Chapter 2 demonstrates that Russian modernist conservatism was first formed in the late Soviet Union as an attempt to confront the convergence horizon predicted by Western liberal modernization theories. From 1970 to 1985, theorizers of modernist conservatism aimed to reenchant Soviet modernity through the deconfliction of the relationship between technological modernity and spirituality. As they viewed it, this new ideological language should serve to reinvigorate the Soviet state ideology and maintain it as an alternative to the Western model of modernity. The chapter shows that, in contrast to the description of the Soviet state ideology as a rigid monolith, modernist conservatism’s ideas were selectively dispersed in official sites of ideology production such as the Komsomol.

Chapter 6 shows that Russian hawks entered the regime’s market for ideology in the years 2005–12. Transactional relations were established between modernist conservatives and the ruling party, whereby the former’s ideological discourse was sponsored as a strategic resource for the regime’s legitimation against oppositional forces and for its distinction against the Western model of liberal democracy. In 2012, the creation of the Izborskii Klub provided institutional form to this interelite network aimed at gaining policy influence over more liberal-inclined elite networks.

Chapter 3 argues that, starting from 1985, the Russian hawks consolidated as an idea network built around their common opposition against perestroika. Modernist conservatism served as the ideological magnet of this eclectic group aggregating national-conservative intellectuals with pro–status quo members of the Soviet political and military establishment. The newspapers Den (1990–93) and Zavtra (1993–) became the intellectual and social fabric of the group’s identity and cohesion, which were maintained across the 1991 regime change. The chapter also demonstrates that some of the hawks’ ideas spread in the ruling elites’ discourse as early as the mid-1990s to legitimate the authoritarian nature of the turn to a superpresidential system and to foster the construction of post-Soviet state patriotism.

Chapter 8 discusses how the Russian regime’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 concretely enacted Russian hawks’ conception of Russia as an imperial great power that should rely on its technological and military might to assert its civilizational distinction from the West. The chapter argues that the Russian regime has restored elements reminiscent of the Soviet-style “vertical,” facilitating the propagation of norms and principles through a bureaucratic chain of command. However, it has not completely reconstructed a cohesive institutionalized state apparatus. Its doctrinal framework remains adaptable. In addition to official state-led initiatives, the regime continued to oversee ideology formation through interactions and transactions with a variety of nonstate ideological entrepreneurs. This involvement of diverse actors across state and nonstate realms fostered a certain degree of polarization within policy circles. Moreover, the hawks’ production of narratives justifying Russia’s imperialism and war violence encountered resistance from recent intellectual emigrants who have established organizations in exile dedicated to fostering critical thinking and dissent in intellectual circles.

Chapter 1 introduces the reader to the book’s definition of the Russian hawks. It provides a brief review of the current literature on Russian conservatism and the gaps in it. It presents the two distinctive features of the book: the historical scope that spans across the 1991 regime change and the sociohistorical analysis of the career of the Russian hawks from ideological fringes to policy prominence. It builds the main argument of the book around the concept of idea network. Finally, it discusses the outline of the book.

Chapter 7 finds that, from 2012 to 2022, the Izborskii Klub evolved from a state-sponsored think tank, whose ideas were used as legitimizing sources for the regime’s policy decisions, to a private lobby group serving as the ideological basis of a conservative interelite network. The alternative state promotion and demotion of the club demonstrates the executive power’s limited and contextual endorsement of ideological narratives and its principled commitment to maintaining a certain degree of pluralism and policy flexibility through the attribution of shifting power weights to different elite blocs.

Chapter 4 shows how the Russian hawks’ ideas moved from the fringes to the center of the public sphere in the early 2000s. It investigates the 2001–02 controversy that surrounded the publication of a novel written by one of the most radical conservative ideologues, Aleksandr Prokhanov. It demonstrates that the controversy reconfigured the formerly consensual distinction between legitimate and transgressive public discourse. It explains that the intellectual legitimation of Prokhanov thrived on Russia’s political and intellectual elites’ backlash against the legacy of the 1990s and the standards of Western liberalism. The controversy eventually contributed to normalizing modernist conservatism, which gained a new audience among the younger generation of intellectuals.

This conclusion highlights that the Russian regime, from the mid-1990s onwards, has revived Soviet practices of sponsorship of ideology production. Instead of the Soviet institutionalization of an ideological apparatus, however, the current regime has outsourced it to clubs and think tanks outside the administration or party institutions. This challenges the common narrative that identifies a distinct conservative turning point in the Russian regime from 2012 onward. Instead, the book argues that this shift should be viewed within a broader and more gradual evolution of the relationship between decision-makers and “ideas networks.” The second implication is that regime support for ideology production aimed not at consolidating a unique state ideology but at cultivating and authoritatively controlling a certain degree of ideological pluralism. While an ideological core consolidated over the years in official discourse around key concepts such as strong state power and the multipolarity of the world order, additional ideological content remained fluid. This practice of “managed ideological pluralism” through the promotion or demotion of different idea networks maintained a range of lines and narratives available to justify various policy courses.

Chapter 5 demonstrates that in the years 2000–05 a new generation of Russian hawks born around the 1970s, the “Young Conservatives,” acquired a reputation as professional media intellectuals and developed a new type of collective ideological entrepreneurship. They naturalized modernist conservatism’s eclectic blend of concepts into a full-fledged ideology, “dynamic conservatism.” Moreover, they established themselves as a legitimate stratum of Russia’s intellectual elites contributing public policy recommendations.