Alexei Yurchak

Reflections Upon “Civilizationisms”

Putin’s Doctrine of Russia as a “Unique State-Civilization,” adopted in 2023-2024

In the spring of 2023, a year after President Putin ordered the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, he adopted a new “Doctrine of Russian Foreign Policy,” which defined Russia as a “unique state-civilization.” In previous years, the term “civilization” was used when “cooperation” between “the world's largest civilizations”, including Russia and the “West”, was welcomed. But in the new doctrine of 2023, this term is used in a different way. It asserts that the world is divided into a few major “civilizations” that are not only different from each other and self-sufficient, but also completely incommensurable with each other. Each major civilization develops according to its own unique internal laws, which are radically different from the laws of other civilizations. Therefore, cooperation between civilizations has limited benefits, and the main way to avoid conflict between them is to limit interaction and respect each other's complete uniqueness. Sharing any “universal values" is futile.

The political-theoretical journal Russia in Global Politics, that is close to the Kremlin political elite, wrote in the spring of 2023: “If earlier the priority [for Russia] was to become a member of the "civilized world" [the West], ... now Russia has realized and accepted its status as a state of civilization and seeks to emphasize its own unique individuality. ...  For a very long time, Russian civilization, “like a genie, was locked in a bottle, corked with a stopper of Western centrism." But now the plug has been pulled out, and Russian civilization has broken free. ... Russia's three-century European journey has finally come to an end.” At the annual Valdai Forum in 2023, where the Russian president meets with journalists and political analysists, Putin announced: “While there are many civilizations in the world,” what makes "civilizational states" unique, is their " and self-sufficiency. ... Any association [between civilizations] is alien to the modern world.” While Putin’s claim is quite radical, in recent years several states have made similar civilizational claims (e.g. the Confucian–Leninism of China, Hindutva in India, Neo-Ottomanism in Turkey, etc.). The civilizational model allows autocrats to use a semblance of “anti-colonial” rhetoric to present various “universal values” (human rights, feminism, the environmental movement, LGBTQ rights, ethnic minority rights, etc.) as the new colonialism of “Western civilization” and to justify their own need for a strong authoritarian state. 

At that 2023 Valdai Forum Putin also claimed that although the military invasion of Ukraine involved occupying and annexing territories, “this is not a territorial conflict, … but something much bigger.” He later explained what this “much bigger” problem was: As a civilizational state, and unlike a nation-state, Russia has two important characteristics - it has “no borders” and it cannot be “divided into parts. It exists only in its entirety, as a single spiritual and cultural whole.” According to this doctrine, civilizational states are considered as biological organisms that evolve over a very long time - in a process that Putin calls a “long and complex synthesis.” In this process each civilization acquires unique, indivisible and stable civilizational "bodies." At the heart of every civilizational body is a strong state that “naturally grows out of the civilizational roots of countries and peoples” and which “cannot be imposed from the outside.”

Each person in this civilization is “naturally rooted” in that unique civilizational whole and is the bearer of its “civilizational code.” This view is clearly quasi-biological -- as Putin puts it: “you cannot betray your civilization” just as you cannot betray your nature. If you do, “this is unnatural and disgusting.” Pushing the biological metaphor further, Putin elaborated at the same Valdai Forum: “it is just as important to protect the … civilizational diversity” of our planet, “as it is to protectits biological and ecological diversity.” The goals of the Russian invasion has been re-articulated in accordance with this civilizational doctrine: they amount to preventing the “unnatural fragmentation” of the Russian civilization and “the artificial division into Ukrainians and Russians” – something, that for Putin is “unnatural and disgusting” because it goes against one’s “civilizational nature.” 

It is easy to see that Putin’s rhetoric draws on old quasi-biological theories, starting with the 18th century writings of Johann Gottfried Herder on “national character” and “national spirit.” However, this rhetoric also goes further: it replaces “character” and “spirit” with “civilizational roots,” “civilizations codes,” and “civilizational DNA,” which makes one’s “civilizational character” even less amenable to historical change and more dependent on the immutable DNA of a strong civilizational state. With the introduction of this doctrine, in 2023-2024, the Russian educational system has undergone a major transformation. All college students, regardless of their major, are now required to take a semester-long course entitled, “The civilizational code of Russian History.” In addition to claiming that Russia is its own unique civilization and that at the center of this civilization is a strong state, this course also articulates “three fundamental values” of the Russian civilization – duty, sovereignty, and blessing, while “Western” values, such as “universal human rights” and “tolerance” are represented as an attempt to promote “destructive indifference” to one’s own civilizational nature.

Putin’s aggressive “civilizationism" is a neo-imperialist project, but it is also something even more ominous. By rejecting the universality of human values and rights, this project also rejects the common ground of humanity. Claiming radical, “quasi-biological” uniqueness is another way to claim the “priority” and “superiority” of one's own unique nature. While this aspect of Putin's civilizational project allows him to justify any state violence inside the country and any aggression outside it, it also links his project with the classic forms of fascism.