Energy Populism or Why so many Slovaks do not fear Putin´s Russia

Populist politics in East Central Europe, especially in its guise of right-wing or national populism, is generally considered challenging the policies of sustainable transformations to climate-neutral societies and economies. We consider this region of special attention due to democratic backsliding tendencies and resilience towards the EU and its role in the green transformation. Green New Deal bringing among many other goals socially just change to the region with energy legacy based on fossil fuel industry that has been heavily supplied with material from Soviet Union, in particular from Russia. This paper takes the popular representation and understanding of energy resources as the source of tension between politics defined as reactionary populism and progressive reformism in order to define the energy populism. Basing the empirical analysis on content analysis of parliamentary debates about energy transformation, green technologies, and energy transportation and on the ethnography of popular ambivalence towards sustainable sources of energy, this paper partly explains why it is worth looking at exceptionally positive attitudes of Slovaks towards Russia of Vladimir Putin, the dominant provider of energy resources to the country, not only from the view of reactionary ideologies, propaganda, and national romanticism but from the perspective of what we understand as the energy populism, the popular practice, understanding, and typology of the natural resources after state-socialism. The aim to contribute to ongoing debate on populism and democratic backsliding with specific focus on energy supply and transition.