This introduction presents a cluster of articles developed from two international workshops held in April and May 2024 at the University of Copenhagen and Södertörn University. These events critically examined the ideological trajectory of the contemporary Russian regime, increasingly referred to as “Putinism.” Initially viewed as a form of kleptocratic authoritarianism, the regime has gradually adopted a more defined ideological profile. Key features now include the securitization of Russian identity, the articulation of the “Russian World” doctrine, an antagonistic view of the Western-led global order, and expansionist, quasi-nationalist visions of Russian civilization. Since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, Putinism has acquired overtly messianic undertones, presenting itself as a universalist, illiberal alternative to Western liberal democracy. It has gained particular resonance in parts of the Global South by blending identitarian conservatism with elements of left-wing anti-globalist discourse. Despite lacking a coherent doctrinal core, Putinism selectively appropriates imperial, Soviet, and Orthodox legacies to legitimize state power and assert Russia’s global role.

This essay examines the engagement of the European Far Right during the Cold War with the legacy of classical geopolitics, above all the work of Mackinder, Spykman, Haushofer and Schmitt. The concerns of geopolitics with immanent spatial "realities" gave it an instrumental utility for the EFR as the latter sought to move beyond the obsessive preoccupation of interwar fascism (in its dominant German version) with factors of genetics and race. Beyond this, classical geopolitics provided conceptual and theoretical support for the EFR as it elaborated new ideological principles and political projects. On the one hand this involved a novel vision of pan-European unity that rested on the principle of continentalist autarky. On the other, with key concepts such as Heartland and Rimland, classical geopolitics offered a sophisticated but strategically flexible meta-geography of Eurasian space that was of immense value, for it could accommodate the EFR's ambivalence regarding the geographical limits of its envisioned pan-Europe and the nature of its relationship to its Eurasian neighbour, the USSR. The essay argues that while the conceptual continuities with the interwar period were vital, the deployment of classical geopolitical theory by the EFR after 1945 was driven by a logic of its own, one that was directly connected to the historical context and political realities of the Cold War. EFR ideologues used classical geopolitics essentially in order to negotiate the particular challenges of their day and to sustain and develop their own political agendas.

Despite the sympathy for Vladimir Putin’s Russia expressed by much of the European far right (EFR), the question of Europe and Russia has for decades represented a considerable ideological challenge for it. This essay examines the ways in which this challenge is addressed in the work of the French intellectual Guillaume Faye (1949-2019), one of the EFR’s most influential theoreticians. Faye’s writings reveal the full scope of the far right’s ambivalence toward Russia, identifying it alternatively as a mortal enemy of the pan-European project, a potential strategic ally that despite its non-European character was vital for Europe’s purposes of resisting the American behemoth, or finally as a thoroughly European country and an essential part of the European “bio-culture.” In order to support these various positions, Faye deploys alternative ideological narratives, one based on geopolitics and the other on the precepts of ethnopolitics. This particular ideological juxtaposition has a deep history in the thinking of the EFR, and Faye’s polemics reveal how it has become intertwined with the special complexities of the Russia problem.