'Putin's Europe', a research project on Putin's propaganda

(ANSA) - ROME, 23 NOV - Now that in Poland Donald Tusk, former president of the European Council, aspires to form a liberal, pro-European government, the Visegrad group is reviving the dilemma between the populist and liberal perspectives. Of the challenges to Western liberalism and how Europe has changed since the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian war speaks about 'Putin's Europe,' a research work that deals with Putin's propaganda and the instruments of its dissemination in Europe: the volume will be presented in Warsaw on November 28.
    The project was carried out by a team of European scholars (Polish, Austrian, Russian, Portuguese, Italian, Ukrainian) coordinated by the European Liberal Forum (Brussels) in cooperation with, among others, Projekt Polska (Warsaw), Friedrich Naumann (Berlin) and Fondazione Luigi Einaudi (Italy).
    Also among the authors of the volume is researcher Renata Gravina, who devotes a chapter to an examination of how anti-liberal propaganda was declined in the 20-year Putin era and who points out how, conversely, a specifically Russian liberal tradition occupied a prominent place in the history of the empire.
    To the origin of Russian liberalism the author has dedicated a historical essay, 'Freedom out of Russia' (Nuova Cultura), presented yesterday at the Tor Vergata University of Rome, as part of the newly established Center for Contemporary Russian Studies (CESARC). The center, coordinated by historian Andrea Romano, aims once again to understand and make people understand contemporary Russia. But the idea is, also, to fuel a debate that can analyze Russia's authoritarian drifts and nurture interest in the affairs and destinies of democratic Russia.
    According to Gravina, "the contradictory vicissitude of the history of Russian freedom finds countless points of contact with the theoretical parabola of Putinism, which, particularly in its first terms, drew heavily from the ideology of conservative liberalism." Knowing Russia's liberal history and connecting it with current events appears, for the researcher, as "one of the tools for investigating the difficulties and possible liberal prospects for the future of the whole of Europe." (ANSA).