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For any post-totalitarian country, the duration of totalitarianism is critical. Long-term totalitarianism creates its own language, discourse, habits, and most importantly a sense of identity. Over time, the founding ideology transforms: beside the official doctrine emerges a de facto ideology that shapes thinking and social behaviour even more deeply.

My hypothesis is that modern Russia should be viewed not as a simple autocracy but as a totalitarian civilization a self-reproducing system resistant to political change. Within such a civilization, totalitarian tendencies easily revive, as seen over the last thirty years, while democratic reforms face resistance from both the authorities and much of the population. To overcome this, one must first understand the nature of totalitarian civilization, something that, judging by repeated historical relapses, remains poorly grasped.

Modern Russia is often described as an “ordinary autocracy.” This term, coined during the Cold War, sought to distinguish new non-democratic regimes from classical totalitarianism. The distinction rests on two assumptions: that autocracies lack a coherent ideology, and that their rulers seek only to preserve power, avoiding full control over citizens’ lives. Both assumptions are questionable.

Marxist-Leninist ideology initiated totalitarianism in the USSR. Later, the system survived not through belief but through habits of obedience. The state adapted when utopia clashed with reality, while citizens learned to live by shifting rules whose only constant was submission to central authority. Initiative and self-organization were stifled; individual life mattered little.

From this emerged the ideology of totalitarian civilization: defining enemies, viewing human relations as zero-sum, and treating the external world not as a partner but as a threat. Power meant command and punishment. Rituals of loyalty elections, parades, public declarations became psychological safeguards and proofs of conformity. Over decades, these rituals turned into the cultural DNA of society.

The state’s reach into private life may vary, but in a totalitarian civilization it always remains latent, ready to expand. Soviet and post-Soviet history shows that this penetration fluctuates but never disappears.

Conclusion: Today’s Russia, like the USSR, exemplifies a totalitarian civilization with its own enduring identity and ideology. Unless that ideology is rigorously studied and exposed, it will remain a black box, one capable of reproducing itself indefinitely.