Is Russia Fascist?: A Response to Yoshiko Herrera, Mitchell Orenstein, and Anton Shekhovtsov

Extract

Writing Is Russia Fascist? was a difficult intellectual exercise, as it feels counterintuitive to spend years working on a concept, only to refute its validity. Yet it eventually brought more than I envisioned, helping me conceptualize the notion of illiberalism as a more accurate term for capturing the pre-war Russian regime’s ideological nature. Another important take I got from writing this book has been the centrality of memory wars for the whole of Europe, and the need to analyze Russia while looking in the mirror at “our” (read “Western”) own ambivalent, multi-voiced, memories of the 20th century. I am therefore grateful to the reviewers for their interest in the book and for bringing forward so many new arguments to the discussion.