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Thinking Allowed · BBC Radio 4

Russian Propaganda

June 24, 2025·28 min·2 clips
How does Vladimir Putin use state propaganda to forge a charismatic, heroic image of himself and Russia?
Charisma is the starting problem. The host begins with old sociology arguments about Weber, asking how some leaders come to look separate from ordinary political authority. Putin's image comes across as assembled. The guest describes an ideological porridge, with greatness, masculinity, hunting, sport, language skill, Stalin, and the patriarch all stirred in. That mess is useful. Different Russians can take the piece that suits them, instead of dealing with one coherent doctrine. Orwell gives the conversation its hinge. The host quotes 1984 on control of the past, then asks how that authoritarian slogan explains Putin's Russia. The guest keeps it plain. Russia bends history for present use, denouncing Stalin under Khrushchev and then remaking Stalin under Putin. Tradition turns elastic. It can mean family, empire, religion, or whatever mythological past serves the regime now. The future points backward. The guest's sharpest line is that Russia's political imagination keeps reaching toward the thirteenth century. Byzantium gets pulled in too. Officials invoke the eastern Roman empire, while the guest dryly notes how absurd that sounds in the twenty-first century. The closing mood is heavier. A visible sign of support for Ukraine shows that not everyone is too afraid to resist the official script. Art remains a fragile hope. The host ends by returning to Orwell and wondering whether 1984 can still push readers against autocracy and repression.

As heard by us

A sharp sociology-minded account of how Putin's propaganda mixes charisma, history, and contradiction into political authority.

Russian Propaganda treats Putin's public image as a sociological problem: how charisma, state messaging, and a pliable version of history can be made to serve authority.

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Why you'd press play

How a state turns memory into a weapon and still calls it tradition.

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