By Amari Leiva-Urzua
On April 12th, UK ex-defence minister, Tobias Ellwood said that Vladimir Putin is “now the most powerful leader in Europe,” heading towards his final goal to emulate “the old Russian empire”.
Nevertheless, Putin has been gathering his ideological cards, one by one, since before his invasion of Ukraine in 2022. It is only now, as two years of conflict settle into a stalemate, that Putin has played his cards, revealing the full ideological flush of what validates his power and justifies his policies; autocracy, nationalism, and the Russian Orthodox church.
According to 19th Century Russian Minister of Education Count Sergey Uravov these were the three pillars of Tsarism.
For Putin, it is a matter of strategy, a process of historical manipulation that has allowed him to climb to power and use Russian ethnicity and culture to construct a foolproof justification for his invasion.
So here is a three-step guide for understanding Putin’s ideological empire in 2024.
1: All Hail Tsar Putin
Autocracy is at the heart of any empire. It is what ensures political control over social unity and stability.
In his book First Person (2000), Putin said that “Russia was created as a super-centralised state”.
“That’s practically laid down in its genetic code, its traditions, and the mentality of its people,” he said.
These sentences are an eerie echo of Joseph Stalin’s own musings in April 1926 where he said: “The Russian people are Tsarist … accustomed to one person being at the head.”
Putin then followed up his claim on January 15th, 2020, passing seven amendments to the constitution, one of which allowed him to remain in power for two additional terms until 2036. Through the amendments, the Federation Council (Russia’s upper legislative house) was given the authority to dismiss constitutional law in the event of misconduct, on the proposal of the president.
On March 18th Putin conveniently managed to ratify his fifth term with a majority vote of 87.3 per cent, and his opposition either, dead, incarcerated or missing. This election has made him Russia’s longest-serving leader in over 200 years, surpassing Joseph Stalin.
After 24 years, Putin has crowned himself the Tsar of a political system that has the power to control all aspects of society. After accomplishing the first part of his “One ruler, one nation” ideal, he still needed the second.
2: ‘One people, a single whole’
A Tsar’s power was legitimised by its ever-expanding, multi-ethnic empire, making nationalism a central source of authority. With a failure to recognise Ukraine’s independence, Putin has guised his invasion with nationalism to gather public solidarity against Ukraine.
In his 2021 essay, Putin said that Russians and Ukrainians are “one people, a single whole”.
In 2024, after Tucker Carlson’s interview with the Russian leader, it was made clear that those five words were to be the central justification and validation for his invasion of Ukraine.
Putin’s claim harkens back to the belief in Ancient Rus, a region said to be the cultural birthplace of Russian and Slavic language and tradition. Within this region Kiev (modern-day Kyiv) became the birthplace of the Russian Orthodox church.
Alongside his endeavour to ignite a public sentiment of ethnic ownership he also brings into play the eternal tensions between Russia and the West, seeking to revitalise an ancestral mistrust and fear.
In his 2023 Victory Day speech, Putin claimed that Russia was fighting against “Nazism” in Ukraine and that “Ukrainians [were] being held hostage by the West”.
The imagery alone evokes the memory of Ukraine as the West’s trojan horse, first used by the Poles and Swedes in the 17th century, Austrians and Germans in WWI and the Nazis in WWII, to attack Russia.
Putin also economically retaliated against the West after the international decision to impose sanctions on Russia played right into Putin’s hands. Not only did it realise his claims against the West but allowed him to undermine its authority and demonstrate Russian economic independency.
As Tobias Ellwood recently said: “[Putin has] pivoted his entire economy away from Europe to China and Iran.”
Employing nationalism as a tool to expand his empire both geographically and economically Putin only needs to secure public validity, and what better way than by using religion.
3: The Holy War
In 2023, the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Centre, showed that 57 per cent of Russian’s consider themselves Orthodox. In Putin’s eyes, it is a prime channel for social control.
After the USSR’s anti-religious stance, the Russian Orthodox church was stripped of its authority.
Out of this came Putin’s establishment of an implicit mutual relationship with the church. The church would legitimise his authority in exchange for a religious revival with 25,000 newly built or restored churches since Putin’s presidency in 2012.
In 2022, the head of the Russian Orthodox church, Patriarch Kirill, directly aligned Putin with the Tsars announcing that he was put into power by God.
On March 27th 2024, the Russian Orthodox released a document stating that the Russian-Ukrainian war was a “Holy War” to protect “the world from the onslaught of globalism and the victory of the West, which has fallen to satanism”.
“The reunification of the Russian people should become one of the priorities of Russian foreign policies,” it continues, calling Russia a “sovereignty” that must be preserved, validating Putin’s autocracy.
However, Putin is still trying to swim against the current of Russian public opinion with rising social instability following opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s death and the Moscow terrorist attacks, as well as the decline in Russian Orthodox adherents which is already six per cent from 2019.
Whilst Putin has clambered up the hierarchy to Tsardom, how long will he be able to maintain it without full public support? It can only be a matter of time.
Featured image: Vladimir Putin is manipulating Tsarist history to justify and validate his political power. Photo: World Economic Forum/CC/Flickr. Artwork: Amari Leiva-Urzua
