adam zivo: how putin hoodwinked american conservatives
those on the right who romanticize russia today are no different than those on the left who glorified the soviet union
4 minute read
a file photo taken on july 16, 2018, shows u.s. president donald trump and russian president vladimir putin shaking hands ahead of a meeting in helsinki.
brendan smialowski
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it’s unfortunate that some populist conservatives in the west have bought into the myth that russia is a haven for “traditional values.” this fairytale is nothing more than kremlin-sponsored propaganda, and it bears little resemblance to the realities of russian society, where divorce, abortion and secularism are widespread.
russia’s self-anointed status as a defender of global conservatism can be traced back to 2011, when anti-government protests erupted following the country’s rigged parliamentary elections. these disruptions threatened to topple the autocratic rule of russian president vladimir putin, but were eventually suppressed.
putin’s governance subsequently became more jingoistic and anti-western. by directing the nation’s anger outward and fostering an atmosphere of permanent besiegement, the president was able to effectively draw attention away from his domestic shortcomings and stagnating economy. he fixated on the lgbtq+ community, associated it with foreign interference, and passed laws curtailing both.
this won putin crucial political support from the russian orthodox church, imbued his regime with an aura of moral authority and, most importantly, vested the kremlin with an ideology that could compete with western liberalism.
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while international relations generally follow the principles of realpolitik, they are also clearly influenced by perceived ideological kinship. during the soviet era, moscow portrayed itself as the headquarters of international socialism, and used this political branding to deepen alliances with other communist states.
this simultaneously secured the allegiance of certain leftist foreigners (“useful idiots,” as stalin dubbed them), who felt compelled to reflexively defend the soviets on ideological grounds — even if russia was hostile to their own countries and did not actually govern in accordance with socialist principles.
to illustrate: when news of stalin’s great purges reached europe in the 1930s, many figures within britain’s leftist intelligentsia refused to publicly criticize the soviets, lest they embarrass the global socialist movement.
in canada, a young pierre trudeau took a propaganda tour of maoist china, wrote a book whitewashing the country’s great famine and then, as prime minister, bragged to soviet leaders that he had cut his country’s european nato commitments in half.
but in the post-communist era, russia lost its ideological sales pitch to the world. it was reduced to unconvincingly mimicking western norms, earning little moral or political authority until its embrace of traditionalist politics changed everything.
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by the late 2010s, russia had won over much of europe’s far right and was flinging its tendrils into the united states. it found fertile soil there, owing largely to the collapse of neoconservativism (which had been discredited by the failed wars in iraq and afghanistan) and the republicans’ inability to define a replacement foreign policy framework.
ideologically destitute, some republicans treated foreign policy as an extension of america’s culture wars — they allied with moscow, a geopolitical rival, simply so they could vanquish woke culture domestically. russia’s full-scale invasion of ukraine, and the election of u.s. president donald trump, only accelerated this realignment.
as of now, a considerable number of republican influencers, particularly those affiliated with trump, portray russia and putin as the defenders of family and god. they are the modern analogue to the socialist traitors who, decades ago, forsook their own countries to pledge allegiance to a russia that never existed — only this time, it is the clergy, not the proletariat, that are being romanticized. but the useful idiots are being duped, again, because russia is no more a conservative utopia than the soviet union was a socialist one.
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according to a 2023 poll by the russian public opinion research center, only 15 per cent of russians identified as highly religious, while 28 per cent said that religion does not play a role in their lives at all. although 66 per cent of russians believed in god, only 15 per cent regularly attend religious services (i.e., church).
in contrast, gallup polling data gathered between 2021 and 2023 suggests that, among other things, 81 per cent of americans believe in god and 41 per cent attend a religious service at least once a month. so russia is apparently far more atheistic than the united states.
russians also love divorces and abortion. the country’s divorce rate (3.9 per 1,000 people) is among the highest in the world — far higher than the united states (2.7), canada (1.1) and much of europe. similarly, russia’s abortion rate is higher than many western countries.
what about family values? domestic violence is an epidemic in russia, abetted by a 2017 law, which stipulates that, unless hospital treatment is required, such abuse should be considered an administrative, not criminal, offence. first time wife-beaters can get away with paying only a 5,000-rubles (c$80) fine.
free speech is also non-existent: criticizing the government can easily lead to a long prison sentence or, in some cases, a mysterious death. whatever faults the west might have with policing speech, russia’s restrictions are a magnitude worse and crueller.
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why do some conservatives glorify a society so woefully unaligned with their values? who knows. but their behaviour is nothing new, and it fits within an established tradition of boundless self-delusion.
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