Putin’s Regime and the Ideological Market: A Difficult Balancing Game Marlene Laruelle • Task Force White Paper • March 16, 2017 http://carnegieendowment.org/2017/03/16/putin-s-regime-and-ideological-market-difficult- balancing-game-pub-68250 Summary: The current Russian regime is not static in terms of ideology. It was able to activate intense nationalist sentiment during the Ukraine crisis and calm it down later, without undermining Putin’s personal legitimacy and popular support. This publication is from the Task Force on U.S. Policy Toward Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia project. Marlene Laruelle Marlene Laruelle is co-director of PONARS-Eurasia and a research professor at the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies (IERES) at the George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. At a time of economic stagnation, the Russian state is in need of social consensus and popular support behind the figure of President Vladimir Putin. After feeding an anti-Western atmosphere during the first year of the Ukraine crisis, the regime deliberately decreased its nationalist rhetoric, sidelined some of the nationalist actors who had become too prominent and not reliable enough, retired some of Putin’s old friends, and brought some more liberal figures back to the political game. The Kremlin continues to advance a diverse ideological repertoire, combining several isms and historical narratives that seem contradictory, all under a broad and blurry rubric of conservative values. While the presidential administration has been able to successfully manage this doctrinal diversity, it remains a difficult balancing act in some respects, especially on the issues of more or less Russian nationalism and mobilization potential for or against the political status quo. The Kremlin’s Ideological Landscape: Explicit Conservatism, Implicit Doctrinal Plurality During Putin’s first term as president (2000–2004), the presidential administration denied any need for a state ideology. Putin cast himself as nonideological, claiming to be working solely in line with technocratic objectives. 1 In 2003, the authorities discussed the creation of a council for national ideology (Sovet po natsional’noi ideologii) to convene major intellectual and cultural figures, but the project never led to anything concrete and aroused little enthusiasm within state