Alexander J. Motyl
Department of Political Science, Rutgers University, United States
a b s t r a c t
There is a broad consensus among students of contemporary Russia that the political
system constructed by Vladimir Putin is authoritarian and that he plays a dominant role in
it. By building and expanding on these two features and by engaging in a deconstruction
and reconstruction of the concept of fascism, this article suggests that the Putin system
may plausibly be termed fascist. Not being a type of group, disposition, politics, or ideology,
fascism may be salvaged from the conceptual confusion that surrounds it by being
conceived of as a type of authoritarian political system. Fascism may be defined as a
popular fully authoritarian political system with a personalistic dictator and a cult of the
leader - definition that makes sense conceptually as well as empirically, with respect to
Putin's Russia and related fascist systems.
© 2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of The Regents of the University of California.