Countering the myth of Russia's “ideological vacuum”

This chapter makes a case against “end-of-ideology” theories, which contend that post-Soviet Russia has transitioned in the 1990s from an ideocratic regime to an “ideological vacuum”. Based on an analysis of the discourses of intellectual and political elites across the political spectrum, the chapter identifies three types of ideological languages, broadly defined as “Westernism”, “national–patriotism” and “managerial centrism”. Instead of the fixed and rigid belief-system of Marxism-Leninism, these ideological narratives are characterised by their inner eclecticism and malleability. The chapter shows that the problematic relation to the concept of ideology that they explicitly claim to represent – rejecting ideology, merging ideologies and transcending ideologies – still stands for an ideologically charged worldview. In this sense, the 1990s are a period of low-institutionalised ideological rearrangements instead of ideological vacuum.