Center for Security Studies

Conservatism as the Kremlin’s New Toolkit

Conservatism as the Kremlin’s New Toolkit

An Ideology at the Lowest Cost

Author(s): Marlene Laruelle
Editor(s): Stephen Aris, Matthias Neumann, Robert Orttung, Jeronim Perovic, Heiko Pleines, Hans-Henning Schröder, Aglaya Snetkov
Series: Russian Analytical Digest (RAD)
Issue: 138
Pages: 2-4
Publisher(s): Center for Security Studies (CSS), ETH Zurich; Research Centre for East European Studies, University of Bremen; Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies, George Washington University
Publication Year: 2013

Among the major themes that cut across Russia’s public debates, the heightened focus on values and identity is a bold demonstration of the entrance of conservative rhetoric into the Kremlin’s toolkit. This conservative turn has no ambition to reshape Russian society. It is an ideology of the lowest cost, targeting the conservative majority and hoping to create a new space of depoliticized consensus, which has the added advantage of offering the country a new string to its bow in terms of international branding.

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