Is Russia Fascist?

Is Russia Fascist? is a work that offers a worthy contribution to the ongoing conversation and debate about how to define contemporary Russia and project where it is heading. Regardless of what a reader might think about “illiberalism” as an answer, Laruelle offers many good analytical insights. Her command of the facts of recent Russian political history is solid and is to be taken seriously.

If you want to know what’s been happening in the Russian far right, this is undoubtedly the book for you. Is Russia Fascist? provides excellent insights into the ideological state of play in modern Russia. It also does a thorough job of demolishing the accusations that Russia is a totalitarian state.

In this book Marlene Laruelle not only seeks to answer the question “Is Russia fascist?” but to provide a comprehensive analytical framework for how to study the concept of fascism in the first place. In doing so, she engages with scholarship in multiple fields across the social sciences and in public discourse, which makes this book of interest not only to political scientists but to Russia watchers more generally.

Is Russia Fascist? provides a clear, balanced assessment of contemporary Russian politics, serving not only as a sensible dissection of the status of fascism in Russia, but also as a guide to that country’s problematic political structures.

Marlene Laruelle is Research Professor of International Affairs and Director of the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at The George Washington University. She works on Russia’s ideological landscape at home and its export abroad.