The Verkhovna Rada supported the draft resolution according to which the political regime in Russia is officially recognized as ruscism.
This is reported by RBC-Ukraine with reference to People’s Deputy Oleksiy Honcharenko.
During Tuesday’s meeting of the Verkhovna Rada, 281 MPs supported the corresponding initiative.
The Rada recognized the political regime in Russia as ruscism.
The authors of the draft resolution proposed to refer to the Russian regime as ruscism, since a neo-imperial, totalitarian dictatorship was being formed in the Russian Federation, which imitates the worst practices of the past and embodies the ideas of fascism and national socialism in the modern version of Russian fascism (ruscism).
The initiative also includes a call to the UN, European Parliament, Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, NATO Parliamentary Assembly, governments and parliaments of other countries to support condemnation of the ideology, policies, and practices of ruscism.
What is “ruscism”?
This term is often used to refer to the political regime inherent in Russia at the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries. In its name, it combines two words – “Russia” and “fascism”. The term “Russian fascism” is also employed.
American historian and Yale University Professor Timothy Snyder stated in May 2022 that Russia meets most of the criteria for fascism. Among them is the personality cult of a single leader, the cult of the dead in the form of the cult of victory in the Second World War, as well as the myth of the golden age of the imperial past, which must be restored by force.
Snyder explains that, although officially the Russian regime opposes fascism, in reality this “anti-fascism” has simply become the Russian leader’s right to identify public enemies. According to the historian, fascists, who call other people fascists, is about fascism brought to the point of illogic, a cult of the absurd. This is the end point where hate speech turns white into black and propaganda is based on nothing but bigotry.
Jason Stanley, an American philosopher, calls it subversive propaganda while Snyder called it schizofascism. Ukrainians have the most elegant wording as they call it ‘ruscism,’ Snyder recalled.
President Volodymyr Zelensky also called Russia’s actions “ruscism”. In April 2022, he said that this term will characterize Russia in history books.
