One of the features of the new cold war between the west and Russia is the notion, propagated by some western journalists, scholars, and politicians, that the regime of Vladimir Putin represents a Russian version of fascism both in its political character and in its foreign policy. Prof. Marlene Laruelle, a prominent American expert on Russia, Director of the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at George Washington University, offers a critical examination of this thesis.

After a review of existing knowledge on the nature and history of fascism, the author proceeds to a detailed study of those aspects of post-communist Russia that are cited in support of the claim that Russia is a fascist state. The results of her study can be summarized in two main points. First, Russia is definitely not fascist: “The Russian regime has authoritarian features, but authoritarianism is not a synonym of fascism” (27). Second, we are witnessing a “terminological inflation of fascism” (10): “The tendency to accuse everyone who challenges liberalism of being a new fascist has dramatically obscured our understanding of today's Russia as well as the current transformations of the world order and Western domestic scenes Controlling the labeling of political opponents and assassinating a country's brand through the accusation of fascism is inscribed into a broader trend: the rise of character assassination in world politics. It vilifies the enemy by identifying it with the most murderous ideology, and it identifies the attacker with those who fought against Nazism or were its victims, thus using a very powerful historical reference to establish the attacker's moral superiority” (20).

According to Laruelle, the term “illiberal” is more applicable to Russia's political regime, as well as to many other similar regimes existing in the contemporary world. Laruelle defines illiberalism “as a new, postliberal political paradigm that reasserts the rights of a supposed silent majority by promoting sovereignty in the spheres of politics (rejection of supranational and multilateral institutions, reassertion of the nation-state), the economy (protectionism), and culture (rejection of multiculturalism and minority rights, essentialist definition of who is part of the nation and what the nation's genuine cultural features should be)” (22).

Political groups and figures that can be regarded as fascist do exist in Russia, as everywhere, but their potential of influencing the Russian political mainstream is negligible: “The fascist tree constitutes a very small percentage of Russia's ideological forest, and an excessive focus on peripheral characteristics obscures other ideologies that are available for consumption and that celebrate Russia's uniqueness in more traditional ways by emphasizing national history and culture, Orthodoxy, or some form of Soviet nostalgia” (152).

Laruelle takes issue with the notion that Russia is behind the rise of illiberal political forces in the west, allegedly driven by a determination to destroy democracy. The rise of new forms of right-wing populism in western societies is rooted in internal problems of those societies, including discontent over globalization and loss of state sovereignty. Russia is not the originator of western illiberalism, but it does from time to time make common cause with it when it may suit Russian national interests, while it pragmatically interacts with other foreign political forces and regimes, from left to right.

Chapter 4 is devoted to “international memory wars” between Russia and the west. Until the 2000s, the questions of responsibility for World War II did not generate major ideological frictions between the two sides: after all, the communist Soviet Union and western democracies had been wartime allies against fascism. Later, under the influence of eastern Europe's post-communist regimes, official European discourse moved to a position that communism was just as evil as fascism and that the Soviet Union shared with Nazi Germany responsibility for World War II. This shift in western opinion generates strong protests in Russia, where the memory of the enormous losses suffered by the Soviet Union as a result of the Nazi invasion—and the sense of national pride in playing the main role in defeating fascism—are important and strongly felt elements of the national identity. Laruelle takes note of this new ideological rift and views it in instrumentalist terms, pointing to both sides’ political goals behind it, while refraining from judgment on the substance of the politicized dispute over twentieth-century history.