Dina Khapaeva: the most systematic formulation
Khapaeva's argument that Putinism constructed a death-centred political religion before the invasion, not because of it.
The Russian-born historian and sociologist Dina Khapaeva, Professor of Russian at the Georgia Institute of Technology, has probably developed the “death cult” thesis more systematically than anyone else.
Post-Soviet Russia has 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 — a political religion in which supposedly meaningful death compensates for a life without political agency, prosperity or a credible future. This culture produced, rather than resulted from, the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
This documents Khapaeva's interpretive thesis, confirmed against her interview and book descriptions. It is an interpretive framework, not a claim capable of simple true/false verification; "supported" here means the sources make the argument attributed to her, not that the thesis is proven fact about Russian society as a whole.
claim:khapaeva-putinism-death-cult-thesis
Her crucial point is chronological: the full-scale invasion of Ukraine did not create this culture; it was one of its consequences Dina Khapaeva, A military defeat is the only cure, Meduza (19 January 2023)unverified record. Her argument is developed at length in Putin’s Dark Ages: Political Neomedievalism and Re-Stalinization in Russia Dina Khapaeva, Putin's Dark Ages: Political Neomedievalism and Re-Stalinization in Russia, Routledge (2024)unverified record, which argues that Putinism fuses the celebration of Ivan the Terrible’s oprichnina with the rehabilitation of Stalinism. 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.
Khapaeva’s own summary, in her words: “a military defeat… is the only thing capable of sobering Russians” from this ideology.
Sources for this chapter
- Dina Khapaeva, A military defeat is the only cure, Meduza (19 January 2023)unverified record
- Dina Khapaeva, Putin's Dark Ages: Political Neomedievalism and Re-Stalinization in Russia, Routledge (2024)unverified record
- Dina Khapaeva, The Celebration of Death in Contemporary Culture, University of Michigan Pressunverified record