Skip to content

Russia: the nature of the Putin regime

Marxist Theory · 2026-05-13

Core Argument

The central thesis is that the Putin regime is a form of Bonapartism — a political configuration in which the ruling capitalist class has lost direct control over the state apparatus and become dependent upon it, rather than the state serving as a straightforward instrument of bourgeois rule. The article argues that this situation arose from the specific manner in which Russian capitalism was reconstituted after the destruction of the USSR: through the direct conversion of the Stalinist bureaucracy into a new capitalist class via privatisation, without the formation of a stable bourgeois Establishment of the kind that exists in Western liberal democracies. Putin's consolidation of power after 2000 represents not a rupture with oligarchic capitalism but a reorganisation of the relationship between capital and the state, in which the bureaucracy subordinates individual capitalists to its authority while preserving capitalist property relations as such. The regime is not fascist — the working class has not yet posed the question of power — but it is structurally unstable, dependent on economic growth, "small victorious wars," and the absence of an organised revolutionary alternative.

Theoretical Grounding

The analysis draws directly on Marx's concept of Bonapartism as developed in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, and on Trotsky's later elaboration of the distinction between Bonapartism and fascism in his writings of the 1930s. The key theoretical move is to treat the state not as a simple instrument of the ruling class — which the article affirms as true "in general" — but as capable, under specific historical conditions, of achieving relative autonomy from any particular faction of capital, subordinating the bourgeoisie to the state bureaucracy while preserving capitalist social relations. This is distinguished from fascism, which the article (following Trotsky) identifies as a mass movement of the petty bourgeoisie that big capital turns to only when the threat of proletarian revolution makes conventional Bonapartism insufficient.

The article also deploys the Marxist distinction between base and superstructure in a nuanced way: it insists that the economic base of Russian capitalism is monopoly capitalism of the same type as in the West, but that the superstructure — the political form of the state — differs dramatically because of the specific historical path of primitive accumulation in Russia. This avoids both economic reductionism (which would predict identical political forms from identical economic bases) and the idealist "political science" categories (democratic maturity, national character) that the article explicitly rejects.

The concept of the Establishment is used in a specifically Marxist sense: not as a journalistic term for elites, but as a historically formed social layer that mediates between the capitalist class and the state apparatus, recruiting from the propertied classes and ensuring ideological and personal loyalty to capitalism. The article's central claim is that no such layer exists in Russia, because the bureaucracy did not mediate between capital and the state but became capital directly through privatisation.

Conjunctural Relevance

The article was written in January 2020, before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but its analysis anticipates many features of the current conjuncture:

  • Economic stagnation and sanctions: The article notes that the annexation of Crimea (2014) was a gamble that resulted in sanctions and economic stagnation, but that Putin used it to repatriate capital and consolidate control over remaining independent corporations. The 2022 invasion and subsequent sanctions escalation have intensified this dynamic dramatically.

  • The "small victorious war" strategy: The article identifies Chechnya (1999), Crimea (2014), and the possibility of further military adventures as a core mechanism of regime stabilisation. The 2022 invasion of Ukraine represents the most extreme and catastrophic iteration of this pattern — and, as the article's framework would predict, one that has exposed the regime's weakness rather than consolidating it.

  • Inter-clan struggle and succession: The article's emphasis on "cop wars" and the difficulty of preparing a successor has become more acute. The Wagner Group rebellion (June 2023) and the ongoing tensions between the FSB, the Ministry of Defence, and the National Guard exemplify the "spiders in a jar" dynamic the article describes.

  • The working class and the soldiery: The article's prediction that economic crisis will bring the working class onto the streets, and that the absence of organic ties between the officer corps and the bourgeoisie will become decisive when soldiers face a choice, remains a strategic hypothesis. The mobilisation of 2022 and the flight of hundreds of thousands of Russians abroad have not yet produced a revolutionary situation, but they have created conditions of deep social tension.

  • The regime is not fascist: This claim remains politically significant. The article insists that Putin's regime is a Bonapartist one, relying on the existing state apparatus rather than on a mass fascist movement. This has implications for how Marxists approach the question of the regime's social base and the character of the opposition.

Where the Argument Continues

The article is a condensed theoretical intervention that opens several lines of inquiry developed elsewhere in the IDOM corpus:

  • The distinction between Bonapartism and fascism is treated more extensively in Trotsky's The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany and in IDOM articles on the rise of the far right in Europe. The article's claim that Putin is "more like von Schleicher than Hitler" invites comparison with analyses of contemporary far-right movements in the West.

  • The nature of the Russian bourgeoisie — its origins in the nomenklatura, its relationship to the state, its international integration — is a recurring theme in IDOM's coverage of Russia. The article's brief treatment of the oligarchs' desire to "exchange assets with Western corporations" points toward a broader analysis of the comprador character of Russian capital.

  • The question of war and revolution is taken up in IDOM articles on Ukraine, particularly those analysing the class character of the conflict and the tasks of Marxists in the anti-war movement.

  • The crisis of the world economy and its impact on Russia is a theme developed in IDOM's regular economic analyses, particularly those addressing the tendency of the rate of profit to fall and the inevitability of new crises of overaccumulation.

Connections

  • Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte: The foundational text on Bonapartism, from which the article's central concept is drawn.

  • Trotsky, The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany: The key text distinguishing Bonapartism from fascism, cited implicitly throughout.

  • Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed: For the analysis of the Stalinist bureaucracy as a social layer — the article's account of the nomenklatura's conversion into a capitalist class is a direct extension of Trotsky's analysis.

  • IDOM articles on Ukraine (2022–present): These apply and test the Bonapartist framework against the reality of war, sanctions, and regime crisis.

  • IDOM articles on the nature of the state: The article's nuanced treatment of the base-superstructure relation connects to broader Marxist debates about the relative autonomy of the state.

Key Quotes

  1. "The modern Russian state is built on the wreckage of the planned economy, which was looted and destroyed in the 1990s."

  2. "A situation where the ruling class loses control over the state and becomes dependent on it is well known in history. The concept of bourgeois Bonapartism was introduced by Marx in his 18th Brumaire to describe the political regime of the Second Empire in France."

  3. "Unlike in many Eastern European countries, where the capitulation of the masses to western imperialism made it possible to privatise industry in the interests of western corporations, the main beneficiaries of privatisation in Russia were state enterprise directors, officials and higher-level party bosses."

  4. "Putin is not a fascist. The working class has not yet raised the issue of power, and Putin can still rely on the machinery of the bourgeois state."

  5. "The precondition for this to concretise is a movement of the working class, socially and culturally close to the working-class soldiery, who will be ready to join their class brothers in the fight for a social revolution."

  6. "Bonapartist regimes may seem extremely stable, but internal contradictions inevitably lie behind their apparently solid political support. On the one hand, there is open corruption and the direct seizure of property by state officials — as the bourgeoisie has no other way of limiting their despotism except through 'petitions to Bonaparte'."