Ruscism

Russian fascism is the unofficial name of the political ideology and social practice of the ruling regime of Russia in the early XXI century based on the ideas of the "special civilizational mission" of the Russians, intolerance, xenophobia, paternalism, Soviet-style imperialism, the use of Russian Orthodoxy as a moral doctrine, and on geopolitical instruments of influence, such as nuclear arsenal, energy resources etc.

History

The term became widespread in informal circles in 2008, during Russia's aggression against Georgia. The second wave of proliferation of the term occurred during the annexation of Ukrainian peninsula Crimea by the Russian Federation, the downing of a Boeing 777 near Donetsk on July 17, 2014, the start of the Russian-Ukrainian war in 2014 and the start of full scale invasion in Ukraine in February 2022.

It was first introduced by Herzen in his novel The Past and Thoughts(1868) in the form of "Russianism" to denote the extremist trend in Muscoviteism. The revival of the term is due to the President of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria Dzhokhar Dudayev [13], who saw the main feature of Russianism in Russia's territorial expansion in the Caucasus, this line of perception was continued by Shamil Basayev and Aslan Maskhadov, for example