by Zack Beauchamp
Sean Guillory situates Putin in a historical tradition of Russian liberalism quite distinct from its Western counterpart:
[Putin et al.] are situated on the conservative end of a particularly Russian liberal tradition that accepts capitalism as a fundamental truth, but only as far as it can bolster the Russian state’s transformation into the ever elusive Rechsttadt, or legal state. The Putinists do not pray to Locke or Smith but to the Russian pantheon of great reformers Speransky, Witte, and, I think most importantly, Stolypin.
I take the point about the Russian political tradition being somewhat insular, but Guillory is playing word games here. Liberals believe broadly in three things: political democracy, individual rights, and capitalism. If "Russian liberalism" accepts the latter and reject the former two, isn't it really just "authoritarian capitalism" with good branding?
The Dish 