The Collectivist Roots of Russian Atrocities

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, horrific stories have emerged of Russian forces killing, maiming, and raping civilians. Shortly after the invasion began, Russian soldiers intentionally drove tanks over cars with people inside.¹ In the days that followed, soldiers shot at civilians and bombed residential areas.² In April, after the Russian retreat from Bucha (a town outside Kyiv), Ukrainian forces discovered the bodies of murdered civilians, some killed with their hands tied, some sexually violated, others missing limbs.³ These were not isolated incidents, but part of a concerted, intentional targeting of civilians by Russian forces, consistent with their tactics in previous conflicts in Syria and Chechnya.⁴

Naturally, these atrocities have elicited shock from people across the world. Many are asking “How could people do such horrible things to other human beings?” In response, some are pointing to the 1940 Katyn Massacre, in which Soviet forces, under the direction of Lavrentiy Beria, executed 22,000 Polish officers and intellectuals.⁵ But the fact that it has happened before doesn’t explain what enables such horrors, which we must understand if we are to prevent them in future. To do that, we must understand the ideology behind both atrocities, and all such atrocities throughout human history. That ideology is collectivism.

Vladimir Putin explicitly embraces collectivism. Asked in a television interview about the fundamental differences between America and Russia, he answered: “The foundation of the American consciousness is the idea of the individual. The foundation of the Russian consciousness is the idea of the collective. . . . These are two different philosophies of life.”⁶

Collectivism, as philosopher Leonard Peikoff describes in his book The Ominous Parallels, is:

the theory that the group (the collective) has primacy over the individual. Collectivism holds that, in human affairs, the collective—society, the community, the nation, the proletariat, the race, etc.—is the unit of reality and the standard of value. On this view, the individual has reality only as part of the group, and value only insofar as he serves it; on his own he has no political rights; he is to be sacrificed for the group whenever it—or its representative, the state—deems this desirable.⁷

Peikoff identified this ideology as the cause behind the rise to power of the National Socalist (Nazi) Party in Germany during the 1930s. “In place of the despised ‘private individuals,’” he writes, “the Germans heard daily or hourly about a different kind of entity, a supreme entity, whose will, it was said, is what determines the course and actions of the state: the nation, the whole, the group.” He quotes Alfredo Rocco, a leading philosophic architect of the Italian fascist movement, whose words closely mirror Putin’s: “For Liberalism, the individual is the end and society the means. . . . For Fascism, society is the end, individuals the means.”⁸

More recently, Alexander Dugin, often referred to as “Putin’s Philosopher” for his ideological influence on the Russian president, echoed the call for collectivists to set themselves against the West’s tradition of individual liberty, what he calls “Atlanticism.”⁹ He says, “The new Eurasian [Russian] empire will be constructed on the fundamental principle of the common enemy: the rejection of Atlanticism, strategic control of the USA, and the refusal to allow liberal values to dominate us.”¹⁰

The natural consequence of an ideology that holds the group, not the individual, as the standard of value, is complete disregard for the rights of individuals. If what really matters is the Russian state, who cares if some Ukrainian civilians are sacrificed for that ideal? This sounds callous and brutish to Western ears, precisely because Western culture places great importance on the value of the individual’s life. When that standard of value is lost—when the state or the group replaces it—the door is opened to unthinkable depths of inhumanity.

Unfortunately, many in the West don’t understand that this is the prevailing philosophy in Russian society. Russia’s history was dominated by authoritarian regimes of one kind or another and never progressed to a more individualistic society as Western Europe and America did. It has also been heavily influenced by the Russian Orthodox Church, which was often directly connected to the apparatus of government, and which never underwent a reformation as did other branches of Christianity. The Orthodox Church placed great emphasis on tradition while discouraging independent thinking.¹¹ That influence remains strong, with Orthodox ideology included in Russia’s present-day school curriculum. The Church has also had significant influence on Putin’s own ideas. “The Church serves a powerful role in supporting Putin’s true political ideology,” notes Church of England scholar Ben Ryan; “his identity as a gosudarstvennik or ‘Statist.’ The ‘Russian Idea’ as described by Putin in his so-called ‘Millennium Message,’ delivered in 1999 and still seen as the core of his political model, includes patriotism, collectivism, solidarity and derzhavnost (destiny to be a great power).”¹²

The collectivist culture in Russia was already well established by the time of the Bolshevik Revolution (1917), and the subsequent eighty years of communist government have done little to dispel it. In a 2020 poll, 75 percent of Russians named the Soviet era as the greatest period in Russian history, associating it with “social stability.”¹³ The widespread acceptance of collectivism in Russia is what made Putin, and in turn the current atrocities in Ukraine, possible.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in an address to the Russian people that he does not believe the invasion is being perpetrated in their name, echoing the view expressed by many that Putin is acting against the values of Russian people. However, although Putin is clearly a madman, his actions are enabled by a philosophy that has as thoroughly permeated Russia today as it had Germany in the 1930s. This truth is borne out in the reaction of many Russian people to the invasion of Ukraine: According to independent polling agencies cited by Forbes.com and other Western sources, Putin’s approval ratings have increased sharply since the war began.¹⁴ Many Russian people accept the government’s “justification” for the invasion.¹⁵ There are some valiant individuals who resist, and they deserve enormous credit, as do those Russian soldiers who defect or refuse to obey orders to murder civilians. But they are a small minority.

What is happening now in Ukraine is a kind of barbarism many in the West thought was consigned to history. But the collectivism that led to the murder and brutalization of millions upon millions of people in Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s USSR, Mao’s China, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, and numerous other collectivist tyrannies during the 20th century, is still alive and capable of inflicting gruesome harm on millions of innocent people.

The only antidote to collectivism is a principled defense of the very ideas Putin opposes: individualism and individual rights. That is what was missing in 1930s Germany, and that is what is missing in Russia and many other countries today. Nationalist parties inspired by Dugin have made significant electoral gains in relatively free European countries such as France and Germany.¹⁶ Collectivist ideology even underpins policies of both major American political parties. It will lead to ever more human suffering—until and unless people come to understand and embrace individualism and individual rights.

About Thomas Walker-Werth

Thomas Walker-Werth is associate editor at The Objective Standard and a fellow at both Objective Standard Institute and Foundation for Economic Education. He is currently writing his first full-length book, Reason for Living: A Rational, Fact-Based Approach to Living Your Best Life. See more of his work at walker-werth.com.

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