Dr. Miklos K. Radvanyi
The core doctrine of the tyrant du jour in Moscow called Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is not derived from a systematic ideology. It is a composite mixture assembled from Russian imperial history, Soviet anti-culture mechanisms, Russian Orthodox chauvinism, post-Soviet hatred against brutal uniformization, OKHRANA-NKVD-KGB-FBS security-service culture, and his personal determination to restore Russia’s status as one of the leading great powers. Its central concept is straightforward: Russia cannot be secure, legitimate, or genuinely sovereign, unless it absolutely dominates its extended neighborhood, eliminates Western influence in Eurasia, and is recognized at least as equal, if not superior, to the world’s presently governing great power, the United States of America.
The deepest root is much older than Communism. From the rise of Muscovy from a small principality in 1147 into the center of a united Russian empire between the 12th and 18th centuries, Russian tyrants uniformly understood security through territorial expansion. Because Russia possessed very few natural defensive frontiers, every acquired buffer produced a demand for another buffer beyond the last one. Consequently, defensive anxiety and imperial expansion became indistinguishable. This labyrinth of fear, in turn, generated three enduring assumptions: Russia must possess strategic depth, neighboring states cannot be entirely sovereign if their alignment affects Russia’s security, and Russia is not an ordinary nation-state, but the center of a larger historical as well as civilizational domain. Beginning with Tsar Ivan III, the Russian Empire absorbed Ukrainians, Belorussians, Balts, Poles, Finns, Caucasian peoples, and Central Asians. Their separate identities were treated as provincial, artificial, or politically threatening. President Putin inherited precisely this mendacious hierarchical understanding. Accordingly, Russia possesses full sovereignty, while neighboring countries possess sovereignty only conditionally. Thus, presently, the sovereign state of Ukraine is not merely another foreign country in Putin’s thinking. It is the decisive test of whether the Russian imperial center still possesses the authority to define the political identity of its former periphery.
After Constantinople fell in 1453, Russian ecclesiastical and political thought developed the notion that Moscow had inherited the mission of Orthodox Byzantium. Moscow became the “Third Rome” – the real guardian of true Christianity and the center of a sacred civilization. President Putin is not really a religious person. Nevertheless, he has appropriated this tradition because it supplies Russia with a transcendent global mission. Thus, the Kremlin presents today’s Russia as the defender of Orthodox Christianity, the guardian of traditional family and social values, the fiercest opponent of Western moral decadence, and even a superior civilization entitled to its own political order and sphere of unassailable authority. Consequently, the Russian Orthodox Church, particularly under the servile leadership of Patriarch Kirrill, has helped transform geopolitical confrontation into an ostensibly spiritual war. The war against Ukraine can thus be represented not simply as a territorial conflict, but as a defense of “Holy Rus” against an apostate, secular, and fake Westernized civilization. The sacralization of state aggression is extremely useful: opposition to Kremlin policy becomes not merely political dissent, but a treacherous betrayal of Russia’s historical as well as spiritual destiny.
President Putin does not seek to restore communist ideology or the Soviet economic system. He knows their unambigious failures. Yet, he has retained all of the Soviet conception of tyrannical power. From the Soviet ideological tradition he inherited the suspicion of Western intentions, the belief that international politics is unalterably adversarial, the use of espionage, subversion, disinformation, and political warfare, preference for controlled “friendly” governments on Russia’s borders, contempt for the spontaneous political agency of smaller nations, and the assumption that domestic opposition is often directed from abroad. Therefore, the operative inheritance is not Marxism-Leninism, but Soviet imperial geopolitics and security-service methodology.
In this context, President Putin’s famous description of the Soviet Union’s collapse as a major geopolitical catastrophe is frequently misunderstood. In actuality, he was not lamenting the disappearance of collective agriculture or Communist Party doctrine. He was lamenting the destruction of the state structure, through which the Kremlin controlled a vast territory, a global military system, and numerous totally subordinated nations. Essentially, he wants the geopolitical inheritance of the USSR without its communist ideology.
Exaggeration aside, President Putin’s professional formation in the KGB is at least as important as any philosopher he might have read. The security-service worldview divides political life into controllers and controlled, loyalists and traitors, operations and counteroperations. Within this mentality appearances conceal intentions, civil society is often cover for foreign influence, democratic revolutions are Western intelligence operations, compromise reveals weakness, law is an instrument of power rather than a restraint upon it, (dis)information is a weapon, and every adversary – without exemption – can be corrupted, frightened, divided, or deceived. This helps explain President Putin’s interpretation of the “Color Revolution” in Georgia, Ukraine and elsewhere. He cannot mentally accept that populations might independently reject corrupt pro-Russian governments. He interprets such movements as engineered operations because that is how his own state approaches political influence. Therefore, President Putin’s foreign policy is simultaneously imperial as well as operational: it seeks territorial or strategic control through military pressure, intelligence penetration, corruption, propaganda, energy dependence, and cultivation of political extremists.
In this context, his persona is also of utmost importance. Essentially, Putin can be described as the disciplined intelligence officer who transformed himself into a semi-modern tyrannical Tsar and captive to the historical mythology that he created for himself. Most importantly, he carefully concealed his private personality. He reveals little spontaneously, restricts access to his family, and controls photographs, interviews, and public appearances. What the world sees is, therefore, partly genuine temperament and partly political theatre. His official image combines several roles: the calm and calculating intelligence officer; the physically vigorous masculine leader; the paternal protector of ordinary Russians; the defender of the Orthodox faith and traditional morality; the successor to both the Russian tsars and the Soviet victors of 1945; and the lonely statesman resisting a decadent and conspiratorial West.
The staged photographs – horseback riding, martial arts, hunting, diving, piloting aircraft – were intended to contrast Putin’s vigor with Boris Yeltsin’s weakness and disorder. Simultaneously, they also convey his central political message: Russia is safe because a strong man is in total control. This image is not entirely artificial. Putin appears genuinely disciplined, controlled, secretive, status-conscience, and intensely competitive. Yet, the omniscience master strategist is largely a political construction. In this context, three experiences seem especially important. The first is Leningrad/St. Petersburg. Putin was born in Leningrad in 1952 into a family scared by war, deprivation, and the siege. His youthful surroundings appear to have taught him that weakness invites aggression and that reputation can be a form of protection. He has frequently cited lessons from the courtyard – if a fight is unavoidable, strike first – captures his political instinct. Whether every autobiographer details this exact matters less than the fact that Putin chose this lesson to explain himself. The second is his sixteen years in the KGB. This reinforced several tendencies: suspicion of appearances and stated motives; division of society into loyal people, useful people, and enemies; preference for secrecy, infiltration, deception, and leverage; belief that individuals are controlled through fear, money, vanity, or compromising information; and conviction that public institutions conceal the real struggle among power networks. In this respect, Putin was not a legendary field operative; much of his service was bureaucratic, and his Dresden posting was provincial. Yet, the KGB supplied his governing mentality. Politics, in this conception, is not an open contest among legitimate interests. It is an intelligence operation, in which sovereignty depends upon controlling information, institutions, and elites. The third is the collapse of the Soviet Union. He regards the 1990s not as an imperfect democratic opening but as a period of state disintegration, humiliation, oligarchic plunder, and Western exploitation. In reality, he mourned the disappearance of imperial power, strategic depth, and Moscow’s authority over neighboring peoples.
Accordingly, his central psychological-political traits are controlled rather than charismatic. He is not charismatic in the exuberant manner of a revolutionary demagogue. His strength lies in emotional restraint. He speaks deliberately, projects mastery of detail, and ordinarily avoids visible panic. His controlled demeanor reassures supporters and intimidates subordinates. Anger, when displayed, is, therefore, especially purposeful. Humiliation, profanity, historical lectures, and threats become instruments of dominance.
Putin evaluates individuals and states according to power, cohesion, and willingness to retaliate. Legal principles matter less to him when unsupported by force. He appears to interpret compromise offered from weakness as an invitation to demand more. Conversely, determined resistance can make him more pragmatic, although he may conceal the adjustment and declare victory. His obsession with respect is inseparable from resentment. He does not merely demand recognition for Russia. He appears to demand recognition of Russia’s equality with, or special superiority over, the Western powers. Criticism becomes humiliation, and resistance becomes evidence of conspiracy.
Therefore, Putin’s worldview is conspiratorial, although that does not mean every suspicion is imaginary. States do compete, intelligence agencies do interfere, and Western policies sometimes have been inconsistent. The problem is his tendency to interpret autonomous developments as centrally directed operations. Popular uprisings become Western-engineered “color revolutions.” Independent neighboring states become instruments of American encirclement. Domestic opposition becomes a foreign-controlled “fifth column.” This worldview protects him from confronting an intolerable possibility that Ukrainians, Georgians, or Russians themselves might freely reject Moscow’s authority. Tactically, he can often be agile. He can delay, deceive, negotiate, escalate, retreat temporarily, use proxies, and exploit an opponent’s division.Strategically, however, he has become increasingly inflexible. His basic convictions appear fixed. Those are: Russia is entitled to a privileged sphere around its borders – meaning the “near abroad.” Most importantly, Ukraine cannot be fully separated from the historical Russian nation. Moreover, Russia’s greatness requires others to recognize its capacity to inflict costs. Finally, Western unity is artificial, time favors authoritarian endurance over democratic impatience, and concessions made under pressure can be reversed later. This combination explains why he can appear extraordinarily clever in the short-term, yet commit catastrophic long-term errors.
Accordingly, his propaganda often advances several incompatible explanations simultaneously. The purpose is not always to make everyone accept one account. It may instead be to create confusion, exhaust scrutiny, test loyalty, and suggest that objective truth itself merely another political construction. This is characteristic of intelligence culture. Deny what can be denied. Admit only what has become useful to admit. Turn the accusation back against the accuser. Yet, this kind of manipulation creates a danger for the manipulator. A leader who destroys independent information channels eventually receives reports designed to confirm his assumptions. Research on the Ukraine invasion identifies an “autocrat’s intelligence paradox.” Putin’s settled views about Ukrainian identity and Western decadence discouraged contradictory analysis, and contributed to strategic miscalculations.
Putin’s attitude toward violence is that he tends to regard coercion as a legitimate and often efficient instrument of government. In this regard, his pattern is mostly gradual. First, identify and isolate the adversary. Second, impose legal, economic, and informational pressure. Third, offer a subordinate accommodation. Fourth, escalate if resistance continues. Fifth, deny or obscure responsibility. Sixth, normalize the result after international attention moves elsewhere. Chechnya, Moldova, Georgia, Crimea, Donbas, Syria differ greatly, but all demonstrate his willingness to use force when he believes the opposition is weak, divided, or deterrable. In essence, he is a calculated risk-taker rather than a reckless madman.
Putin also increasingly speaks not merely as a president defending interests, but as a historical redeemer correcting the alleged errors of Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko, Gorbachev, Yeltsin, the Soviet breakup, NATO enlargement, and Ukrainian independence. His historical reasoning is highly selective. He treats centuries of imperial control as evidence of rightful ownership, while minimizing conquest, coercion, and the independent development of neighboring nations. He moves freely among tsarist, Soviet, Orthodox, and anti-nationalist traditions, although these traditions frequently contradict one another. This is not even a remotely coherent philosophy. It is an extremely biased imperial synthesis whose constant element is the supremacy of the tyrannical Russian state. Clearly, the danger is profound. Ordinary state interests can be negotiated, a sacred historical mission is much harder to compromise.
Another important element must also be pointed out, namely the fact that during his presidency Putin has changed considerably. Between 2000 and 2004, he was the restorer. Between 2004 and 2012, he was the resentful revisionist. Between 2012 and 2022, he was the ideological tyrant. Since 2022, he has been the wartime emperor. Consequently, survival of the regime, Putin’s personal prestige, and prosecution of the war have become intertwined. Russia’s increasingly personalized structure gives him tyrannical authority, but also deprives him of institutional correction. Yet, he should not be underestimated. His principal political strengths include patience and willingness to pursue objectives relentlessly, ability to identify divisions within opposing coalitions, tolerance for costs that democratic leaders may find politically unbearable, mastery of ambiguity, calibrated escalation, and plausible deniability. However, his strengths have become sources of vulnerability. Secrecy produces isolation. Centralization discourages honest advice. Political control rewards loyalty over competence. Historical resentment distorts strategic judgment. Tactical victories substitute for sustainable policy. Fear of appearing weak makes orderly retreat extremely difficult. Personalized rule prevents credible succession.
Amid this conundrum of strengths as well as weaknesses, the fundamental question arises: is Putin rational? The answer is that he is within an increasingly distorted system of beliefs. Rationality does not mean moderation, morality, or accurate information. Therefore, Putin can reason instrumentally, while beginning from false premises: that Ukrainian identity is artificial, that resistance will collapse, that Western societies cannot endure sacrifice, or that every neighboring democratic movement is foreign manipulation. He is, therefore, neither an incomprehensible madman nor an infallible chess master. He is a highly experienced tyrant whose decisions are intelligible, but increasingly constrained by ideology, isolation, and the need to protect his own historical reputation.
Finally, to the ultimate question: how should other leaders deal with him? Personal warmth alone will not transform Putin’s objectives. He treats relationships as useful channels, but not substitutes for national interests. Productive dealings require clarity about enforceable limits, credible power behind diplomatic language, avoidance of public humiliation that leaves no path to adjustment, verification rather than personal trust, coalition discipline because he searches constantly for division, limited agreements on specific interests rather than expectations of a general reconciliation, and an exit strategy that permits tactical retreat without rewarding aggression. The reason being that Putin respects predictability backed by strength more than moral appeals unsupported by consequences. One additional observation. Putin’s persona contains a central contradiction. He presents himself as the embodiment of stability, yet his rule has made Russia dangerously dependent on one aging man, one narrow worldview, and one war from which he cannot easily retreat. His greatest strategic failure may be that, in attempting to restore the Russian Empire. He has accelerated Russia’s militarization, dependence, estrangement from Europe, and beyond.
The long-overdue collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s produced not only economic suffering, but a profound crisis in Russian identity. During the 1990s, NATO expanded, Russia lost influence over Eastern Europe, and the Kremlin became dependent on Western financial and diplomatic cooperation. Many Russians interpreted this not as liberation from communism, but as a national catastrophe. President Putin built his legitimacy by promising to reverse three perceived humiliations: the disintegration of the Soviet Union-controlled geopolitical space, the subordination of Moscow to a Western-designed international order, and the decline of the Russian state’s authority at home. For these very reasons, his foreign policy has become an international extension of his domestic project. Just as he eliminated competing centers of power within Russia, he sought to eliminate independent geopolitical centers within Soviet space. This is why successful democratization in neighboring states is threatening. A democratic, European, and prosperous Ukraine would not threaten Russia militarily; it would threaten Putin’s tyranny ideologically by demonstrating that an East Slavic society could flourish without authoritarian rule, or submission to the Kremlin.
Against the conventional wisdom across the globe, the most direct strategic predecessor of President Putin’s foreign policy was probably not Aleksandr Dugin, but Yevgeny Primakov, foreign minister from 1996 to 1998, and prime minister from 1998 to 1999. The so-called Primakov Doctrine maintained that the post-Cold War world should not remain dominated by the United States of America, Russia must restore itself as an independent center of global power, NATO enlargement should be aggressively resisted, the Kremlin should cultivate relations with the People’s Republic of China, India, and the other non-Western powers, and Russia must preserve predominance throughout the former Soviet region. This Primakov Doctrine was the genuine practical foundation of President Putin’s “multipolar world.” Multipolarity sounds like an appeal for international equality. In Kremlin usage, however, it principally means that the United States of America must accept Russian and Chinese regional spheres of dominance. The world may be multipolar among great powers, but it is expected to be hierarchical within each great power’s sphere of influence. Russia demands sovereign equality with America, while denying equivalent sovereign equality to Ukraine, Georgie, and Moldova. Accordingly, the 2023 Russian Foreign Policy Concept formally calls Russia a distinctive “country-civilization,” advocates a multipolar order, and accuses the United States of America as well as its allies of using the Ukraine war as part of a broader anti-Russian confrontation. Thus, the Primakov Doctrine is the bureaucratic codification of ideas developed over the preceding two decades.
Moreover, the Primakov Doctrine is organically related to another antediluvian doctrine named the “Russian World,” which links Russian to all Russian speakers, Russian Orthodox believers, and communities shaped by Russian, or Soviet history beyond the Russian Federation’s borders. In its benign form, this doctrine resembles cultural diplomacy. In its political meaning, it dissolves the distinction between citizenship and civilizational affiliation. The Kremlin asserts an interest in people living under the lawful jurisdiction of other states and then reserves the right to “protect” them. In addition, this doctrine performs several geopolitical functions. Primarily, it creates extraterritorial political claims. It also denies that post-Soviet borders are morally definitive. It also depicts Russian minorities as geopolitical instruments. Finally, it transforms cultural influence into a purported right of intervention. This logic appeared in Georgia in 2008, Crimea and Donbas in 2014, and the full- scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
In this regard, President Putin’s historical revisionism concerning Ukraine is the most remarkable falsification of history on a global scale. His July 2021 essay on Russians and Ukrainians was the clearest ideological preface to the 2022 lawless invasion. He contended that Russian and Ukrainians constituted essentially one historical people, questioned the legitimacy of Ukraine’s territorial formation, and portrayed its separation from Russia as the result of hostile foreign manipulation. This mendacious chain of arguments contains the essential elements of imperial denial. First, Ukrainian nationality is treated as artificial. Secondly, Ukrainian sovereignty is legitimate only when exercised in partnership with the Russian Federation. Thirdly, Western alignment supposedly converts Ukraine into “anti-Russian.” Finally, Russia is assigned a historical right to correct what it considers the errors of 1917 and 1991.
From all this labyrinth of lies, President Putin denies Ukraine’s capacity to make a sovereign political choice. If Ukraine rejects Russia, he concludes not that the Russian policy has failed, but that Ukraine has been captured, deceived, or even Nazified by external enemies. This is the ideological bridge from cultural fraternity to military conquest. If Russians and Ukrainians are “one people,” then an independent Ukrainian nation becomes, in his construction, both an unnatural division and an instrument directed against the Russian Federation.
President Putin and his underlings in the Kremlin have also repeatedly invoked Ivan Ilyin, the anti-Bolshevik Russian emigre philosopher. Ilyin envisioned Russia as an organic spiritual unity that required disciplined national leadership rather than competitive Western-style democracy. Several Il’unite themes complement President Putin’s ideas. Accordingly, the Russian state is a spiritually unified organism, national renewal must follow a period of humiliation, parliamentary pluralism is suspect, there is always a need for a strong patriotic ruler, the Russian state has a special civilizational path, and firm opposition to Western attempts to divide or remake Russia. Yet, one should not claim that President Putin simply follows Ilyin’s philosophy as a manual. President Putin selects whatever is politically useful for him. Yet, Ilyin helps provide dignified philosophical language for tyrannical rule and imperial national restoration.
Another important theory that has shaped Russian foreign policy for centuries is Eurasianism. It holds that Russia is neither European nor Asian, but a separate civilization naturally destined to organize the Eurasian landmass. It rejects the proposition that Russia should converge with Western liberal institutions. In this context, Alexandr Dugin developed an especially extremist version: a continental Eurasian empire confronting the Atlanticist world led by the United States of America. In this respect, Dugin’s influence on President Putin is often exaggerated. The former is not the latter’s secret philosopher or the sole architect of Kremlin policy. President Putin’s system is too pragmatic, bureaucratic, and opportunistic to be governed by a single theorist. Nevertheless, Dugin articulates in extreme form ideas present throughout the regime: permanent geopolitical conflict with the main Atlantic power, rejection of universal liberalism, the absorption or neutralization of Ukraine, continental partnership with anti-Western powers, and the empire as Russia’s natural geopolitical condition.
An extra item in this cavalcade of hugger-muggery superficial theories is Vladislav Surkov’s idea of “Sovereign Democracy.” Accordingly, Russia is democratic, while entitled to reject external standards by which its institutions might be judged. In practice, this means sovereignty without accountability. Elections, constitutions, and courts may exist, but the state controls their political meaning. No supranational norm, international court, or universal conception of human rights may legitimately constrain the Kremlin and its tyrants. Applied internationally, this doctrine becomes an attack upon the liberal international order. President Putin argues that Western governments use democracy, human rights, and international law selectively to weaken adversaries, and overthrow unwanted regimes. Thus, President Putin’s objection is less to spheres of influence than to a sphere of influence Russia does not control.
During President Putin’s first years, his foreign policy was not openly a crusade against Western liberalism. Over time, especially after the protest of 2011-2012, the Ukrainian revolution of 2014 and the unlawful invasion of 2022, anti-liberalism became central to the regime’s identity. Now, President Putin depicts liberalism as culturally decadent, hostile to religion and the traditional family, destructive of national identity, an instrument of American hegemony, and incapable of maintaining political order. Accordingly, President Putin presents himself as the leader of a global conservative resistance. This lie appeals to some religious conservatives, nationalist movements, and postcolonial governments dissatisfied with Western liberalism. Yet again, this “traditionalism” is highly selective. A regime marked by corruption, demographic decline, widespread family instability, and political cynicism cannot credibly be described as a consistent moral project. Traditional values operate primarily as a boundary marker. They define Russia against the West and cloak tyranny in moral language.
Adding the additional imperial insult to the injuries caused by the avalanche of shameless distortions as well as crude lies, the cult of the “Great Patriotic War” remains part of President Putin’s governing mythology. Accordingly, Russia is permanently the liberator of oppressed nations. Conversely, Russia’s enemies are all Fascists as well as Nazis. Collaboration with the West against Russia constitutes historical betrayal. Military sacrifice authenticates national greatness. Of course, the charge that contemporary Ukraine is “Nazi” is historically grotesque, but ideologically functional. It places the present war inside the emotionally unquestionable narrative of 1941-1945. Once the opponent is declared a Fascist cum Nazi, negotiation appears dishonorable, and Russian barbarism becomes inherently defensive. “Denazification” is, therefore, not an analytical judgment. It is a ritual formula that immunizes expansionist Russian foreign policy from moral scrutiny.
President Putin’s foreign policy cannot be separated from his ruthless tyranny’s self-preservation. A centralized kleptocratic tyranny needs an explanation for stagnation, repression, and sacrifice. The external enemy supplies it. The confrontation with the West allows President Putin to claim that domestic opposition is treason, economic difficulties result from foreign hostility, repression is necessary for national survival, personal tyranny represents national unity, and military setbacks demand still greater domestic tyranny. In this manner, foreign policy has again become a domestic legitimating mechanism. Russia’s conflict with the West is not merely something President Putin’s tyranny conducts, it is increasingly something tyranny requires.
Clearly, the currently prevailing incomprehensible labyrinth of internal and external contradictions in President Putin’s ideology exclude any progressive development of Russia because it defends sovereignty, while violating that of neighboring states, it condemns Western imperialism, while practicing Russian imperialism, it invokes international law selectively, while annexing territory by force, it celebrates national self-determination in the non-Western world, while denying it to Ukrainians, it claims to defend Russian civilization, while sacrificing Russia’s population and future to permanent war, it seeks independence from the West, while creating growing economic and strategic dependence on the People’s Republic of China, and it promises stability, but has made Russia’s geopolitical environment more hostile and militarized.
In conclusion, President Putin’s foreign policy is best described as revanchist imperial conservatism administered by a security-service tyranny. This uniquely Russian tyranny combines the territorial reflexes of the Russian Empire, the operational practices of the KGB, the geopolitical ambitions of the Soviet Union, the multipolar strategy of Primakov, the authoritarian nationalism associated with Ilyin, selected themes from Eurasianism, Russian Orthodox civilizational language, and the post-1991 desire to avenge lost status.
Within this tyrannical conundrum, President Putin is neither merely a cynical opportunist nor a faithful disciple of a single philosopher. Rather, he is an ideological eclectic. He believes certain propositions deeply, such as Russia’s exceptional destiny, the artificiality of Ukrainian separation, the hostility of the West, the necessity of great-power hierarchy, and the weakness of liberal democracy, but he employs every doctrine flexibly in the service of his personal tyranny.
Thus, the ultimate object of his foreign policy is not the reconstruction of the Soviet Union in its exact institutional form. It is the restoration of the imperial principle: the Kremlin must possess a privileged right to determine the alignment, sovereignty, and historical identity of the peoples around it.
That is also its fatal weakness. President Putin seeks greatness through domination, but his aggression has strengthened Ukrainian national identity, enlarged and revitalized NATO, estranged much of Europe, depleted Russia’s human and economic resources, and driven Moscow toward dependency on Beijing. Like many Russian tyrants before him, he has attempted to cure insecurity by expansion, and thereby produced far greater insecurity for Russia itself.