The Closing of the Russian Mind
How Putin's Ideology Took the Nation Hostage

Andrei Kolesnikov (Author)

9781509568154, Polity Press

Hardback, published 30 January 2026

256 pages
21.8 x 14.5 x 2.8 cm, 0.431 kg

A Financial Times 'Best Summer Books of 2026: Politics'
One of The Tablet's 'Books to Keep You in the Best Possible Company in 2026'

"A brilliant account of Putinism"
Gideon Rachman, Financial Times

"A work of unusual density and range, combining intellectual history, political science, sociology and memoir. Its analytical vocabulary offers an arrestingly original framework for understanding the deep mechanisms of power in contemporary Russia."
Owen Matthews, Times Literary Supplement

"This book is not only an intellectual tour de force but also a document of the epoch, a testimony written by Jonah from the belly of the Leviathan. Kolesnikov's analytic acumen and a keen sense of Russian culture and history go hand in hand with civil courage."
Sergei Medvedev, Charles University, Prague, author of the Return of the Russian Leviathan and A War Made in Russia

"Andrei Kolesnikov possesses the rare gift of telling the truth with clarity and insight. The Closing of the Russian Mind stands out as one of the few accounts of Putin's Russia destined to endure the test of time."
Ivan Krastev, Chairman, Centre for Liberal Strategies, Sofia

"An important and serious analysis of the hitherto underexamined ideological basis of the contemporary Russian state. It is an extremely rich and skilful work that gives a brilliant insight into the nature of Russian official propaganda."
Andrei Zorin, University of Oxford

"A brilliant study of the ideas and toxic myths that led Russia to invade Ukraine and launch the biggest war on the European continent since 1945. Andrei Kolenikov sets out in lucid and compelling style how Vladimir Putin thinks. The answer is disturbing. He believes Russia is an empire, human life is nothing and the West is an eternal enemy. The book is an important corrective to the deluded Trumpian view that Putin wants 'peace'."
Luke Harding, author of Invasion: Russia's Bloody War and Ukraine's Fight for Survival, shortlisted for the Orwell Prize and Peterson Literary Prize

"Writing with both trenchancy and humour, but above all with a fervent and much needed moral clarity, Kolesnikov examines the deep and ancient roots of [Putin's] ideology."
The Tablet

"Andrei Kolesnikov has written an intellectually stunning and very brave analysis of why Russia has become 'a country with no future'."
Financial Times

"Not only convincingly analyses the purely political explanations for this hatred, but also provides his poignant personal story."
Expressen

Not so long ago, Russia under Putin appeared to be a corrupt state run by an elite mainly interested in their own privileges and wealth: authoritarian but not fundamentally expansionist.

The 2022 invasion of Ukraine made it clear that Putin is driven by far more than simply greed. Putin's Russia is, Andrei Kolesnikov argues, in the grip of intense ideological radicalization, seeking to mobilize its population in support of a form of chauvinistic neo-imperialism using increasingly totalitarian methods. This march towards "hybrid totalitarianism" is driven by a messianic view of Russia as a superior, "spiritual" form of "state-civilization" underpinned by its Orthodox faith and hatred of Western "decadence." Based upon a falsified version of history and a profound hostility to modernization, this ideology is making Russia an international pariah and condemning its citizens to endless war and economic stagnation. The only hope for redemption is a profound moral regeneration which redefines the nation's place in the world and embraces the spirit of democracy.

This incisive analysis of the ideological dynamics of late Putinism, written by a leading Russian scholar and journalist, is an indispensable guide to understanding the country's recent descent into war-mongering barbarism.

Preface: 'Kyiv was bombed...'

Chapter One: Hybrid Totalitarianism: Interdependence of Regime and Ideology
Chapter Two: Roots, Crown and Flags: The Evolution of the Russian Idea
Chapter Three: The 'Special Path' of the 'State-Civilization'
Chapter Four: History as a Weapon
Chapter Five: Ideology as a Tool of Suppression
Chapter Six. Making Unfreedom Sacred
Chapter Seven: A Country Without a Future: Is Russia’s Modernization Possible?

Acknowledgements
Index
Contents

Subject Areas: History [HB]