Russia's ideological jumble (Juan Carlos Girauta in El Debate)

Russia's foreign and domestic policy, according to **Juan Carlos Girauta**, feeds on a complex and contradictory ideological cocktail that mixes various authoritarian historical legacies. This often confusing syncretism drives its constant interference in other countries' affairs.

## Russia's authoritarian syncretism

Russia's foreign and domestic policy, according to **Juan Carlos Girauta**, feeds on a complex and contradictory ideological cocktail that mixes various authoritarian historical legacies. This often confusing syncretism drives its constant interference in other countries' affairs. The Duma elections in **Russia** lasted three days, an example of the peculiar way the country manages its internal processes, to the point of an apparent self-inflicted interference. Russian intrusiveness is such that, according to **Girauta**, they interfere with themselves even when no other electoral fronts are open, producing results that resemble unreliable polls which, despite their questionable credibility, are presented as facts in the media.

## The legacy of the autocrats

Autocratic leaders such as **Pilingui**, **Sánchez** or **Lula** share a fundamental advantage: the certainty that their peers will act dishonestly on their own, without any external encouragement. This self-indulgence in electoral fraud and information manipulation allows them to focus on their agendas. **Russia**, however, stands out for a particularly dense and conflicted ideological legacy. It combines authoritarian, totalitarian, genocidal, antisemitic and imperial elements, creating a "mess" that drives constant and expansive action, akin to relentless movement. This dynamic dates back to **Pilingui's** time in **St Petersburg**, after his spell in the KGB, when he began forging that wounded, resentful nationalist identity.

## A collage of resentments

The political and social aesthetics developed in **Russia** since the **1990s**, marked by a severe economic crisis and the privatisation of state-owned companies, is a direct reflection of this pursuit of power through an amalgam of ideologies. A bewildering mix of symbols such as the hammer and sickle alongside the swastika is on display, revealing a profound historical confusion and a nostalgia for past greatness. The **Holocaust** industrialised the Russian pogroms of the 19th century, and documents such as "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion", which fuelled Ophobiaophobiaophobiaophobia in Nancy **Germany** and still resonate today in **Gaza**, were fabricated by the secret service of Tsar **Nicholas II**. This collage is completed with Orthodox religious imagery and the exaltation of empire, forming a foundation of resentments and conspiracy theories whose chief ideologue is **Aleksandr Dugin**.