The IFR Statism Lab examines whether Putin’s regime has an ideology and, if so, what it is. The 2014 annexation of Crimea and the overt invasion of Ukraine in 2022 marked a shift in the Kremlin’s discourse toward more explicitly ideological messaging. Nonetheless, experts on Russia continue to disagree on whether Putin’s regime possesses a fully developed ideology.
The lab approaches the set of ideas employed by Putin’s regime as an ideology of thin statism, an ideology that does not have a full-fledged doctrine but has a relatively stable and distinguishable core in which the state is the central value. The periphery of the ideology remains flexible and is adjusted based on the situational goals the regime seeks to achieve.
С момента основания в 2024 году в лаборатории были запущены два проекта:
- Teaching Statism in Russian Universities: Between Indoctrination and Re-Interpretation (2024-2026)
- Disentangling Russian Statisms Across Genres and Modes (2026)
The laboratory is led by Ivan Fomin, who is a Senior Researcher at Charles University in Prague and the head of the Ideas for Russia initiative.