Russia as a Death Cult: Who Supports the Theory?

Calling Russia a “death cult” sounds polemical. Yet the expression describes a serious and increasingly influential interpretation of Putinism: a political culture in which sacrifice, historical suffering, military death and the destruction of enemies have become sources of legitimacy.

This is not a formal theory with a single founder, nor a claim that Russians possess some innate attraction to death. The careful version is narrower: the Putin regime has constructed a political religion that offers supposedly meaningful death as compensation for a life without political agency, prosperity or a credible future.

Dina Khapaeva: the most systematic formulation

The Russian-born historian and sociologist Dina Khapaeva, a professor at Georgia Tech, has probably developed this thesis more systematically than anyone else.

Khapaeva argues that post-Soviet Russia progressively embraced contempt for individual life, fascination with cruelty and punishment, the rehabilitation of Stalin, imperial nostalgia and the glorification of sacrifice for the state. In this worldview, destruction can become a form of purification and the Second World War ceases to be remembered principally as a catastrophe. It becomes an object of worship.

Her crucial point is chronological: the full-scale invasion of Ukraine did not create this culture; it was one of its consequences. Putinism offers Russians the possibility of a supposedly heroic or useful death in place of a dignified and politically meaningful life.

Her argument is developed in Putin’s Dark Ages: Political Neomedievalism and Re-Stalinization in Russia and explained particularly clearly in the Meduza interview “A military defeat is the only cure.” Dina Khapaeva, A military defeat is the only cure, Meduza (19 January 2023)unverified record Her earlier book, The Celebration of Death in Contemporary Culture Dina Khapaeva, The Celebration of Death in Contemporary Culture, University of Michigan Pressunverified record, addresses a broader international phenomenon but supplies part of the intellectual background.

Andrey Makarychev: death as validation of the state

Political scientist Andrey Makarychev reaches a closely related conclusion through his analysis of the Russian “retro-state” and “Homo Putinus.” Russia, in his account, has lost sensitivity to death because its political identity increasingly depends on dead heroes, past wars, martyrdom, collective suffering and the willingness to sacrifice present lives for an imagined historic Russia.

A state with no persuasive vision of the future attempts to inhabit a mythologized past. Death is not merely tolerated: it validates the regime and confirms the nation’s imagined greatness. Makarychev summarizes this position in the interview “Russia has lost sensitivity to death. Death validates it now.” Andrey Makarychev and Robert Finch, Russia has lost sensitivity to death. Death validates it now., New Eastern Europe (9 May 2025)unverified record

Timothy Snyder: eternity politics and the disappearance of the future

Historian Timothy Snyder does not always use the exact phrase “death cult,” but his concept of eternity politics describes much of the same mechanism.

In eternity politics, the future disappears. Political life becomes an endless cycle of innocence, victimhood and revenge. The nation is eternally threatened, its enemies are eternally attacking it, and violence becomes proof of national virtue. The leader’s function is not to offer a better future but to interpret the nation’s suffering and identify the enemies responsible for it.

Snyder has emphasized the transformation of the Soviet victory in 1945 into a cult combining military power, the war dead and Putin’s personal rule. His essay “9 Theses on Putin’s Fascism for 9 May” Timothy Snyder, 9 Theses on Putin's Fascism for 9 May, Timothy Snyder (Substack) (9 May 2022)unverified record contrasts Russia’s cult of victory and the dead with Ukraine’s more future-oriented understanding of history. His larger framework appears in The Road to Unfreedom and his writings on Russian fascism.

Natalia Antonova: apathy keeps the system alive

Russian-American journalist Natalia Antonova uses the phrase explicitly. Her contribution is to show that such a system does not require a nation of enthusiastic fanatics.

In “Apathy Keeps Russia’s Death Cult Alive” Natalia Antonova, Apathy Keeps Russia's Death Cult Alive, The Bulwark (6 October 2022)unverified record, Antonova argues that fatalism, indifference and learned helplessness are enough: nothing can be changed; people have always died; the authorities know better; survival requires silence. Passive adaptation can sustain a death-centred ideology as effectively as genuine belief.

The cult of victory, sacrifice and death

Russian sociological analysis published by Re:Russia describes the regime’s emerging ideology as a combination of the cult of power, victory, sacrifice and death. It also provides an essential qualification: this official ideology does not necessarily reflect the private values of ordinary Russians.

Many people remain primarily concerned with family survival, personal security and material life. The Kremlin must therefore manufacture and reproduce its ideology through television, schools, ceremonies, memorials and financial incentives. “The Mobilisation of the Demobilised” Ekaterina Schulmann, The Mobilisation of the Demobilised, Re:Russiaunverified record depicts a state offering society a death-centred ideology while much of society responds through evasion and passive compliance rather than enthusiasm.

Memory politics: from “Never again” to “We can do it again”

A broader scholarly literature supports parts of this interpretation without necessarily using the expression “death cult.” Nina Tumarkin, author of The Living and the Dead: The Rise and Fall of the Cult of World War II in Russia; Julie Fedor; Maria Mälksoo; and researchers studying Victory Day, the Immortal Regiment and Russian memory laws have shown how remembrance of the Second World War became a source of state legitimacy, entitlement to violence and permanent mobilization.

The transformation can be summarized starkly: “Never again” became “We can do it again.” The dead no longer warn the living against war. They are symbolically recruited into the next one.

The sacralization of military death

The Russian Orthodox Church adds an explicitly religious dimension. Patriarch Kirill declared that Russian soldiers who die performing their military duty receive forgiveness of their sins. This turns death in Putin’s war into an act of atonement and presents obedience to the state as a path to redemption.

Researchers describe this as military-patriotic martyrdom: a fusion of Orthodox symbolism, imperial nationalism, the Great Patriotic War and submission to state power. The language of sin, purification and glory converts traumatic losses into politically useful sacrifice. See the report on Kirill’s declaration Religion News Service (Associated Press wire report), Moscow patriarch: Russian war dead have their sins forgiven (27 September 2022)unverified record and this academic study of military-patriotic martyrdom University of California Press, Martyrological in Form, Military-Patriotic in Contentunverified record.

What evidence supports the interpretation?

• Putin’s statement that Russians would go to heaven as martyrs in a nuclear confrontation.
• Patriarch Kirill’s promise of forgiveness for soldiers killed in Ukraine.
• The state’s extraordinary tolerance for Russian military casualties.
• Payments that make a soldier’s death a source of family income and social advancement.
• The language of cleansing, purification and holy war.
• The omnipresence of dead-warrior imagery and the Immortal Regiment.
• The glorification of Wagner mercenaries and convicted criminals who died fighting.
• The conversion of Victory Day into the central civic-religious ceremony of the state.
• Nuclear rhetoric implying that global annihilation is preferable to a world without Russian greatness.
• The absence of any plausible positive vision for Russia after “victory.”

A political religion—not a diagnosis of an entire people

The most defensible conclusion is not that “Russians naturally love death.” Essentializing an entire people would replace analysis with prejudice.

The Putin regime has constructed a political religion in which death, sacrifice, historical suffering and the destruction of enemies supply meaning and legitimacy that the state can no longer derive from prosperity, freedom or a credible future.

Whether ordinary Russians have genuinely internalized that religion remains disputed. Many comply because of money, fear, propaganda, resignation or the belief that resistance is futile. That does not make the ideology harmless. A death cult does not need everyone to believe. It needs enough people to preach it, enough institutions to enforce it and enough of society to stop objecting.

As an interpretive framework for Putinism—especially its post-2022 form—the thesis is powerful. Dina Khapaeva supplies its fullest formulation; Andrey Makarychev, Timothy Snyder, Natalia Antonova and scholars of Russian memory politics illuminate different parts of the same structure: a regime unable to promise a better life, increasingly legitimizing itself through meaningful death.