europe’s bizarre liberal beliefs inhibited
sensible policies that could address the terror threat. Nonetheless, in answering

41 Putin, “Vladimir Putin otvetil na voprosy zhurnalistov o situatsii na Ukraine,” President

of Russia, March 4, 2014, http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/20366 (accessed
7 April 2022).
42 Clunan, “Russia and the Liberal World Order,” p. 47.
43 “Russian daily TV roundup for 11 December 2013,” BBC Monitoring, December 11, 2013.
44 Putin, “Pryamaya liniya s Vladimira Putina,” President of Russia, April 16, 2016, http://krem
lin.ru/events/president/news/51716 (accessed 7 April 2022).

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Livid about Liberalism 345

the question, Putin endeavored to project moderation and commonsense; he

implied that Western liberalism had problems but refrained from outright neg-
ativity about the ideology.
Kiselev impugned Europe’s migration policies and characterized liberalism
much more negatively than the ostensibly neutral Putin. A year before Putin’s
allusion to European migration policies, Kiselev prepared a segment on the US
2016 primary season. A Vesti Nedeli correspondent relayed updates from the
Republican primary and described how US media targeted Republican can-
didate Ben Carson with “a dirty media campaign for his conservative views.”
Kiselev explained to viewers that Americans were stuck between “aggressive
liberalism” on the left and “neoconservatism” on the right, a division that
denied Americans political pragmatism.45 In line with Putin’s 2016 remarks,
Kiselev’s monologue focused on short-sighted Western policies rather than
the nature of liberalism itself. However, Kiselev’s characterization of liberal-
ism as “aggressive” and the political property of the Left diverged from his
2012 assessment of liberalism as implying “a sensible moderation of freedom
with some inner restraint”46 and his 2014 description of Putin himself as a
“truly liberal person.”47
Harsh Russian media rhetoric about liberalism erupted in 2018 after Western-
Russian relations dramatically deteriorated following the assassination attempt
in Salisbury against Russian defector Sergey Skripal. As Western nations joined
the United Kingdom in condemning the assassination attempt, Vladimir
Solov’ev interviewed a London-based “Russian political analyst” who claimed
British schools indoctrinate children with “neo-liberal militant propaganda.”
Moreover, Solov’ev’s guest claimed that such propaganda fueled Britain’s
“extreme militant neo-liberalism” and the British desire to isolate “hated con-
servative countries like Russia.”48 The United Kingdom was not the only tar-
get. For Kiselev, French President Emmanuel Macron’s 2018 New Year’s address
provided the perfect occasion to denounce the Western “liberal democracies.”
According to Kiselev, Macron subdivided the world’s nations into three cat-
egories: “liberal democracies” like France, “non-liberal democracies,” alleg-
edly including the United States, and “second class” nations – including

45 “Programme Summary of Russian Rossiya 1 ‘Vesti Nedeli’ 1700 Gmt 8 Nov 15,” BBC
Monitoring, November 8, 2015.
46 “Russian TV and Radio Highlights for 8-14 October 2012,” BBC Monitoring, October 16,
2012.
47 “Programme Summary of Russian Rossiya 1 TV ‘Vesti Nedeli’ 1848 Gmt 16 Feb 14,” BBC
Monitoring, February 16, 2014.
48 “Russian State TV Show: Western ‘Russophobia’ and ‘Censorship,’” BBC Monitoring, May 7,
2018.

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346 Sykes

“authoritarian regimes” like Russia. Kiselev responded by inverting Macron’s

hierarchy. With the screen caption “Authoritarian liberalism” projected behind
him, Kiselev derided Macron for stripping RT Francais of its accreditation in
an “authoritarian” manner.49 Unlike the past, 2018 pro-Kremlin media com-
mentary explicitly suggested the nature of liberalism drove Western criticism
and opposition to Russia.
Barring his brief 2016 comment, Putin himself did not lend his voice to these
denouncements of liberalism. Rather, as the 2018 Russian presidential election
approached, Putin positioned himself as a pragmatist in tune with Russia’s
needs and responding patiently to “provocations” by Russia’s “western part-
ners,” his approach since his 2012 return to power. In 2019 though, Putin waded
into the ideological debates. That June, the British Financial Times interviewed
Putin on several topics, but one quote garnered global media attention: “The
liberal idea has become obsolete,” Putin remarked, “It has come into conflict
with the overwhelming majority of the population.”50 Putin made this com-
ment in response to Lionel Barber and Henry Foy’s questions about the rise
of populism and illiberalism in the West. Although politically confrontational,
Putin’s answer by and large reflected his historical rhetoric. Putin conceded
that the liberal idea “has a right to exist,” but it cannot overwhelm all else as
the “absolute dominating factor.”51 As a point of reference, Putin contrasted
Russia’s experience of the nineties with many discontented and aggrieved citi-
zens in the West. According to Putin, those who prized the liberal idea as that
“dominating factor” failed to see the costs imposed on the purported majority.
As a Russian example, Putin cited the failure of Russia’s healthcare systems
and post-Soviet industrial collapse; as a Western example, he cited reactions
against “multiculturalism” and the widening gap between ruler and ruled.52
At the G20 summit days later, reporters pressed Putin to explain his claim
that “liberalism is obsolete.” Putin obliged but preceded his response with a
confession: “To be honest, it was totally unexpected for me that an interview …
in which I did not think I said anything new – should stir such great interest.”53
Indeed, Putin may have made a genuine confession. After all, the crux of the
matter, according to Putin, was “that this part of society is aggressively imposing

49 “Programme Summary of Russian Rossiya 1 TV ‘Vesti Nedeli’ 1700 Gmt 14 Jan 18,” BBC
Monitoring, January 18, 2018.
50 Putin, “Interv’yu gazete The Financial Times,” President of Russia, June 27, 2019. http://
kremlin.ru/events/president/news/60836 (accessed 7 April 2022).
51 Ibid.
52 Ibid.
53 Putin, “Press-konferentsiya Vladimira Putina,” President of Russia, June 29, 2019. http://
kremlin.ru/events/president/news/60857 (accessed 7 April 2022).

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Livid about Liberalism 347

their view on the majority,”54 a view in line with his absolutist interpretation of
sovereignty. Amid the rapid decline of Western-Russian relations, Putin held to
the longstanding conviction he articulated at the Munich Security Conference
in 2007: that parts of the West eagerly yearned to impose their preferences on
the international system instead of upholding state sovereignty for all. Putin
commented on polarization and culture wars within the West to illustrate the
problems he perceived with unipolarity and what the Russian elite derisively
refer to as the “rules-based international order.”

7 Russian Television Discovers “Totalitarian Liberalism”

In spite of his critiques, Putin even extended an olive branch at the height of
Covid-19 pandemic. In a 2020 article dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the
victory over Nazi Germany, Putin called for global collaboration in spite of
divisive “geopolitical, ideological, and economic” differences.55 Yet at the same
time, according to a prominent Russian journalist, Putin spent most of the
pandemic in nigh complete isolation, brooding about Western slights to both
Russia and to him personally.56 When the Biden Administration took office in
2021, Putin noticed the new President’s rhetoric of “autocracy versus democ-
racy” but did not immediately engage with it, a decision reflecting his desire to
appear as the moderate, responsible politician. When President Biden called
him “a killer,” Putin responded with cheeky magnanimity: “I wish him good
health … but when we evaluate other people … we are always facing a mirror …
we project our inner selves onto the other person.”57
While Putin endeavored to project the calm assurance of a statesman,
pro-Kremlin media rhetoric grew even more hyperbolic as their characteriza-
tions of liberalism in their broadcasts merged with the rhetoric of confront-
ing fascism – Russia’s historical ideological nemesis from the Second World
War. When the 6 January Capitol Hill riot roiled US politics, Kiselev seized
the moment for a new lecture on US shortcomings and the moral poverty

54 Ibid.
55 Putin, “75 let Velikoi Pobedy: obshchaya otvetstvennost’ pered istoriei i budushchim,”
President of Russia, June 19, 2020, http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/63527
(accessed 7 April 2022).
56 Mikhail Zygar, “How Vladimir Putin Lost Interest in the Present,” New York Times, March 10,
2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/10/opinion/putin-russia-ukraine.html (accessed
14 April 2022).
57 Putin, “Vstrecha s obshchestvennost’yu Kryma i Sevastopolya,” President of Russia,
March 18, 2021, http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/65172 (accessed 7 April 2022).

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348 Sykes

of the West. The headline on the 17 January program of Vesti Nedeli announced
“the dictatorship of liberals” had arrived in the United States. Kiselev explained
to his audience how “censorship and a total purge” had begun under the “flag
of democracy.”58 Even more hyperbolic, Kiselev equated the state of affairs
under the incoming Biden Administration to Stalin’s Great Terror: “the culture
of liquidation,” Kiselev argued, could lead to “firing squads and mass repres-
sion” and transform the United States into a “totalitarian state.”59 In making
such extreme claims, Kiselev’s monologue redirected Western commentary
on Russia’s Stalinist past – and in some quarters, on Russia’s rehabilitation
of Stalin in the present – at the United States, suggesting that Western world
ought to look at the alleged sins of its own leaders rather than to corral Russia
into supposedly false Western narratives.
By musing on Stalinism, Kiselev simultaneously implied to viewers that
Russia had maturely come to terms with its own past, whereas the United States
in its hubris had begun to stumble along paths already familiar to Russian his-
tory. In May, Kiselev made this implication explicit. During his 16 May show,
Kiselev linked purported US immaturity toward history with Western poli-
cies toward Ukraine. “Totalitarian liberalism,” Kiselev warned, has joined with
“European tolerance toward Ukraine’s ‘Nazification,’” increasing the probabil-
ity of Stalinism or fascism reappearing in the West.60 Kiselev acknowledged
what Putin previously noted in 2009: that Stalin had committed crimes but
that Russia had dealt with them in the present.61 However, at the same time,
the repeat references to Western totalitarianism implied that the perceived
threat posed by the West and its liberal ideology had become as dire the threat
posed by Hitler during the war and by Stalin at the height of the purges.
Guests on Solov’ev’s program deployed similar rhetoric to denigrate
the West. Discussing the 6 January riot, Solov’ev invited Sergey Kurginyan,
a Russian neo-Stalinist thinker and commentator, to analyze the new Biden
Administration. Kurginyan pounced at the opportunity; he insisted that Presi­
dent Biden’s policies would involve the “demonization of Russia” and that
President Biden had gathered a motley crew of “liberal-fascist scum” in the
White House.62 Whereas Kiselev employed somewhat dispassionate, albeit

58 “Russian TV Highlights: US ‘Dictatorship’, Covid-19, Navalny’s Return,” BBC Monitoring,

January 18, 2021.
59 Ibid.
60 “Programme Summary of Rossiya 1 ‘Vesti Nedeli’ News 1700 Gmt 16 May 21,” BBC Moni­
toring, May 16, 2021.
61 Laruelle, Is Russia Fascist?, p. 76.
62 “Russian TV Show Says Protests Were ‘attempted Coup’ Orchestrated from Abroad,” BBC
Monitoring, January 26, 2021.

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Livid about Liberalism 349

sardonic, rhetoric to entertain his audience, Solov’ev fully encouraged unre-

stricted hyperbole. In the span of three years, Solov’ev’s guests moved from
2018 characterizations of liberalism as “militant”63 to imbuing Western liberal-
ism with the spirit of totalitarianism. In July, Mariya Zakharova, the Russian
Foreign Ministry’s chief spokesperson, joined in the rhetorical embellishment
when she made one of her regular appearances on Solov’ev’s program. Goaded
by Solov’ev, who joked about hiring “gender-bending staff” at the Foreign
Ministry, Zakharova labelled Western ideas about “80 genders” as “desecration”
and warned that to heed such calls would bring Russia closer to “a dictatorship
of liberalism.”64
Putin himself avoided discussing liberalism for most of 2021. However, in
October, Putin again addressed ideology in regards to the state of affairs in
the West, or more specifically, regarding “cancel culture.” Speaking at the 2021
Valdai Forum, Putin claimed “the fight for equality and against discrimina-
tion has turned into aggressive dogmatism bordering on absurdity.”65 Follo­
wing Putin’s remarks, Dmitrii Muratov, editor-in-chief of Russia’s liberal daily
Novaya Gazeta, turned the tables on Putin and pressed the Russian presi-
dent on Russian press freedom. In response, Putin deflected by attacking the
United States and liberals in Russia: “Do we have to copy everything from the
Americans? No … yet many liberals in Russia think we should copy almost
everything.”66 In implying an ideological divide, Putin suggested that too tight
an embrace of the United States and the West would lead to chaos and insta-
bility, hallmarks of the “wild nineties.” Moreover, in answering Muratov’s ques-
tion, Putin implied that Russian liberals obsequiously served the United States
in wanting to supposedly transform Russia into a Western satrapy.
Kiselev hailed Putin’s Valdai address and claimed that Putin had developed
a sensible ideology to guide Russia. Kiselev explained to viewers that Putin
had constructed “a national idea” for Russia, deriving the concept from the
philosopher Nikolay Berdyaev. Alluding to Putin’s comments on Bolshevik-like
behavior in the United States, Kiselev also deployed a subtle metaphor when
he reminded viewers that the Bolshevik Revolution forced Berdyaev, a cham-
pion of “healthy conservatism,” to leave Russia.67 In this metaphor, the United

63 “Russian State TV Show: Western ‘Russophobia’ and ‘Censorship,’” BBC Monitoring,

May 7, 2018.
64 “Russian TV Show Airs Call for Killing LGBT People,” BBC Monitoring, July 20, 2021.
65 Putin, “Zasedanie Mezhdunarodnogo diskussionnogo kluba ‘Valdai,’” President of Russia,
October 21, 2021. http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66975 (accessed 8 April 2022).
66 Ibid.
67 “Russian Weekly TV Highlights: Covid-19, Valdai, Ukraine,” BBC Monitoring, October 25,
2021.

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350 Sykes

States played the Bolsheviks, whereas Berdyaev symbolized Russia and a purer,
Russian truth. While not explicitly articulated by Kiselev, a Russian viewer
could easily deduce that the purported revolutionary behavior in the United
States could directly harm Russia, just as revolution had harmed Russia in the
past – both in 1917 and after 1991 during the “wild nineties.”
Solov’ev anticipated Kiselev’s monologue when he portrayed Putin as the
“new leader of the conservative world” back in 2019 after Putin’s comments on
liberalism’s obsolescence.68 In addition, Solov’ev had hammered “cancel cul-
ture” as early as March 2021, a condition he diagnosed as the result of “a break-
down of religious foundations.”69 After Putin endorsed these very themes in his
October 2021 Valdai address, Solov’ev’s panel erupted in a cacophony of approv-
als. These approvals involved denouncing the alleged symptoms of Western
liberalism: “eco-fascism,” ubiquitous “bored,” “self-indulgent” children, and the
ascendancy of aggressive ideologues possessed by “ultra-feminism and radi-
cal environmentalism.”70 After several guest rants, Solov’ev weighed in himself
and noted that “militant liberalism” had replaced “the true understanding of
liberalism,” or more specifically, “the talk [in the West] was of indulging vice,
and not about perfecting the man.”71
Solov’ev’s comment perfectly encapsulated the evolving official Russian view
of Western liberalism: in its Platonic form, it expressed tolerance and respect,
even as it sought to defy nature and perfect man; by 2021, it had devolved into
a confrontational, belligerent force dangerous to nonconformists both within
and without the West. According to Solov’ev and his guests, whether Russia
desired it or not, a new ideological conflict had dawned and the stakes –
judging by the bellicose language – suggested nothing less than choice between
civilizational survival and extinction.

8 Moderate No More: Putin, Liberalism, and the War in Ukraine

By definition, war is never a moderate affair, and Putin has since embraced
more hyperbole in publicly describing liberalism and the West. On 7 July 2022,
Putin met with the leaders of all the State Duma political parties. The war
in Ukraine had yielded minimal gains at an exorbitant cost. Addressing his

68 “Russian Talk Show Review: Ukraine and PACE, G20,” BBC Monitoring, July 2, 2019.
69 “Russian TV Show Bemoans Western-Imposed Cancel Culture,” BBC Monitoring, March 9,
2021.
70 “Russian TV Show Praises Putin’s Valdai Speech,” BBC Monitoring, October 26, 2021.
71 Ibid.

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Livid about Liberalism 351

sympathetic audience, Putin railed against “the so-called collective West” and
the perceived threat posed by NATO. Toward the end of his remarks, Putin
offered some political theory remarks about the West. He argued that whereas
once “the principles of democracy, free speech, and respect of other opinions”
defined the West, now their model “is degenerating” into totalitarianism.” Of
greater concern, Putin claimed the West would impose its “totalitarian liberal-
ism” on the whole world,72 a sweeping statement more resemblant of Russian
television rants than Putin’s past speeches. In the media environment, those
rants still appeared in an ever more melodramatic form. For example, on
25 December 2022, Solov’ev claimed that “true liberalism” had taken root in
Ukraine, a display replete with the “persecution of Orthodoxy,73 destruction
of political opposition, [and] of freedom of speech, [and] a cult of neo-Pagan
creeds … [all] under the LGBT flag.”74
At the same time, Putin’s remarks at the 2022 Valdai Forum on 27 October
2022 contained both elements of Putin’s old approach toward liberalism
alongside the more hyperbolic language from his July remarks. Putin no longer
referred to “the liberal idea” as “obsolete”; instead, he charged “liberal ideol-
ogy itself has changed beyond recognition [izmenilas’ do neuznavaemosti].”75
Immediately thereafter, Putin confirmed Clunan’s hypothesis when he com-
pared “classical liberalism” to the liberalism he perceived in the present.
Notably, and unlike his remarks to Rutte in 2013, Putin claimed that this darker
liberalism reached back into the twentieth century, when “liberals started to
declare that the open society has enemies … and that the of the freedom of
such enemies can and must be limited and then cancelled.”76 Some would
deem Putin’s reference to Karl Popper and to “cancel culture” to be “dog whis-
tles” aimed at populist and right-leaning audiences in the West. However, these
remarks fit within the longer history of Putin’s own thinking on the matter of
liberalism, and that thinking on liberalism was never static.

72 Putin, “Vstrecha s rukovodstvom Gosdumy I glavami fraktsii,” President of Russia, July 7,

2022, http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/68836 (accessed 23 December 2022).
73 A month earlier, on 22 November, Ukraine’s counterintelligence arm, the Security Service
of Ukraine (SBU) raided Kyiv’s formerly Russian Orthodox monastery Pechersk Lavra over
suspicions that Russian security services were using the monastery to conduct subversive
activities.
74 “State TV show says Russia fights ‘war against Nato,’” BBC Monitoring, December 27, 2022.
75 Putin, “Zasedanie Mezhdunarodnogo diskussionnogo kluba ‘Valdai,’” President of
Russia, October 27, 2022, http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/69695 (accessed
23 December 2022).
76 Ibid.

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352 Sykes

Unfortunately for the Russian leader, labelling one’s erstwhile partners

an “empire of lies”77 or an example of totalitarianism makes for good media
sensationalism but complicates the prospect of negotiations, something Putin
has claimed Russia desires. In transforming from an apparent moderate into a
bulwark against “totalitarian liberalism,” Putin’s rhetoric may have placed him
beyond the pale, and although only Ukraine has publicly averred it will not
negotiate whilst Putin remains in power, many Western leaders may have qui-
etly drawn similar conclusions.

77 Putin, “Obrashchenie Prezidenta Rossiiskoi Federatsii,” President of Russia, February 24,

2022, http:// kremlin.ru/events/president/news/67843 (accessed 7 April 2022).

Russian Politics 8 (2023) 331-352