The Political Elite Under Putin

Here’s my latest policy brief from the series on Russian strategic culture and leadership decision-making, written for a collaborative project organized by the Marshall Center with support from the Russia Strategy Initiative. This one is on stability in Russia’s political elite during Vladimir Putin’s rule. As with the previous ones, I am posting the full text here with permission from the Marshall Center. Please go to the newly updated Marshall Center website if you would prefer to read a PDF version.

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Executive Summary

• Russia’s political elite has undergone relatively little change under Vladimir Putin’s rule. Only sixty people have been ranked twentieth or higher at least once between 2000 and 2019 in the annual Nezavisimaya Gazeta list of the most politically influential Russians. Eighteen people have appeared on every list during this period. The greatest shift in elite composition occurred between 2007 and 2008, with smaller shifts around the presidential elections of 2004 and 2012.
• Most of the political elite originate in the government bureaucracy in Moscow or St. Petersburg or came to their positions of influence through personal ties to Vladimir Putin, either in St. Petersburg or in the security services. Only ten percent came to power through electoral politics; another ten percent are businessmen who made their money independently of any connections to Vladimir Putin.
• The elite is fairly evenly divided between individuals who have political influence solely because of their positions in government and individuals who have influence outside of their official role. People in the first group generally drop off the list quickly after leaving government or being demoted, and people in the second group tend to retain influence regardless of their position at any given time and remain influential for extended periods, even after departing government service.

Introduction

For most of the post-Soviet period, the newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta has conducted a monthly survey of Russian political experts. This survey asks its respondents to rank the 100 most politically influential Russians in the previous month. Throughout this period, the newspaper has also published an annual ranking,¹ based on the average rank of those mentioned during the previous calendar year. These data can be used to identify the most politically influential members of the Russian elite during the twenty years of Vladimir Putin’s rule.²

Characteristics of the Data Set

The dataset used includes all individuals identified in Nezavisimaya Gazeta’s survey who ranked at least twentieth at some point during the period from 2000 to 2019. Since the annual rankings run through 2019, they do not include changes in elite composition resulting from the government reshuffle that took place in January 2020. Such changes will be reflected in the next annual ranking, which is expected to be published in early 2021. This group is composed of just sixty individuals. Although most of those named are politicians or senior government officials, eight are well-connected businessmen or executives of state corporations. Only six individuals came to power through electoral politics. Two are religious leaders. Only three are women. Almost all built their careers in Moscow or St. Petersburg, with only three originally coming from the regions.

The dataset shows each individual’s average annual ranking if they were in the top 100 that year. In the graphs below, gaps indicate periods when the individual in question fell out of the top 100. The primary characteristic of the list is the extraordinary longevity of the people on it. Eighteen people have appeared in the top 100 every year from 2000 through 2019. Nine of them also appeared in the 1999 list, indicating that their political careers extend at least to the late Yeltsin period.³ Only four people have returned to the top 100 after spending more than a year off the list.

Members of the Putin-era political elite can be characterized in various ways. Many analysts have divided them according to their background, as having emerged from the security services or from Vladimir Putin’s circles in St. Petersburg or from private businesses established in the 1990s.⁴ Others have divided them according to the nature of their position.⁵ These are very useful ways to categorize, therefore both background and position are mentioned in the discussion below. However, I take a different starting point and categorize the elite on the basis of when they attracted the notice of expert analysts of the Russian political scene as being influential in that scene. This undoubtedly creates some artifacts. Some individuals undoubtedly flew under the radar for some period of time before attracting the notice of experts. Most importantly, individuals who may be influential advisors to senior leaders but stay in the shadows may be undervalued or missed entirely. Nevertheless, given that the main goal of this study is to examine elite stability and change, a primary focus on the chronology of the subjects’ appearance on the scene is more appropriate than one that puts the main focus on the subjects’ background or role in the political system.

Survivors of the Yeltsin Era

Ten members of the political elite can be characterized as long-term survivors of the Yeltsin era. These are individuals who have appeared on the list since at least 1999, which is the earliest year for which data is currently available. Strikingly, half of the group is still considered among the top thirty most politically influential people in Russia in 2019, twenty years later. This group of Council and former Governor of St. Petersburg Valentina Matvienko; and current Presidential Envoy of to the North Caucasus region and former Prosecutor General, Yuri Chaika. With the exception of Putin and Matvienko, these are people who have made careers as appointed senior officials rather than elected politicians.

The group of survivors also includes a number of people who have made their careers primarily in the business world, including such prominent oligarchs as Roman Abramovich and Vagit Alekperov. Vladimir Potanin is also included in the graphic as an oligarch known for his ability to maneuver through changes in Russia’s political scene and remain influential, although he is not part of the dataset, having never reached the top twenty in influence in any year measured. Although Anatolii Chubais was a prominent government official earlier in his career, during the period being analyzed here he has made his career in the world of state corporations, first as head of Russia’s electricity monopoly and then as head of the Rosnanotech state corporation. All four of these individuals have seen a decline in their influence in recent years, reflecting a general decline in influence among oligarchs in favor of bureaucratic officials.

The two other members of this group deserve a brief mention. Aleksandr Zhukov is a survivor who has played a variety of roles in government, including as a leading member of the State Duma, as the head of the Russian Olympic committee that organized the Sochi Winter Olympics, and as a deputy prime minister. Like the oligarchs, his influence has declined sharply in recent years. Finally, there is the case of Aleksandr Voloshin. Throughout Putin’s first term as President, Voloshin was the head of the presidential administration and considered one of the most powerful people in Russia. More interestingly, unlike other holdovers from the Yeltsin team described in the following section, he has consistently remained on the list of politically influential Russians since his resignation in 2003, albeit in relatively low positions.

Yeltsin-Era Politicians Who Did Not Last

A second group of members of the political elite were also survivors of the Yeltsin era, but have not retained their influence. These nine individuals are a fairly diverse group. Five of the nine were senior officials in the central government who stepped down at various points between 2001 and 2011 and thereafter disappeared from political life in Russia. These include Viktor Gerashchenko, who headed the Russian Central Bank until 2002; Aleksandr Veshniakov, who headed Russia’s Central Election Commission until 2007; and Mikhail Kasianov, who served as prime minister during Putin’s first term as president. There are also two former government ministers: Mikhail Zurabov, who headed the pension fund from 1999 to 2004 and was thereafter health minister until 2007 and Viktor Khristenko, who was deputy prime minister in both Yeltsin’s last year as president and in Putin’s first term and thereafter the minister of industry until 2012.

The other four members of this group can be described as more eclectic. Aleksei II’s influence came from his position as the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church. As we will see below, after his death in 2008, his successor retained a roughly similar level of influence. Yuri Luzhkov rapidly lost influence after his removal from his post as mayor of Moscow in 2010. The two businessmen in this group had very different trajectories. Mikhail Khodorkovsky was, for a time, the most influential private businessman in Russia and remained influential even after his arrest in 2003, but he disappears from the list after his trial and imprisonment in 2005. Finally, Mikhail Fridman is somewhat different from the rest of this group. He is a businessman whose influence has gradually faded over time. In this, he is most similar to Vladimir Potanin in the previous group (the “survivors”), with the main difference being that the degree of his fade has taken him out of not only the top twenty, but the top 100, in recent years. Other than Fridman, the members of this group are all notable for having derived their influence from their positions, rather than their personal power. Unlike several people in the survivor group, their influence did not outlast their dismissal from their government positions.

Putin’s Original Team

When Vladimir Putin became Russia’s president in 2000, he quickly installed his own team of loyalists. With only one exception, these twelve individuals who first appeared on the list in 2000 have remained highly influential players in Russian politics over the next twenty years. The majority of the team are connected to Putin, either through their work in the security services or from Putin’s time working in the St. Petersburg mayor’s office in the 1990s.

The security service contingent includes Sergei Ivanov, Igor Sechin, Nikolai Patrushev, and Vladimir Ustinov. The first three people on this list have been among the core members of Putin’s inner circle throughout his time in power. One key difference when compared with the group of individuals that did not last is that the security service contingent’s influence has remained high regardless of the various positions they have held. Thus, Igor Sechin has variously served as deputy head of the presidential administration, deputy prime minister (while Putin was prime minister), and head of the Rosneft state oil corporation. His influence did not decrease when he departed from his government position in 2012 and he remains one of the ten most politically influential people in Russia to the present day.

Similarly, Nikolai Patrushev has been highly influential, both as FSB director and as secretary of the Security Council, despite the latter organization’s relatively limited formal power. Sergei Ivanov was highly influential first as defense minister, then as deputy prime minister, and finally as head of the presidential administration. His influence has faded in the last three years after his departure from the presidential administration, but the fact that he remains on the list despite having virtually no significant official role in Russian politics speaks to his personal connection to the president. Vladimir Ustinov is a somewhat different case. Although he played a powerful role in Russian politics while serving as prosecutor general, his removal from that position in 2006 was interpreted as a political defeat and resulted in a sharp decline in his perceived influence, even while he was still serving as Minister of Justice. After his dismissal from that position in 2008 and his transfer to the role of presidential representative to the Southern Federal District, he disappeared from the rankings entirely.

The St. Petersburg team includes Dmitry Medvedev, Aleksei Kudrin, German Gref, Dmitry Kozak, and Boris Gryzlov. These are also figures who have exhibited political influence regardless of the position they held. Medvedev served variously as deputy head and then head of the presidential administration, first deputy prime minister, president, and prime minister, retaining a position among the ten most influential Russian political figures since his appointment as head of the presidential administration in late 2003. Gref and Kudrin survived their departures from positions as minister for economic development and trade and minister of finance, respectively. Gref has retained influence in his role as head of Sberbank, while Kudrin remained highly influential despite having no major government or business position from 2011 until his appointment as head of the Accounts Chamber in 2018. Boris Gryzlov was highly influential as minister of internal affairs and as speaker of the State Duma, but disappeared from the list after stepping down as speaker in 2011. He returned in 2017, however, despite having a fairly low-level position as the president’s representative to the contact group on the Ukraine conflict.

Dmitry Kozak has held a wide variety of positions over the last twenty years, both in Moscow and in the regions, while remaining highly influential. His peak of influence was in Putin’s first two terms in office, when he held senior positions in the presidential administration and as presidential representative to the Southern Federal District. Note that his high level of influence in the latter position contrasts with the case of Vladimir Ustinov, who dropped off the influence list after replacing Kozak in this position. This strongly suggests that Kozak’s influence during this period was related to his personal connections, rather than the office he held.

Three other members of the team are not connected to Putin through prior service. Vladislav Surkov and Aleksei Gromov were already working in the central government in the 1990s but first rose to positions of prominence under Putin. Surkov served in the presidential administration until 2011, then briefly as head of the government executive office before becoming a personal advisor to Putin. Although his influence declined in the latter position and he is likely to drop out of the rankings entirely in 2020 after his very public resignation in February, he remained on the list throughout the period of the study. Gromov was the president’s press secretary in his first two terms, followed by twelve years in the presidential administration as deputy and first deputy chief of staff. His influence has steadily increased over the years, especially once he moved into the presidential administration. Finally, Oleg Deripaska is an outlier among this group, as his role is in business rather than government. Although he is linked more closely to Putin than some of the businessmen who appeared in the other groups, his influence has declined in the last decade as power has shifted away from people in business and toward government officials.

People Who Became Influential During Putin’s First Term

Individuals who joined the list of politically influential figures between 2001 and 2004 fall into very similar categories as Putin’s original team. Once again, the majority are figures whose background is in the security services or in the St. Petersburg government, while a few rose through other channels. Unlike Putin’s original team, few of these individuals have the political capital to have influence separate from their positions.

Siloviki, political figures who rose to power in the security services, such as Mikhail Fradkov, Rashid Nurgaliev, and Viktor Ivanov, are good examples of this tendency. Fradkov, for example, appeared in relatively low positions on the list as head of the tax police in 2001 and 2002, then disappeared from the list entirely while serving as Russia’s representative to the European Union in 2003. He then spent four years as one of the most politically influential people in Russia while serving as prime minister, before again disappearing from the list entirely after losing that position. He returned to the list in 2013 while serving as head of the Foreign Intelligence Service, but disappeared after being dismissed from that position in 2016. Similarly, Rashid Nurgaliev was highly influential while serving as minister of internal affairs from 2004 to 2011, but disappeared from the list immediately after stepping down from that position. Viktor Ivanov spent several years as an assistant to President Putin and then several more as director of the Federal Narcotics Service. He disappeared from the list after being dismissed from the latter position in early 2016.

The political figures who came out of St. Petersburg are a relatively diverse group. Among them are two who have remained on the list throughout the period since their initial appearance in 2001–2002. Sergei Mironov served for many years as the speaker of the Federation Council, although he retained a certain amount of influence after moving to the State Duma in 2012. Aleksei Miller has remained among the twenty-five most politically influential Russians continuously since 2003 while serving as the head of Gazprom, Russia’s natural gas monopoly. Vladimir Iakunin was on the list only during the period from 2005 to 2015, when he headed the Russian Railroad state corporation. His immediate disappearance after his departure from that position in 2015 suggests that his influence derived from his position, rather than his personal power. Viktor Zubkov first made the list while running the Financial Monitoring Committee and reached higher positions on it, having served as prime minister and first deputy prime minister. He dropped off the list after losing the latter position in 2012.

The remaining four people in this group have had highly varied careers. Igor Shuvalov has served in a variety of roles in the government, including as the government’s chief of staff, as an assistant to the president, and as first deputy prime minister. He was most highly ranked on Nezavisimaya Gazeta’s list in the latter period, although he retained some influence even after departing that position in 2018. Aleksandr Khloponin is one of the few people on the overall list who appeared on the list while holding a position outside of Moscow. He was, for many years, the governor of Krasnoyarsk Krai and then served as deputy prime minister. The peak of his influence was in the period 2010–2014, when he concurrently served as deputy prime minister and presidential envoy to the North Caucasus Federal District. Even during this period, his highest position in the survey was twentieth in 2010, highlighting the extent to which Moscowbased political figures dominate the rankings.

Dmitry Rogozin first came to prominence as one of the few elected national-level politicians on this list. He was one of the leaders of the right-wing Rodina party until 2005 and was thus one of the few influential politicians with an independent power base. However, he dropped off the list after departing the party due to conflicts with other leaders. He returned to a position of influence in 2012 after being appointed deputy prime minister in charge of the defense and space industries. Finally, Sergei Pugachev is unique, in that he only appeared on the list for two years, but in very high positions. He was a businessman with close ties to Putin, but quickly fell out of favor after refusing to reinvest his capital in Russia. He has since renounced his Russian citizenship and now lives in France.

People Who Became Influential During Putin’s Second Term

A fairly large group—thirteen people—became politically influential during Putin’s second term. Although a few of these people appeared on the list early in the term, most joined or rose to high rankings in 2007 or 2008. Individuals who joined the political elite during this period fall into two major categories, with a few outliers.

Five people in this set had close ties with Putin, mostly dating to their schooling in the 1970s and 1980s or through working together in the security services in the 1980s and 1990s. All five of these individuals rose to highly influential positions at around the same time and have remained near the top of the list throughout Putin’s presidency. Aleksandr Bastrykin was a university classmate of Putin. He worked at the Ministry of Justice and in the Prosecutor-General’s office before being appointed in 2007 as head of the Investigative Committee (IC), an anti-corruption agency within the Prosecutor-General’s office. His influence increased further in 2011, when the IC became an independent agency directly subordinate to the president.

Sergei Naryshkin has served in a variety of roles over the years, including chief of staff to the prime minister, deputy prime minister, head of the presidential administration, chair of the State Duma and, most recently, director of the Foreign Intelligence Service. His influence has always come less from his position and more from his close ties to Vladimir Putin, whom he has known since the early 1980s, when they studied together in the Soviet security service (KGB) schools in Leningrad. He was perceived as having been appointed head of the presidential administration under Dmitry Medvedev in order to ensure Medvedev’s loyalty to Putin.⁶ Aleksandr Bortnikov spent his entire career in the KGB or its successor agency, the Federal Security Service (FSB), primarily in the Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) office. He was appointed deputy director of the FSB in 2004 and became its head in 2008. Although all three are influential because of their positions, they achieved these positions through a combination of their previous work and their connections to Vladimir Putin.

On the other hand, Sergei Chemezov and Yuri Kovalchuk have attained their positions almost entirely through their connections to Putin. Chemezov worked with Putin in the KGB in East Germany in the 1980s and again in the Presidential Property Office in Moscow in the late 1990s. Since Putin became president, Chemezov has held senior positions in a variety of state corporations, beginning with Rosoboronexport (the state defense export company) and since 2007 as general director of Rostec, which, under his leadership, has become the dominant player in Russia’s defense industry. Although Yuri Kovalchuk did not go to school or work with Putin, he has had close ties to the president dating back to the 1990s. Like Chemezov, he has never worked in the Russian government, having instead used his personal ties to Putin to amass a large fortune as the head of Bank Rossiia, a position that has led him to be labeled as “Putin’s personal banker.” 

A second set of five people rose to political influence by rising through the ranks of their agencies. Sergei Lavrov is perhaps the archetype of this figure. He has served as foreign minister since 2004, having previously served as a deputy foreign minister and as Russia’s representative to the United Nations. Although he was, for many years, described as someone who is a civil servant and chief implementer rather than a member of Putin’s inner circle, his longevity in his post has gradually translated into greater influence on decision-making. 

Tatiana Golikova rose through the ranks of the Ministry of Finance, becoming Deputy Finance Minister in the late 1990s. She was then appointed as Minister of Health and Social Development in 2007, going from that role to the position of Chair of the Accounts Chamber in 2013 and then becoming Deputy Prime Minister for Social Policy in 2018. Similarly, Elvira Nabiullina rose through the ranks at the Ministry for Economic Development and Trade, becoming the head of the ministry in 2007. She has retained influence since transitioning to her current position as head of Russia’s Central Bank in 2013.

Arkady Dvorkovich rose through the Finance Ministry and the Ministry for Economic Development, having developed close ties to German Gref in the latter ministry. He first rose to prominence as then-President Dmitry Medvedev’s chief economic advisor and then as deputy prime minister once Medvedev assumed the position of Prime Minister in 2012. He dropped off the list of politically influential Russians after losing that position in 2018, and now serves as president of the World Chess Federation. Finally, Patriarch Kirill rose through the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church and headed the Church’s Department for External Church Relations from 1989 until his election as Patriarch in 2009, following Patriarch Aleksei’s death.

He first appeared on the list of influential people in 2007, when it became increasingly clear that he was likely to become the next patriarch, even as Aleksei’s health was declining. All five of these individuals are influential because of their positions, rather than through personal ties.

Only two members of this group attained their positions through the political process, both initially in regions outside of Moscow. Sergei Sobianin has had a long career in electoral politics at the regional level, first winning election in 1991 as mayor of a small town in Siberia, gradually rising to higher positions in the region, including a five-year stint as governor of Tiumen. He moved to Moscow in 2005 to serve as head of the presidential administration, and has remained a fixture in the top twenty most influential Russians since 2007. He has been the mayor of Moscow since 2010.

Viacheslav Volodin won his first election even earlier, serving on the Saratov city council beginning in 1990. He represented Saratov in the State Duma beginning in 1999, serving as the Duma’s deputy speaker. He succeeded Sobianin as head of the government executive office in 2010 and has remained on the top twenty list since then, serving as deputy head of the presidential administration and, since 2016, as chair of the State Duma.

Finally, Anatoly Serdiukov is unique among this group in that he achieved his influence by virtue of his ties to someone in the top elite other than Putin. He appears on the list in 2007, when he moved from his previous position as head of the Federal Tax Service to Defense Minister. He dropped off the list in 2012, when he was dismissed from that position. His appointment was linked to his connection to Viktor Zubkov, as he was married to Zubkov’s daughter. Despite constant criticism from members of the military, he remained in the position until his wife filed for divorce in 2012, at which point he was quickly accused of corruption and removed from his position.

People Who Became Influential in the Last 12 Years

Although much has been written about efforts by Russia’s senior leadership to renew Russia’s political elite, very few people have joined the ranks of the most influential Russians since 2008. In fact, only one person who joined the list while Dmitry Medvedev was president has become highly influential, while another four rose to top positions between Putin’s return to the presidency in 2012 and the end of 2019. As we saw in the previous section, a few others appeared on the list earlier, but only became highly influential after 2012. The five people in this group come from a variety of backgrounds, though most share the characteristic of rising to positions of influence through the ranks of the organizations they now lead, rather than achieving that position through personal connections to Putin or members of Putin’s inner circle. Dmitry Peskov rose through the diplomatic service and then through the presidential press office before becoming Putin’s press secretary in 2008. Anton Siluanov rose through the finance ministry, replacing the previous minister in late 2011. Anton Vaino rose through the presidential administration and has headed it since 2016. Vladimir Kolokoltsev served in various positions in the interior ministry, followed by a term as the Moscow police commissioner, before being appointed to head the interior ministry in 2012. Viktor Zolotov is the one exception in this group because he has been personally close to Putin since serving as a bodyguard to St. Petersburg mayor Anatolii Sobchak in the 1990s. Although he only appeared on the list of influential Russians in 2016, he headed the presidential security service from the start of Putin’s tenure in 2000 until his appointment as head of the newly established National Guard in 2016. He thus serves as a good example of the type of individual who was missed by expert rankings because of his tendency to keep out of the limelight.

Inflection Points

Although Russia’s political elite has experienced relatively little change over the last twenty years, there have been a few key moments of substantial renewal, most immediately before or after presidential elections. After the initial introduction of Putin’s team in 2000–2001, an initial shift took place in 2003–2004. This was a period of consolidation, during which holdovers from the Yeltsin administration such as Kasyanov and Voloshin left their positions and the influence of independent businessmen was largely eliminated after the arrest of Khodorkovsky. These figures’ residual influence meant that they remained on the list, though in relatively low positions, for some time thereafter. However, starting at this point, all senior officials were either members of Putin’s circle or technocrats.

A much bigger elite transition took place in 2007, with the departure of Veshniakov, Fradkov, and Zurabov and the decline in influence of Chubais, Gref, Zhukov, and Viktor Ivanov. At the same time, a large number of new people appeared on the list, including Chemezov, Bortnikov, Bastrykin, Kovalchuk, Golikova, Nabiullina, Dvorkovich, and Serdiukov. In addition, Naryshkin, Zubkov, Iakunin, and Shuvalov, who had all been on the list previously, first attained high levels of influence in 2007 or 2008. These changes occurred as part of the transition to what became known as the “tandemocracy,” a period during which Medvedev served as president while Putin was prime minister.

There was a second major transition around the 2012 presidential election, with the departures of Zubkov, Gryzlov, Khristenko, Nurgaliev, and Serdiukov and the decline of Kudrin and Surkov. At the same time, Shoigu, Bastrykin, Volodin, and Peskov became highly influential for the first time while Siluanov, Rogozin, and Kolokoltsev either first appeared on the list or returned after a lengthy absence. This date marked the consolidation of the conservative turn in Russian politics, with security officials in the ascendance and economic modernizers relegated to secondary roles.

Putin’s third term was characterized largely by stability, with only a few significant shifts in influence. There were early signs of a generational shift, although few younger officials had yet reached positions of highest influence by the end of 2019, as highlighted by the dearth of people in the final group discussed above. Although a big government shakeup took place in January 2020, initial monthly polling suggests that this will result primarily in a reshuffling, with potentially limited impact on the composition of the top elite beyond the addition of the new prime minister. The shift to a new generation is coming, but the highest level still consists primarily of the people who have been with Putin since the early days of his rule. This will likely remain the case at least until the next presidential election in 2024.

Conclusion

The small number of people represented in the elite suggests a high level of elite continuity, which has allowed the regime to remain remarkably stable over a twenty-year period. Regime stability can be fleeting and authoritarian regimes, in particular, can shift from the appearance of eternal stability to collapse in a brief period. Nevertheless, the level of elite continuity in Putin’s Russia has allowed for relatively high level of policy consistency. While Putin’s team certainly has its share of tensions, everyone in his inner circle understands how the others operate.

The expert survey data clearly show that Russia’s Putin-era political elite includes two types of officials. Members of the first group have influence because of their roles or positions in government, while members of the second group have influence independently of their positions because of their ties to Vladimir Putin. Those in the second group tend to remain influential even when they are no longer in positions of power, while those in the first group drop out of the rankings as soon as they step down from their official role. This finding suggests that the number of people with real power may be even smaller than the sixty people represented in the data set, as only the second group has lasting influence at the highest levels. It also suggests that the members of the elite who were displaced in the government turnover of January 2020 will have different fates. People who have close ties to Putin, such as Dmitry Medvedev, will remain influential, while those who have had power because of their roles in government, such as Surkov, are likely to disappear.

Notes

¹ The most recent annual rankings were published in Dmitri Orlov, “100 ведущих политиков России в 2019 году,” Nezavisimaya Gazeta, January 1, 2020, http://www.ng.ru/ideas/2020-01-13/7_7766_people.html.

² The question of how well an expert survey of this type reflects actual power dynamics in Russia is a valid one. Because the main goal of this study is to examine political influence, ratings by Russian experts on domestic politics are likely to be a fairly accurate representation, especially because the survey used a consistent methodology throughout the period under study.

³ “1999 год. 100 ведущих политиков России.” https://ru.telegram.one/CorruptionTV/1499.

⁴ Olga Kryshtanovskaya and Stephen White, “Putin’s Militocracy,” Post-Soviet Affairs, 19(4):289-306, 2003.

⁵ Tatiana Stanovaya, “Пять путинских элит на фоне транзита,” Carnegie Moscow Center, February 27, 2020. https://carnegie.ru/2020/02/27/ru-pub-81158.

⁶ Guy Faulconbridge, Michael Stott, “Medvedev’s Kremlin chiefs are Putin men,” Reuters, May 13, 2008. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-cabinet-kremlin/medvedevs-kremlin-chiefs-are-putin-men-idUSL1323497720080513.

How Much Did Orthodox Church Help Revive Russia’s Military and Nuclear Complex?

I have published a review of Dima Adamsky‘s excellent new book on Russian Nuclear Orthodoxy on the Russia Matters site. Here’s a preview.

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“Russian Nuclear Orthodoxy: Religion, Politics and Strategy”
By Dmitry Adamsky
Stanford University Press, April 2019

“Russian Nuclear Orthodoxy,” an important new book by the Israeli scholar Dmitry Adamsky, explores the critical but highly understudied juncture between religion and the military. Focusing on the role played by the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) in the restoration and development of the Russian nuclear weapons complex in the post-Cold War period, Adamsky highlights the organizational and ideological impact of the church on the gradual remilitarization of Russia over the last three decades. Adamsky has written a highly readable and informative book on a woefully understudied topic, though one that at times reads like a continuous success story for the church and raises many questions. Also, the book would have been strengthened by a more comparative focus, vis-à-vis both the role of other religious faiths in Russia and the experience of other countries.

The main argument comes in three parts. First, the church has played and will continue to play a crucial role in promoting the rebuilding of the Russian military in general and the nuclear weapons complex in particular. The book demonstrates that the church was among the earliest advocates for the nuclear weapons complex, at a time when the military and nuclear agencies were generally unpopular among Russians and neglected by a cash-strapped government. Second, the church has influenced the direction of security thinking among both Russian politicians and military leaders. Finally, church advocacy has resulted in a gradual conflation of national defense and rearmament with holiness and spirituality. The protection of the state and nation through armed force has been portrayed as a holy act that is highly compatible with religious belief and spiritual values.

The book is organized chronologically by decade. The first, labeled the Genesis Decade, follows the collapse of the Soviet Union and is the period during which the church-nuclear nexus was first developed, beginning as a grassroots phenomenon within the nuclear complex that combined with outreach efforts by the ROC. The second decade, labeled the Conversion Decade, features the emergence of a top-down trend that supplemented the bottom-up initiatives of the 1990s. During this period, which coincides with Vladimir Putin’s first 10 years in power, the increased role of religion in Russian society and political life merged with a gradual increase in societal respect for the Russian military to result in the formulation of the “nuclear orthodoxy doctrine.” The Operationalization Decade of the last 10 years, Adamsky argues, has resulted in peak clericalization of the Russian military and Russian foreign policy. During this period, “Orthodoxy became the main pillar of Russian nationalism and the basis of state ideology”; in the military sphere, “religious rituals became tightly interwoven with … combat activities” while “priests have penetrated all levels of command.”

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Please click here to read the rest

Russian Politics and Law, March 2013 Table of Contents

Volume 51 Number 2 / March-April 2013 of Russian Politics and Law is now available on the mesharpe.metapress.com web site at http://mesharpe.metapress.com/link.asp?id=U3W2355N2437.

This issue contains:

Civil Society in Russian Politics: Editor’s Introduction	p. 3
Dmitry Gorenburg
Quo Vadis?: Prospects for Establishing Civil Society in Russia. A Round-Table Discussion Hosted by Polis	p. 6
Mass Protests in the Context of the Russian Power Regime	p. 77
Anton N. Oleinik

Civil Society in Russian Politics: Editor’s Introduction

In the aftermath of the public protests that accompanied the 2011–12 Russian electoral season, the topic of civil society in Russia returned to a level of prominence it had not had in Russia since the immediate aftermath of the period of mass protest that brought down the Soviet government in the late 1980s and the early 1990s. While many analysts had for years written about the unusually quiescent nature of Russian society, the emergence of mass public demonstrations against an entrenched political regime led some scholars to reevaluate their models of the political behavior of Russian citizens.

Most of the issue comprises the presentations made at a roundtable held by the journal Polis. The roundtable, titled “Quo Vadis? Prospects for Establishing Civil Society in Russia,” shows that there is no consensus on the role and functioning of civil society in present-day Russia, much less on its future prospects, among leading Russian academics. Some of the speakers see civil society as emerging from the organizations that have sought to protect and institutionalize Russians’ political rights over the last two decades. Others argue that these organizations are inherently political and therefore cannot be the basis for a true civil society. As one speaker notes, protests cannot be taken as a sign of the maturation of civil society. Supporters of this viewpoint look instead to various nonpolitical social organizations, including ones focused on establishing organizations that help Russian citizens achieve their material, spiritual, and social needs.

The speakers also disagree on the state’s role in developing civil society in Russia. Supporters of the political point of view primarily see the state as an opponent of efforts to build Russian civil society. Others argue that in present-day Russia, civil society cannot be developed without state involvement. While there are many nuances to the argument, the critical disagreement can be summarized in the debate over whether civil society can function successfully only if social actors and the state cooperate in its development or, on the contrary, if its development requires society to battle against a largely authoritarian state to create space for public political activity. The roundtable participants do not resolve this dispute, which also remains at the heart of divisions among different political currents within the Russian Federation.

In “Mass Protests in the Context of the Russian Power Regime,” Anton Oleinik interprets the mass protests in Russia in late 2011 and early 2012 as a reaction to the prevalence of a special model of power relationships in Russia. He argues that dissatisfaction with the absence of feedback in relations between the state and society played a critical role in spawning the protests, utilizing survey data that shows that this reason was given by more than half of all protest participants as a cause of their participation in a critical December 2011 demonstration, while the more specific reason of indignation about voter fraud (also an indicator of a lack of equitable relations between state and society) was cited by almost three-quarters of respondents.

Oleinik discusses scenarios in which the mass protests are a first step toward the transition from the existing equilibrium of the Russian power regime to a new democratic equilibrium regime, placing an emphasis on two tasks. The first is the need to reform municipal and regional governance, which could act as a school for the next generation of officials, who could transfer their experience to the central level as they rise in the ranks. The second is the need to democratize the functioning of universities, especially those that train members of the future governing elite. As with local administration, the educational institutions could act as training grounds for the next generation of government officials, inculcating democratic values that they would in turn enshrine in state institutions during their subsequent careers.

Since these articles were published in mid-2012, the Russian protest movement has visibly lost steam. Vladimir Putin’s regime not only seems strongly entrenched but has initiated a crackdown on independent nongovernmental organizations that has made it increasingly difficult for societal organizations seeking to build civil society to function. As a result, it may be that in the short term, collaboration with the state or withdrawal from political engagement may be the only ways for independent civil society organizations to survive. The longer term offers a much wider array of possibilities, as the gradual emergence of a true middle class in Russia’s larger cities augurs well for the possibility of the gradual development of preconditions for the development of a civic culture in Russia that may lead Russian citizens to create boundaries for state power.

Problems of Post-Communism, November 2012 Table of Contents

Volume 59 Number 6 / November-December 2012 of Problems of Post-Communism is now available on the ME Sharpe web site at http://mesharpe.metapress.com.

This issue contains:

The 2012 Political Reform in Russia: The Interplay of Liberalizing Concessions and Authoritarian Corrections	p. 3
Grigorii V. Golosov
Modernization and Historical Memory in Russia: Two Sides of the Same Coin	p. 15
Miguel Vázquez Liñán
Reforming Post-Communist Welfare States: Family Policy in Poland, Hungary, and Romania Since 2000	p. 27
Tomasz Inglot, Dorottya Szikra, Cristina Raţ
Civil Society with Chinese Characteristics?: An Examination of China’s Urban Homeowners’ Committees and Movements	p. 50
Ngeow Chow Bing
A Salute to Ronald Linden, Outgoing Associate Editor of Problems of Post-Communism and a Welcome to Sherrill Stroschein, Incoming Associate Editor of Problems of Post-Communism	p. 64
Dmitry Gorenburg, Editor

The Rules of the Political Game in Russia: Editor’s Introduction

This issue of Russian Politics and Law considers how the political system functions in Russia, focusing especially on the differences between formal rules and informal practices. The issue starts with a discussion of the personalities involved in running the Russian political system. In “Formats of Russian State Power,” Ol_’ga Kryshtanovskaia, one of the leading experts on Russian political elites, compares the power resources at the disposal of President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin. She shows that the two leaders divided responsibilities between themselves in a way that does not match the constitutional division of power between the president and the prime minister. Instead, “the siloviki, the economy, parliament, the regions, and the party have been left to Putin, while Medvedev is responsible for the formal performance of constitutional obligations, the courts, the fight against corruption, and the training of a personnel reserve.”

The comparison of resources available to the two leaders reveals that after two years in power, Medvedev had largely failed to develop his own political team and remained dependent on Putin. By examining the resources available to both members of the ruling tandem in late 2009, Kryshtanovskaia correctly forecast Putin’s return to the presidency in 2012. However, she does not think that the Medvedev presidency will pass without consequences for Russia’s political system. In her conclusion, she discusses the possibility that the creation of the Putin–Medvedev tandem has changed the Russian political game, setting the stage for ongoing shifts between the president and the prime minister in future election cycles.

Grigorii Golosov’s article, “Problems of the Russian Electoral System,” moves the discussion to the sphere of institutional rules of the game. The author analyzes how the Russian electoral system has evolved since 1993, showing how electoral institutions that are commonly used by democratic states around the world have been distorted to eliminate their democratic potential. He enumerates a list of problems withRussia’s electoral system, beginning with the single national electoral district—a feature that can work in small homogenous countries such as Israel and the Netherlands but makes no sense in a country as large and diverse as Russia. An excessively high threshold for party entry into parliament further distorts the proportional representation system, allowing the ruling party to easily dominate parliament. Finally, he criticizes the “locomotive” system that allows candidates who have no intention of sitting in the Duma to run at the head of their party’s list, only to be replaced by unknown deputies after the election.

Having discussed the problems that characterize Russia’s electoral system, Golosov then considers what kind of system should be adopted in the event of democratization. He shows that a majoritarian system based on single-mandate electoral districts would not work well in Russia because of its tendency to create highly disproportional outcomes and to entrench local bureaucratic clans in power. He recommends instead a modification of the current system of proportional representation, with lower thresholds and with relatively small electoral districts.

The bureaucracy plays a critical role in the functioning of the Russian political system. In “The Russian Bureaucracy and State Policy,” Sergei Sytin describes the bureaucracy as a social stratum or corporation with its own subculture and political and economic interests. While traditionally state bureaucrats have been tasked with implementing decisions made by their political superiors, they are no longer willing to limit themselves to such a neutral role. Instead, Sytin argues, they are increasingly seeking to implement their own agenda, a tendency that has led to their partial politicization. He believes that the bureaucracy is gradually usurping power over state policymaking, although its dominance has only limited potential.

Since Vladimir Putin first came to power, propaganda has come to play an increasingly important role in the Russian political system. Aleksandr Belousov’s article, “Political Propaganda in Contemporary Russia,” analyzes the forms and content of propaganda under the Putin–Medvedev regime, with a focus on the ideological concepts of the “power vertical” and “sovereign democracy.” He notes that the regime’s propaganda efforts were most successful in influencing the population during the first two Putin terms, when the regime established a circle of intermediaries who publicized its positions without necessarily having an official position in the government.

As far as the content of the propaganda, the concept of the power vertical was the basis for all subsequent propaganda constructs. It helped that the population was ready for an increase in centralization and control after the relative chaos of the Yeltsin years. The concept of sovereign democracy came later, with the goal of distinguishing the Russian political system from both the democratic ideals of the early postcommunist period and from Western democracies. The concept of sovereign democracy allowed the Putin regime to justify the changes it had made in the Russian political system without explicitly rejecting the democratic revolution of the late 1980s or the partial rapprochement with Western democracies.

The last two articles in this issue focus on efforts to change the rules under which Russian politics takes place. Mikhail Il_’chenko’s “Inertia in Russian Politics” discusses the extent to which reform of the Russian political system is hampered by institutional inertia. He argues that in the 1990s Russian reformers failed to import the institutional innovations that would have been necessary to turn Russia into a functioning democratic state. Neither the party system nor federalism worked as intended, creating instead what Ilchenko calls a decentralized version of the old Soviet nomenklatura. Despite extensive changes in the formal rules of the game, the mechanisms through which power is produced and through which leaders relate to society remain essentially unchanged. What many analysts consider to be traditional Russian values, such as paternalism, strict hierarchy, and clientelism, are in fact merely the representations of Russian political institutions. Putin’s reforms have ensconced these mechanisms more firmly in Russian politics, closing off alternative paths of development and foreclosing the possibility of gradual reform from within.

Ivan Bolshakov’s article on “The Nonsystemic Opposition” addresses the functioning of political opponents of Russia’s current political leadership. Bolshakov argues that the terms “extrasystemic opposition,” “antisystemic opposition,” and “nonsystemic opposition” all fall short as descriptions of what separates opposition parties from those in power, calling instead for a new vocabulary that would more accurately describe the role of such parties in the Russian political system. Bolshakov argues that none of the opposition parties existing in Russia today have a positive evaluation of the Russian political system. Their goals vary between seeking to change the existing system and wanting to destroy it entirely and start over.

The six articles in this issue show that the rules of the political game in Russia depend very little on the formal institutions of the political system. Instead, informal practices, interpersonal relations, and inertia determine power relations. This makes reform both highly necessary and very difficult to implement. The recent protests against fraudulent elections petered out largely because the majority of people who supported them quickly realized that they were not going to be able to affect the system, which would survive this brief scare. The comfortable reelection of Vladimir Putin showed that the system of power had weathered the storm and could endure with minimal modifications until the next crisis. As a result, the chances for real political reform declined further; the system appears likely to survive essentially unchanged until it is brought down completely by a future crisis that it cannot handle.

 

Russian Politics and Law, May 2012 Table of Contents

Volume 50 Number 3 / May-June 2012 of Russian Politics and Law is now available on the mesharpe.metapress.com web site.

This issue contains:

The Rules of the Political Game in Russia: Editor’s Introduction	p. 3
Dmitry Gorenburg
Formats of Russian State Power	p. 7
Ol’ga V. Kryshtanovskaia
Problems of the Russian Electoral System	p. 18
Grigorii V. Golosov
The Russian Bureaucracy and State Policy	p. 40
Sergei Sytin
Political Propaganda in Contemporary Russia	p. 56
Aleksandr Belousov
Inertia in Russian Politics	p. 70
Mikhail Il’chenko

The Nonsystemic Opposition	p. 82
Ivan Bol’shakov

Russian Politics and Law, January 2012 Table of Contents

Volume 50 Number 1 / January-February 2012 of Russian Politics and Law is now available on the M.E. Sharpe web site at http://mesharpe.metapress.com.

This issue contains:

Characteristics of Russian Power: Editor’s Introduction	p. 3
Dmitry Gorenburg
Perestroika, Second Edition: Revolution and Counterrevolution in Russia	p. 7
Vladimir B. Pastukhov
The Specific Nature of “Russian State Power”: Its Mental Structures, Ritual Practices, and Institutions	p. 36
Nikolai S. Rozov
The Post-Soviet Party of Power: United Russia in Comparative Context	p. 54
Boris I. Makarenko
The Russian Establishment: Paths and Means of Renewal	p. 84
Ol’ga A. Voronkova, Aleksandra A. Sidorova, Ol’ga V. Kryshtanovskaia

 

Characteristics of Russian Power: Editor’s Introduction

The current issue examines some of the key characteristics of the Russian political system from the cultural and institutional points of view. This set of articles shy away from close analysis of current political developments in favor of stepping back to look at the longue duree, in some cases going back to Soviet and pre-Soviet Russian history and culture to examine how earlier developments affect the modern Russian political system and its future trajectory. While other articles limit themselves to the post-Soviet period, they also analyze the impact of long-term trends in Russian power politics on current and future developments.

The first two articles in this issue discuss some of the conceptual bases for characterizing Russian power. “Perestroika, Second Edition: Revolution and Counterrevolution in Russia,” by Vladimir Pastukhov, assesses the prospects of a second perestroika based on his interpretation of modern Russian history in terms of the concepts of revolution and counterrevolution. Pastukhov begins by presenting his interpretation of Soviet history, in which the year 1953 plays the key role. For him, the death of Stalin and the subsequent execution of Beria were the events that signaled the end of the Bolshevik revolution and the beginning of a gradual transition to a state based on rules rather than violence that he terms a Soviet civilization. Khrushchev’s victory over Beria in the battle to succeed Stalin was the result, for Pastukhov, of a societal instinct for self-preservation kicking in.

Pastukhov terms the late Soviet period as a kind of bubble on the surface of Russian civilization. Its deflation led to the renewal of the Russian revolution in 1989 and resulted in the self-liquidation of the Soviet system. In other words, the Soviet leaders lost confidence in the system and started the process that led to its collapse. The current stage of Russia’s political development in many ways parallels the early stages of Gorbachev’s reform. The legal nihilism that pervades the top reaches of the Russian political elite has led its members to seek safer havens abroad for their financial resources and, often, their families. Without the advent of a political system governed by the rule of law, another revolution from above is inevitable, though the exact timing remains entirely unpredictable.

In “The Specific Nature of ‘Russian State Power’: Its Mental Structures, Ritual Practices, and Institutions,” Nikolai Rozov develops a dynamic theory of Russian state power as an ideal type and emphasizes the roles played by frames, symbols, and interactive rituals in its creation. He presents these frames as dichotomies, with key frames for Russian power including the concepts of our own versus other and idealism versus profit. He then argues that the specifics of these frames lead to the characteristics of the Russian national character, including such factors as atomization, poor self-discipline, and incapacity for self-organization, which result from the rejection of everything alien. Other characteristics, both positive and negative, result from various combinations of these frames.

Rozov then goes on to consider how these frames can explain some of the key attributes of Russian state power. He notes that Russian officials consider the rest of the population to belong to the category of other, rather than considering them to be part of our own. This mentality increases their willingness to sacrifice the people for the goal of achieving and holding on to power. As a result, the rulers have limited legitimacy in the eyes of the population and frequently have to result to violence to maintain control. Rozov concludes that as the international community has evolved, the crises of the Russian authoritarian state have become more frequent. As a result, the cycle of disintegration and restoration may be broken through a peaceful institutional revolution carried out by those social groups that do not accept the traditional cultural frames.

The final two articles turn to more concrete aspects of Russian power. Boris Makarenko’s “The Post-Soviet Party of Power: United Russia in Comparative Context,” addresses the character, role, structure, functions, and evolution of United Russia (UR) in the context of world experience with dominant and predominant parties in competitive political systems. In the first half of his article, Makarenko discusses the phenomenon of dominant parties with examples from around the world. He notes that the establishment of such parties allows for the establishment of broad elite coalitions that can maximize resources and minimize risks for elite projects. He shows that in various countries such parties have been set up both from above and from below.

In the typology of dominant parties, United Russia is neither a traditional catch-all party that avoids any form of ideological commitment in order to appeal to the broadest possible swathe of the electorate nor a monoparty that serves “merely [as a] means of support for military or civilian dictatorial regimes.” Instead,UR is a party of power, a new dominant party type that has been created in the post-communist world in order to support the re-election of a popularly elected president and remains beholden to the power of the executive branch for its survival.

After briefly tracing the development of the party of power institution over the two decades of post-Soviet Russian history, Makarenko discusses the current state of UR. Its role as a dominant party has been cemented in recent years by increasing federal control of electoral processes at the local and regional level. As UR has squeezed all forms of opposition out of the legitimate political arena, its leadership has increasingly come to recognize that internal pluralism is necessary for the party’s continued functioning. To this end, it has created so-called clubs to foster intraparty discussion and allow for a diversity of views to be represented. Makarenko argues that while the party can continue to function quite successfully as an electoral machine, it is incapable of providing the new ideas necessary to continue the development of Russian politics and society and therefore risks becoming a dead end model for Russian political development.

The final article in this issue, “The Russian Establishment: Paths and Means of Renewal,” by Olga Voronkova, Aleksandra Sidorova, and Olga Kryshtanovskaya, analyzes the changing structure of the Russian government elite in terms of age, length of service, place of birth, level and type of education, and work experience. The article uses a unique database of biographical information on 175 members of the elite who served in top positions in the Russian government between 2000 and 2009. The study rejects the conventional wisdom that President Putin’s governing team was formed primarily from a combination of Putin’s colleagues from the power ministries and from St. Petersburg. However, it does confirm that Putin’s closest advisers were from one (or both) of these camps.

In conclusion, the authors argue that the Russian political system has yet to develop a functioning formal mechanism of elite recruitment. In its absence, leaders resort to the traditional methods of recruiting their teams through personal ties based on previous service together in other branches of government. As a result, the channels for younger cohorts to enter the government are inadequate and prevent the introduction of new ideas into the political system. One of the Russian government’s greatest challenges is how to develop a personnel reserve system that allows for the regular renewal of governing elites.

While the four articles in this issue come from very different points of view, they all share a conviction that the Russian political system faces a critical juncture. For all of them, the existing system is at the point where it has more or less played out its possibilities. The choices made by the current set of leaders over the next three to five years are likely to have a determining effect on Russian political development over the next several decades. They hold in their hands the choice of whether Russia continues to modernize its political and economic systems in a gradual manner or if it faces yet another revolutionary moment once the current political system ceases to be capable of dealing with the challenges of the future. My sense is that Putin and his team are more likely to try to muddle through any coming crises, rather than taking the risk of shaking up the system. The lessons of Gorbachev are still too fresh in their minds. Another revolution from above is at least a generation away.

 

Center–Periphery Relations After Ten Years of Centralization

In the 1990s the dominant paradigm that governed studies of center- periphery relations in Russia focused on the weakness of the central state and the perception that it might result in the breakup of the Russian Federation, much as state weakness in the late Gorbachev period led to the breakup of the Soviet Union. Then Vladimir Putin became president and started a cycle of centralization. Just as quickly, analysts turned to the question of whether Russia was now too centralized. They asked whether a country as physically large and sparsely populated as Russia could be governed as a unitary state, without devolving much if any authority to the regions.

This collection of articles showcases the work of Russian scholars who avoid both extremes, focusing instead on examining the processes through which center–periphery relations have actually worked in Russia.

In “Cycles of Decentralization in the Post-Soviet Space” Aleksandr Libman places this cycle of decentralization followed by recentralization in a comparative context, by looking at how similar processes played out in the other states that were formed after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He points out the parallel nature of decentralization processes in Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan. In all these countries, regional elites capitalized on central weakness to informally take over many powers that were formally assigned to the center. This process was taken to its extreme in Tajikistan, leading to civil war between competing regional elites after the almost total collapse of the center. A separate set of processes occurred in Azerbaijan, Moldova, and Georgia, where ethnically based regional separatism was the most powerful decentralizing force in the first years of independence. Of the post-Soviet republics, only Armenia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan avoided the informal decentralization cycle. (The author does not mention the Baltic states in his analysis.)

In all these countries, the end of the economic disaster of the 1990s and the resumption of economic growth in the last decade allowed central authorities to renege on the informal understandings they (or their predecessors) had reached with regional elites when the center was weak. Since the division of powers between center and periphery had not been formalized, recentralization was a fairly straightforward matter in most of these countries. As it became clear that the balance of power had significantly shifted toward the center, regional leaders by and large did not resist the centralizing efforts emanated from the capitals. The one exception was Kyrgyzstan, where elites in the capital were not strong enough to carry out the centralization effort and were removed by one set of regional elites in the Tulip Revolution of 2005.

With Libman having discussed the origins of the current pattern of center–periphery relations in the post-Soviet region, Alla Chirikova examines how regional elites have adapted to the newly centralized environment. In “Regional Elites in Contemporary Russia: Conceptual Discussions and Political Practice,” she begins with an extended discussion of how to think about political elites and how they might act in the context of the ongoing recentralization. The three paths she considers include unconditional subordination, bargaining, and inertia. Having laid out this theoretical framework, Chirikova then discusses perceptions of the recentralization among elites, based on in-depth interviews and a survey she conducted in 2004–6. She finds that the establishment of the power vertical by President Putin quickly turned “the relationship between center and regions from one filled with conflict to one of hierarchical co-subordination.” She argues that protest against Putin’s centralization drive on the part of regional elites has been muted because they have essentially been bought off by an increase in central financing. They have traded their political resources in favor of economic infusions from the center.

As a result, Chirikova argues that both regional development and regional political life are now largely dependent on orders from the Kremlin. This provides much sought-after stability for the Kremlin, but at the expense of the country’s long-term political development. She finds that the overcentralization of the Russian state is likely to make it more fragile for the long term.

In her second article, “The Power Vertical in the Assessments of Regional Elites: The Dynamics of Change,” Chirikova further develops her analysis, this time with a focus on changes in regional elites’ perceptions of centralization over time. The findings are based on the same set of surveys, conducted in Yaroslavl, Perm, and Sverdlovsk in 2004 and in Tatarstan, Stavropol, and Sverdlovsk in 2006. She finds that in 2004, most regional elites were worried about the effect of centralization, seeing an increase in distance between central and regional authorities, a decrease in responsiveness of central authorities in combination with an increase in their responsibilities, a decline in horizontal contacts among regions, and a general increase in chaos in the system of governance.

By 2006 members of the regional elite had gotten used to the new system of power and were less likely to express negative sentiments about it. Although they worried about its potential instability, they saw the power vertical as necessary in the present environment and better suited to a period of economic and political transformation than the system that preceded it. At the same time, they worried about the negative impact of this system on recruitment of new generations into the political elite. Overall, as Chirikova notes, regional elites preferred the security of a paternalistic system to the combination of greater opportunities and a higher level of uncertainty present in a democratic market-based system. As a result, she argues that at the present time Russian governors have been essentially turned into policy coordinators responsible for implementing orders sent from Moscow. While this is a big step down from their previous positions, it has allowed many of them to stay in power longer than the previous two-term maximum.

The extent to which the new political system has allowed for turnover among regional governors is the subject of Rostislav Turovskii’s “How Russian Governors Are Appointed: Inertia and Radicalism in Central Policy.” On the basis of an analysis of all gubernatorial appointments made in 2005–8, the author argues that the goals of central authorities have changed over time. Initially, President Putin sought simply to change the status of the governors as quickly as possible. To this end, most previously elected governors asked the president to appoint them to their position prior to the end of their term. Almost all these governors were reappointed. Over time, this tendency has shifted, so that by 2008 most governors whose term was expiring were replaced with new people. Furthermore, a number of governors were replaced prior to the end of their terms, as they had resigned or were declared to have lost the confidence of the president.

Overall, the trends outlined by Turovskii show that the central administration has gradually gained confidence in its ability to replace regional governors with their preferred candidates without causing political instability in the affected region. Furthermore, in many cases, Moscow is now replacing governors with outsiders, politicians (or administrators) who have little to no experience in the region they are being asked to govern. Turovskii notes that at the time of writing, thirteen governors belonged to this category. Considering that only thirty-three regions had had new governors appointed since 2005, this represents a fairly high percentage. Despite these changes, Turovskii notes that regional political elites have by and large remained passive, adapting to the new governors without any noticeable protest.

The final article in this issue examines the one set of circumstances in recent years when regionally based protests achieved a significant amount of success. In “The Russian Far East in a State of Suspension: Between the ‘Global Economy’ and ‘State Tutelage,’ ” L.E. Bliakher and L.A. Vasil’eva analyze the politics of this region in the context of a tendency for the central government to leave the Far East to its own devices whenever Russia enters a period of political or economic crisis. The authors note that in the 1990s Moscow exercised very little control over this region, allowing it to subsist largely on the sale of its natural resources and a semilegal international petty-trade business with its neighbors to the south and east. By contrast, as the Russian economy began to revive after 1999, central elites increasingly sought to control economic development and political life in the region. The rapidly strengthening state was fairly successful at eliminating semilegal economic activity by increasing trade barriers. As long as the reduction in economic opportunities was accompanied with fairly generous financing from the center, the inhabitants of the region were willing to go along.

The situation became unstable in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, when generous payments ceased. At the same time, central authorities hoping to protect the domestic auto industry increased restrictions on the import of foreign automobiles. Given that this was the last economic sector where inhabitants of the region were able to make money outside the state sector, this led to public protests. These protests showed the weakness of the centralized system of government, which is unable to take into account the specific conditions in outlying regions. Together with the tendency of local administrators to pass all decision making to Moscow, this centralization increases the fragility of the entire political system.

Altogether, these articles show that the cycle of decentralization and recentralization that took place in Russia over the last twenty years is not unique. It parallels events both in Russia’s past history and in other parts of the region. At the same time, the authors in this collection argue that even as members of the regional elite are adapting to the new system of center–periphery relations, it has increased the vulnerability of the country’s political system as a whole to future political and economic shocks.