Russian conservatism in the Putin presidency: The dispersion of a hegemonic discourse

Abstract

The article traces the emergence and development of conservative discourse in Russian politics from its initial articulation in the late 1990s to its present hegemony in Russian political space. Approaching conservatism in Foucauldian terms as a discursive ‘system of dispersion’, Russian conservative discourse is analysed not as a coherent ideological doctrine but as a space of discursive self-definition of its practitioners. From this perspective, a dualism is articulated between ‘liberal’ and ‘left’ conservative strands in contemporary Russian discourse. While liberal conservatism accords with the main tendencies of the Putin presidency in seeking to reinscribe the gains of the anticommunist revolution of the early 1990s as a secure foundation of the new political order, ‘left conservatism’ is characterised by an irreconcilable opposition to the order that descends from that revolution and a consequent attempt to ‘repoliticise’ the foundations of the existing regime. The article concludes with an interpretation of the problematic relation that both strands of the conservative discourse establish with the ‘moment of the political’ that characterised Russian politics in the 1990s.