'Putinism' as a Special System of Power: The Decline of Russia or the Future of Europe?

In modern Russia, a special state of the political system of society has developed, which requires, respectively, a special approach to its analysis and management. In general, it is called "Putinism." Its definition is descriptive because it cannot be given a norm. The key characteristics of “Putinism” are the irremovability of power, the absolute personification of politics, the absolute belief in the exclusivity of their concept of internal and external political course, reliance on some deep, but for now silent people, its basal invariant layer - the true bearer of national-political identity. In the article «The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy», C. Schmitt argued that for true democracy, a state must “if there is a need to eliminate or destroy diversity” (Carl Schmitt. The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, trans. Ellen Kennedy. Cambridge, Mass, 1985, 9.) . In a certain sense, this phenomenon is reminiscent of political events in the EU: the retreat of left-centrist and conservative parties to the background and the rapid growth of center-right and radical parties. As in Russia, the center-left parties in Europe were able to form a liberal consensus among the middle class, but underestimated the consensus of less educated, more conservative and more numerous voters, many of whom live in the modern economy, but in old values. The key questions of the research: does it mean that after the 1990s Russia began to produce the meanings of a political algorithm for the functioning of a state – Putinism- that has no alternative, including in the European space?