Putin`s nazism: a glance through the prism of psychoanalysis

Why should Ukraine and the world get to understand the deep meaning of the “Russian world”?

For more than three months the main topic around the world has been the war waged by Russia against Ukraine. It was difficult to believe that in the XXI century’s Europe an attack on a peaceful nation was possible; it was yet more difficult to realize that Nazism, long forgotten as a sick dream, had engulfed a vast country. What’s different: Russian Nazis refer to themselves as “fighters against Nazism”, and they now have nuclear weapons.

It would seem that the lessons of WWII should help humanity unite and prevent Putin’s regime from continuing to commit war crimes. However, far from all politicians and even intellectuals are aware of the need to fight Nazism. How is it even possible after what happened in Bucha, Borodianka and Mariupol not to realize how dangerous “the Russian world” is?

What prevents the whole civilized world from fully opening its eyes to the essence of Putin’s Nazism? Besides such obvious reasons as obtaining personal and “geopolitical” benefits, there are also certain psychological gains:

• Firstly – the threat to narcissism, since admitting that Putin’s ideology is Nazi ideology would mean any country could be nazified under certain conditions.
• Secondly – the political correctness and cancel culture that make it a taboo to paint an entire country in a negative light.
• Thirdly – the trauma that Nazism is able to inflict even over distance. A person who is objectively safe can still experience a whole range of reactions to trauma: denial, fear, lethargy, hebephrenic syndrome, etc.

  The approach to the analysis. This research is based on propaganda statements made by government officials and private individuals. Since it’s propaganda, it won’t be very useful to try to extract information from the content itself. Much more interesting would be to pay attention to slips of the tongue, mistakes, inconsistencies, illogicalities, emotional implications, etc. In the study,  Lacanian psychoanalysis has been applied.

  This report outlines the results of  our research into several aspects of Putin’s Nazism:

  • the psychological portrait of its adept;
  • the reasons / conditions for its emergence and rise;
  • the essence of “the Russian world” and its “freedom”;
  • the role of Putin’s propaganda in modern Russian, mechanisms and methods of its influence;
  • the interaction between propaganda and the repressive apparatus.
    

    Natalia Davydova, psychoanalyst, candidate of historical sciences

     

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