We don't have an official term yet for Putin's flavour of political regime. William Gibson saw it in 1993. It's the KOMBINAT.
William Gibson has a good record of anticipating the future. Famously he coined the term "cyberpunk"in his first novel in 1984 in which he set the popular perception of the internet. He is famous for that first trilogy of books, but his second trilogy, known as the Bridge trilogy, quickly fell victim to the law of "nothing dates as fast as yesterdays tomorrow". Published in the early 1990s and set only a decade later, the Bridge books still read pretty cool noir but it's an alternate future with no phones or Web 2.0. Some might prefer this nightmare dystopia /s.
Admittedly he's only a decade away, but some things Gibson gets pretty on the nose. Pandemics, which seemed to begin with HIV, are now a regular occurrence. As per the first trilogy the middle class is shrinking fast and society is dividing into tech driven super rich and crime inflected everyone else. Crime is riddled with Russian money and it has a solid political origin. "Kombinat" is the name given by Gibson to an evolved Communist state which is now explicitly controlled by organised crime. It seems to be sanctioned by all the other states of Gibson's Bridge world so operatives are actively acquiring new technology from locations like San Francisco and Japan.
You might respond immediately that for all it's issues Putin's Russia is not communist! It is extreme capitalism! Well, give it time, because the more Putin's state walks like the Soviet Union, and quacks like the Soviet Union, the more those weird years in the middle look like a Weimar daydream without the sexy dancers.
Having given the Kombinat a name suddenly it's place in history looks a lot less accidental, a lot more familiar. It is common currency now to compare Putin with Hitler ("Putler") but less so to compare his regime explicitly with the Nazi Party. Compare the timelines however - 1918-1933, and 1987-2000. The fall of the Kaiser's Germany without invasion. The fall of the Soviet Union without a hot war. Economic chaos follows alongside liberalism. Nationalism as a excuse to unify. Idolisation of the past. Hatred of the future. Staged terrorism events to justify crack downs.
Soviet Union like Imperial Germany has a once mighty proud empire lost in a war that barely touches the homeland, creating no sense of real defeat. The undefeated younger generation of the old regime uses gangsterism and brutality to return to power based on militarism nationalism. and unrestrained capitalism.
In its first form this state is highly confident and aggressively expansionist. Though Imperial Germany seemed to coming to its senses late in 1914 and the Soviets barely had the resources to invade a third world state at the end, their expansionist ambitions were baked into the political mindset for the rest of the world to see.
In its second form the Nazi/Kombinat is still expansionist but only as part of a self pitying litany of grievances for past injustices. Where Imperial Germany/Russia has actual plans for the territories it seeks to acquire, the Nazi/Kombinat barely has a plan beyond invade and then “watch the world burn". There is no self justified philosophy of "white man’s burden" here, just looting, rape and destruction that would shame the Mongols.
Though not explicitly anti Semitic in its earlier more intellectual form in Imperial Germany/Soviet Union, the more aggressive populist Nazi/Kombinat is bitter, narrow minded and obsessively anti-Jew.
Some of this analysis falls apart when you consider the chasm between the class background of Imperial Prussians and Soviet leaders, and perhaps there are less actual war vets in Putin’s regime than there were in Hitler's, but the patterns of behaviour and outlook do look remarkably similar to me, and if we are looking for a term for Putin’s flavour of Nazism - KOMBINAT is as good as any I’ve come across.
Notes
Readers of Gibson's most recent trilogy will be aware that 22nd century London is run by The Klept (derived from kleptocray), descendants of the Russian super elite which escaped to London from what I'm now suggesting we call the Kombinat.
Since writing this post I've become aware of a Russian documentary of the same name, reviewed positively here -
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/jan/24/kombinat-review-dark-eerie-doc-on-russias-socialist-city-of-steel
It seems unconnected to the Gibson term.
