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Ruscism, also known as Rashism, Russism, or Russian fascism, is a term used by a number of scholars, politicians and publicists to describe the political ideology and the social practices of the Russian state in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, especially during the rule of Vladimir Putin. "Ruscism" and "Russism" are portmanteaus which combine the words 'Russian' and 'fascism'; "Rashism" is a rough transcription of the Russian and Ukrainian equivalents (also a portmanteau). It is also used in reference to the ideology of Russian military expansionism, and has been used as a label to describe an undemocratic system and nationality cult mixed with ultranationalism and a cult of personality. That transformation was described as based on the ideas of the "special civilizational mission" of the Russians, such as Moscow as the third Rome and expansionism, which manifests itself in anti-Westernism and supports regaining former lands by conquest. The term "Rashist" is also widely used by Ukrainian officials and media to more generally identify members of the Russian Armed Forces and supporters of Russian military aggression against Ukraine. The modern use of the term can be traced back to 1995, when it was used in the context of the First Chechen War, but the use of it became more common after the Russo-Georgian and Russo-Ukrainian wars and most recently, during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Ruscism and Rashism are both attempts to transliterate the Ukrainian and Russian terms рашизм (rashizm, rɐˈʂɨzm), a multilingual portmanteau of "Russia" and "fascism." According to Timothy D. Snyder, the word is complex, reflecting and referencing pronunciations of words in English, Ukrainian and Russian. The Washington Post asserts that the word "racism" (расизм or расизм) also contributes to the understood meaning of “rashism.” The term was, in the form Russism or Ruscism (русизм) popularized, described and extensively used in 1995 by President of the unrecognised Chechen state Ichkeria Dzhokhar Dudayev, who saw the military action by Russia in Chechnya as a manifestation of the rising far-right ideology.

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