The Politics of Bad Governance in Contemporary Russia

Chapter

7

The

Politics

of

Bad Governance

Russia in Comparative Perspective

BY THE EARLY 2020S, Russia has seemingly entered the mature stage of its bad governance. Its authoritarian regime has been consolidated, while rent-seeking and corruption within the framework of the power vertical and the overregulated state are perceived as the only mechanisms for governing the Russian state—not only by state officials but also by a significant portion of Russian society at large.1 There is a dismal consensus among most observers that bad governance under durable authoritarianism in Russia will persist for decades (if not forever) and book titles such as “Will Putin’s System Survive until 2042?”2 have become nearly ubiquitous. At best, scholars express some hope for the long-term effects of economic growth, which alongside generational changes, may lay down favorable conditions for democratization in Russia some decades from now.3 Economic experts, however, express skeptical opinions about Russia’s prospects for sustainable growth and development in times of low oil prices and international sanctions, especially given the priorities of the country’s leadership.4 Even the political scientists’ cautiously positive outlook reminds one of a statement by the nineteenth-century Russian poet Nikolay Nekrasov who predicted the bright yet distant future of Russia in his The Railway (1864): “Alas! That the day of our joyful tomorrow // I shall not witness—and neither shall you.”5

In a broader perspective, these expectations reflect global concerns about the future of democracy and good governance worldwide amid the rise of authoritarian populism, which is harmful for politics and governance alike.6 However, the current dismal consensus among scholars over prospects for democracy and good governance in the world (and especially in Russia) is not entirely new. In a way, it looks like a replica of the previous dismal consensus of the 1970s. This was the time when the negative consequences of the Vietnam War and Watergate were considered major threats to the Western world much more than the effects of Brexit and the Trump presidency are today, when the dead end of stagflation was perceived as a predictor of the coming decline if not complete collapse of capitalism, and when almost nobody believed that Communism would end relatively soon. During these years, prominent scholars published alarmist reports about the irresolvable global crisis of democracy and capitalism, and overwhelming determinism dominated in skeptical accounts of the future of freedoms in developing countries7—all things that sound much too familiar to present-day observers. In the late 1980s, these fears turned into major hopes and high expectations, most probably demonstrating a dramatic if ill-thought-through shift from unreasonable pessimism to unreasonable optimism. These lessons from the 1970s and how the dismal consensus was overcome over the next decade—both in political and in scholarly terms—may be useful for reassessing the current state of governance in Russia and some of its post-Soviet neighbors and its further prospects against the background of declining quality of governance in various parts of the globe. To what extent are the sources and mechanisms of bad governance in Russia outlined in the previous chapters of this book country-specific and context-bounded, as opposed to representing an ongoing global trend? How does Russia’s post-Soviet experience of bad governance look in a broader comparative perspective? Which lessons may be learned from attempts to constrain bad governance in various countries, and may some of these lessons be learned in Russia? Why and how may bad governance in Russia prove its resilience vis-à-vis major exogenous shocks such as the epidemic of COVID-19 that struck all over the world in 2020? And what might we expect for the future of Russia in terms of the quality of governance? This chapter will not provide comprehensive answers to all these questions but intends to put them into a research agenda. It is an important exercise given the recent boom of studies of Russian politics and governance in the United States and beyond.8 The need for new frameworks for analysis of bad governance in Russia in a comparative perspective instead of the present-day dismal consensus is also important for further development of a research agenda and may have implications beyond the region of Eurasia.

I will start with some considerations on where governance in Russia is now and what we might expect for the future, using the conceptual lenses of “political decay” outlined first by Samuel P. Huntington9 and more recently by Francis Fukuyama.10 Then I will discuss recent attempts to diminish the most pernicious effects of bad governance in some countries and why some of these attempts have generated more positive effects than others. In the concluding sections, I will consider the role of bad governance in Russia’s response to COVID-19 and possible developments of political changes in Russia and their influence on the quality of governance.

Bad Governance and Political Decay: beyond Russia

Within the intellectual tradition of modernization studies, political development is juxtaposed with political decay, the process that leads to increasing inefficiency of social and political institutions: over time, either these institutions lose their role as rules of the game in a given society or, more often, following these rules contributes to further degradation of societies in terms of development.11 In a way, long-standing institutions can be considered structural constraints on the behaviour of individuals, including political and economic actors. In such a long-term perspective, the focus on institutions in the process of political decay mostly concentrates on their major flaws stemming from an outdated nature and excessive rigidity (usually inherited from the past), which may not respond appropriately to new challenges. In the historical perspective of longue durée, such an account may be correct. However, for a short-term horizon there is a tendency to consider institutions (primarily, formal rather than informal institutions)12 as given facts without an in-depth analysis of their genesis and evolution. Meanwhile, the analysis presented in this book offers a perspective on the role of institutions in political decay through the lenses of an agency-driven process of institution-building. In this respect, bad governance as an intentional outcome of this process may be regarded as an instance of political decay, albeit from a different perspective to those previously offered by scholars of modernization.

Political decay as a consequence of agency-driven processes is not unique to Russia; in fact, many self-interested rulers would like to govern their domains without the significant constraints imposed on them both in democracies and in non-democracies. In the turbulent times of the twenty-first century, they have often gained excellent opportunities to reach these goals and establish a politico-economic order of bad governance in various states and nations. In particular, the wave of popular discontent with the status quo, which gave birth to various populist movements and political leaders across the globe from Europe to Latin America, has contributed to their drive toward bad governance in pursuit of self-interest.13 Regardless of their origins (scholars differ greatly in their analyses of causes of contemporary populism),14 these leaders tend to distort existing institutions and/or rearrange them in order to exploit public resources for private purposes. Numerous examples ranging from Venezuela under Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro15 to Turkey under Recep Tayyip Erdogan16 are quite telling in this respect. If such leaders face little or no resistance from other political and economic actors and from society at large, they may follow the path of the Russian leaders in building and strengthening bad governance. This does not necessarily mean that present-day Russia intentionally acts as a role model for other countries and exports bad governance abroad as a part of its foreign policy strategy,17 but there is no doubt that a number of politicians all over the world only dream of enjoying the scope of discretion available to Vladimir Putin.

In many ways, the recent experience of Donald Trump’s presidency could be regarded as an attempt to impose elements of bad governance on the United States.18 In placing his family members and personal cronies in key positions in the state apparatus, using American diplomacy as a tool for obtaining kompromat (compromising materials)19 on his political rivals, obstructing justice, and turning state regulations into weapons for his political dominance. However, Trump has faced strong resistance from various corners of society. American politicians, bureaucrats, media, and civil society actors have opposed his intentions and somewhat diminished the possible negative impact of Trump’s strategy: as of yet, they have not been able to build new major barriers against making bad governance but have also not let him eliminate all existing ones. This is why Trump’s effects on the quality of governance in the United States were less devastating than they could have been in many other countries under similar leadership. In the end, Trump’s poor handling of the pandemic crisis caused by COVID-19, as well as other instances of his misbehavior, contributed to his loss in the 2020 presidential contest. Given the resilience of many long-standing institutions (including fair elections, constitutional checks and balances and federalism) and the pluralism of political and economic actors, American politics prevented poisoning of its governance in the most dangerous forms, similar to those in Russia—although the experience of Trump presidency was costly for the United States in many ways.

But what can happen when institutions that can present barriers to bad governance are weak and insufficiently resilient, while resistance to populist politicians is insufficient? The recent experience of Hungary might be a prime example of such a path toward political decay. Although this country underwent the collapse of Communism and went through the process of democratization and market reforms relatively peacefully, it faced major challenges in the aftermath of the 2008–2009 global economic crisis.20 Soon after that, the post-Communist political elite was heavily discredited and the economic strategy of global integration via implementation of neoliberal policies21 lost its appeal in the eyes of major actors and society at large. Against this background, Viktor Orban and his centre-right party Fidesz gained popular support because of their fierce criticism of the previous developments in Hungarian politics and won a majority in the parliament in 2010. Since that time, the Hungarian political landscape has changed dramatically. Orban conducted judicial counterreforms, making judges solely dependent upon political appointments, imposed strict state control over the major media, put severe constraints on foreign-funded NGOs, and initiated harsh pressure on the Central European University (CEU) established and funded by Hungarian-born global billionaire George Soros—in the end, CEU was forced to relocate from Budapest to Vienna. While actively using nationalist and anti-European rhetoric to boost his popularity, Orban effectively channeled European funds to strengthen his power base, and overall enjoyed many benefits from his strategy of financial nationalism22 and other illiberal populist policies.23 It comes as no surprise that Fidesz-related businesses obtained major benefits from Orban’s rule, while the quality of governance in Hungary in the 2010s deteriorated, especially with regard to corruption and the rule of law.24 Despite numerous mass protests against monopolizing power and other antidemocratic moves by the government, Orban retained strong leverages of control. Although in 2019 an opposition-backed candidate managed to win the Budapest mayoral election, the new regulations imposed by the Hungarian government made him powerless, as all resources were transferred into the hands of government-appointed officials. Naturally, in the wake of the initial COVID-19 outbreak in April 2020, Orban effectively seized the moment to increase his formal and informal powers and widen the scope of his control over key sectors of the Hungarian economy.25

The Hungarian scholar Balint Magyar labels the politico-economic order established in Hungary after 2010 the “mafia state.”26 This pejorative term was mostly coined to be eye-catching for readers, and its validity as an analytic tool may be objected to on various grounds.27 However, the phenomenon itself may be regarded as one instance of agency-driven efforts to build and consolidate bad governance. Despite numerous peculiar features of the Hungarian case, described by Magyar in great detail, Hungary’s path toward bad governance is not so dissimilar to that of Russia (in fact, Magyar himself extended his analysis to some other post-Communist countries).28 Even though in the 1990s and 2000s Hungary was perceived by many sympathetic observers as a poster child for successful development and European integration, it was not able to obtain strong enough immunity against intentionally creating bad governance. Although in the Hungarian case the populist style of Orban and Fidesz served as a tool for demolishing barriers against bad governance, while in Russia Putin’s policies were largely antipopulist,29 these differences tell us more about the instruments for the creation of bad governance than about its actual mechanisms.

One should consider that political decay caused by bad governance should not be equated to the collapse of the state, at least in the relative short term. Rather, political decay may launch a long-term downward trajectory of economic and societal development over time.30 The main problem with this trajectory is that it has proved to be resistant to correction: once the politico-economic order of bad governance is built and consolidated, all moves toward overcoming it will become more and more difficult. At a certain point, this downward trajectory may become irreversible despite all efforts, causing a lock-in effect. This basically means that the countries poisoned by bad governance may find no way out: this is why the parallel with chronic diseases, outlined earlier, might be relevant for those countries that are deeply affected by bad governance over a long period of time. Even though their leaders and elites may realize that the pernicious effects of bad governance are dangerous not only for the futures of their countries but may also harm their own interests, they tend to avoid the use of the bitter medicine of major political and institutional changes, especially in a nondemocratic context. William Easterly vividly describes this paradox in his analysis of countries of sub-Saharan Africa.31 From this perspective, contemporary Russia may be considered a prime example of imperfect recipes for improving the quality of governance without major changes.

Bad Governance

in

Russia: No Way

Out

?

By the early 2020s, preservation of the political status quo for as long as possible and avoidance of any threats of regime changes in Russia became the key element of the Kremlin’s political strategy. The ongoing process of tightening the screws in Russia’s domestic politics (started after the 2011–2012 wave of mass protests) reduced the risks of the regime’s implosion due to public discontent,32 and despite some bumps on the road in terms of undesired results at subnational elections, the Kremlin was more or less insulated from unpleasant surprises from the Russian voters. The slow pace of economic development in Russia and international sanctions have not significantly changed this picture: like many authoritarian regimes across the globe,33 Russia was not heavily sensitive to the near stagnation of its economy (slightly above 1 percent annual growth between 2014 and 2019) and a decline in real incomes of its citizens. Even unpopular policy decisions, such as the major increase in retirement age for Russians, adopted in 2018,34 only resulted in a temporary decline in Putin’s approval rate and did not shake the existing political equilibrium.

It is no wonder that under these circumstances, the extension of Putin’s stay in power for an indefinite period became the number one priority task for the Kremlin. In January 2020, Putin announced a major revision of the Russian 1993 constitution in his annual state of the nation address. Initially, the handful of proposed amendments was rather vague, but it implied further empowering the president at the expense of the government and the legislature. The most decisive constitutional amendment was proposed in March 2020 and stated that upon the introduction of the new set of amendments, previous presidential terms in office were nullified, and the limit of two six-year terms should apply only after the next presidential elections scheduled for 2024. In fact, these constitutional changes, approved by the legislature, mean that Putin could stay in power until 2036.35 Such a constitutional rearrangement in Russia is hardly unique among personalist autocracies across the globe,36 as several rulers in Africa or in post-Soviet Eurasia have used similar institutional tricks to ensure their stay in power for indefinitely long periods of time.37

Unsurprisingly, the Kremlin’s intention to prevent political changes in Russia at any cost further contributed to political decay in the country, thus leading to aggravation of already acute problems with the quality of governance. Nevertheless, Russia’s leaders did not ignore these problems completely and often raised these issues as priorities for their agenda. They offered several recipes to improve the quality of governance in Russia, which may be summarized as a combination of three major directions, or 3D: deregulation, digitalization, and decentralization. However, these recipes in themselves and their actual implementation seem like imperfect approaches to countering bad governance in Russia.

Deregulation as an instrument for improving the quality of governance in Russia is vigorously advocated by liberal economists, especially in the aftermath of the 2008–2009 global economic crisis.38 The problem, however, is twofold. First, despite the loud rhetoric of state officials who call for a “regulatory guillotine,”39 the outcomes of many revisions of numerous by-laws and governmental decrees are selective, partial, and insignificant as of yet: entrenched bureaucrats and special interest groups have little incentive to revise the existing status quo. In terms of policy reforms, the insulation of the Russian government from the influence of societal actors, cultivated since the early 2000s,40 has demonstrated its dark side. Major policy changes, though necessary, can be conducted in Russia only by those state actors who pursue their own self-interest and may deliver unintended policy outcomes.41 For example, it was hard to expect that deregulation in Russian academia would be conducted effectively by the same actors who previously contributed to its overregulation and imposed dubious practices of oversight and evaluation. 42 Moreover, as deregulation remains a matter of discretion on the part of the regulators themselves, these efforts may even result in perverse effects such as “regulatory capture.”43 Very telling in this respect is the experience of RZhD, which almost unilaterally imposed high commuter services tariffs onto the shoulders of regional budgets, while being endorsed by the Russian government (as described in chapter 2). In 2020, the Russian government proposed a bill that involved a sweeping elimination of all previous environmental regulations, except for those approved by the government. This proposal could bury state requirements for environmental accountability of businesses and norms of disclosure of negative environmental effects of economic activities, ruin any fair methodology for assessing ecological damages, and severely limit the regulatory functions and monitoring of state environmental watchdog agencies. Only after a series of alarming calls from environmental activists,44approval of this proposal has been postponed and later on stopped at least for a while. In fact, however, this happened not because of the ultimate importance of environmental issues for the government, but rather because the overall framework of the regulatory guillotine had not been sufficiently prepared, and the process of interagency negotiations within the state bureaucracy took more time than was initially expected by its initiators. That said, it is highly likely that the environmental concerns will not stop the regulatory guillotine or change its major directions. Even the most socially efficient deregulation can at best reduce some of the risks for policy entrepreneurship crated by the negative incentives within the power vertical. However, it cannot in itself provide positive incentives for improving the quality of governance, given prioritization of loyalty over efficiency and the lack of transparent meritocratic mechanisms for rewards and career advancements within the Russian state.

Digitalization became a new buzzword among Russian state officials and technocratic experts in the mid-2010s. The advancement of algorithmic governance (driven by artificial intelligence rather than by self-interested humans) is widely perceived as a mechanism for constraining the rent-seeking aspirations of special interest groups and for improving the effectiveness of government. Furthermore, techno-optimists, such as German Gref (currently, CEO of the largest Russian bank, Sberbank), consider online platforms to be an instrument of accountability that may serve as a viable alternative both to the power vertical and to representative democracy.45 The evidence, however, is far from these optimistic expectations. On the one hand, against the background of isolationist trends in Russian politics and the obsession of Russia’s leadership with threats to its sovereignty, digitalization faces numerous political constraints that have contributed to many attempts at the “nationalization of the Russian Internet.”46 Successes on this front have been modest, to say the least. In 2012, Rostelekom, the state communication monopoly, launched the major project of making a national Internet search engine, “Sputnik,” which was intended by the Kremlin to be a state-controlled alternative to Google. However, despite it investing more than two billion rubles from state funds into this project, Sputnik received less than 1 percent of all search inquiries in Russia, and the project was finally closed in September 2020.47 On the other hand, the government is faced with pressure from special interest groups that tend to adjust algorithmic governance to serve their own purposes. Andrei Isaev, an influential State Duma member from United Russia, summarized the essence of such an approach. He openly stated in front of journalists in August 2019: “If you, an official, come to an Internet company to resolve a concrete issue, and he (its representative) responds: ‘hey, there is an algorithm, so I can’t change anything,’ then you should ask him to change the algorithm.”48 As one can see, this approach is hardly compatible with the ideas of effectiveness and impartiality promoted by crusaders of digitalization.

The increasing use of digital technologies for purposes of surveillance and political control, most notably in China, has contributed to the development of major concerns regarding the rise of “digital totalitarianism”49 in many autocracies, including Russia. Ironically, bad governance has hindered technological developments in this direction in Russia, as many high-tech initiatives of this kind are used as smokescreens for rent-seeking and corruption, and in the end attempts by Russian authorities to impose various sophisticated mechanisms of control over citizens have had only partial effects at best.50 For example, the Kremlin failed to stop the use of popular messenger Telegram, launched by the Russian IT entrepreneur Pavel Durov, who fled the country after vicious attacks on his previous projects from state-affiliated companies, endorsed by state security services. State regulators ultimately prohibited the use of Telegram and tried to block it across the country but failed to do so despite a series of attempts (at least, as of yet).51 Rather, these attempts resulted in the Streisand effect, as Telegram became increasingly popular among Russian users and anonymous channels in this messenger were employed as a means of communication among Russian elites.52

Still, the effects of politically driven digitalization can be observed in Russia, albeit in different forms than in China. They were heavily criticized in the aftermath of the September 2019 Moscow City Duma elections, when in one of the single-mandate districts, electronic voting via a web portal contributed to a shift in the outcome. According to the offline mode of voting, the independent candidate Roman Yuneman won with a solid margin over his major opponent, university rector Margarita Rusetskaya, who was openly endorsed by city hall. Yet online voting brought quite the opposite results: Rusetskaya won a landslide majority when votes were counted via the web, and in the end, she gained a seat in the legislature. Meanwhile, the web portal was hacked, and faced many technical glitches, so the integrity of online voting has been questioned by election observers.53 Similar trends were discussed in the aftermath of 2021 State Duma elections, when electronic voting results not only totally contradicted the results of offline voting, but also contributed to dubious electoral victories of candidates of major pro-Kremlin party, United Russia, in eight single-member districts of the city of Moscow.54

In a similar vein, Carolina Schlaufer, Daria Gristenko, and Andrey Indukaev analyzed opportunities for and constraints of the “digital governance” model in Russia, using the evidence from the Moscow-based project Active Citizen, which was developed by the city government as an instrument of communication with Muscovites.55 Despite noticeable success in aggregating citizens’ requests, online platforms still constrain citizens’ empowerment, as advanced digital tools are used only in limited policy domains and certain types of participation because the agenda-setting of e-participation is tightly controlled by the Moscow City government.56 Even though in most instances the effects of digitalization on governance in Russia may have less salient political connotations, the fundamental problem remains the same: algorithms and online services can improve the quality of governance only if these mechanisms are complementary to impartial and effective offline good governance, but not if they aim to substitute for it.

Last and important, decentralization remains the most problematic part of the current Russian agenda for improving the quality of governance in the country. These problems are related to the consequences of the major political, economic, and administrative recentralization that Russia underwent in the 2000s.57 Following this shift, the autonomy of most of Russia’s regions and localities was greatly reduced, as they became heavily dependent on the central government both in economic and in administrative terms. This is why many projects and programs aimed at advancing regional socioeconomic development are all but doomed to be overcentralized. Alexander Libman and Andrey Yakovlev demonstrated the limits of this centralized approach in their research on the performance of a newly established ministry in charge of developing the Russian Far East.58 Despite the strategic importance of this region and the need for a major inflow of resources into the Far East due to urgent demographic, infrastructural, and other problems, the positive effects of this effort by the federal government remain limited, to say the least. One temporary solution is the promotion of specialized policy and geographical areas that enjoy preferential treatment and a certain degree of decentralization and deregulation granted by the central authorities. However, the major challenge policy-makers encounter is a trade-off between sufficient local knowledge and the capacity to lobby the ministry’s interests efficiently in the federal center. This is an uneasy balance, and indeed actual policy success heavily depends on not only personal style and connections but also the political priorities of the central government. Policy stability and continuity under personalist autocracies are constantly threatened since international and domestic priorities may change at any time depending on the autocrat’s will, as happened in 2014 after the annexation of Crimea.

Given the consequences of recentralization amid Russia’s sluggish economic growth, only a handful of Russia’s relatively wealthy regions, being less dependent on federal funding and driven by proactive leadership, can afford their own large-scale development programs and major innovation projects.59 The housing renovation program in the city of Moscow may be considered one of the few examples that attract major public attention; it was aimed at resolving housing problems for many Muscovites and promoting gentrification of urban areas in the Russian capital. This program faces major problems due to the dominance of special interests of developers and construction companies, nontransparency, and political constraints of the Moscow City government.60 The Moscow renovation program offers an example of how different institutional and participatory formats are used to accommodate the variety of business and bureaucratic interests and pursue an ambitious developmental plan despite complex problems and resistance from Muscovites. If the poor quality of governance serves as an obstacle to successful development in Moscow, with its plentiful financial resources and relatively high degree of autonomy for the city government, it is no surprise that in many not-so-wealthy regions and municipalities these problems are much more acute.61

What about bottom-up influence on subnational governance from the mass public? Most recently, the Russian government actively promoted projects on participatory budgeting and other forms of public engagement in various localities. While critical observers dubbed these tendencies “participatory authoritarianism,”62 promoters of participatory budgeting in Russia argued that even small-scale local funding caused certain grassroots enthusiasm and offered local activists new opportunities for improving their communities on the basis of joint responsibility of municipalities and local citizenry.63 However, in-depth assessments of public participation in local governance are more skeptical, revealing major problems with the role of the local public in urban policy-making.64 If, under democratic arrangements, the coproduction of public goods results from the joint efforts of the local government and civil groups, the paradox of civic activism and self-management under nondemocratic and nontransparent rule is that even if successful, the lion’s share of the public goods production costs is shifted to the local communities. In other words, local communities often provide better governance than local governments, thereby decreasing political pressure on the state and municipalities. These controversies may reflect a more fundamental issue of grassroots mass participation in the absence of local (as well as of nationwide) democracy: public engagement may promote good governance only by being complementary to mechanisms of electoral accountability and separation of power at the local level, not substituting for them.

The 4D solution, which may go beyond recipes of deregulation, digitalization, and decentralization and put political democratization as the number one item on the agenda of improving the quality of governance in Russia, remains off the current menu of Russian authoritarianism. This is why all other recipes for countering bad governance in the country may be considered partial and temporary solutions at best—without major political changes there is no means of improvement. Yet even a possible democratization of Russia’s political regime and subsequent attempts at full-scale revision of its politico-economic order cannot guarantee a diminishment of bad governance in the country, as the recent experience of some other post-Communist countries suggests.

Combatting Bad Governance: Rethinking

the

Post-Communist Experience

As one can see from the previous chapters, the creation of bad governance in Russia after the Soviet collapse exemplified intentional poisoning of the state by rent-seekers who became beneficiaries of the emerging politico-economic order and attempted to consolidate it in a long-term perspective. The turbulent period of “triple transition”65 after the collapse of the previous order in the 1990s made such state capture easier,66 thus paving the way for further aggravation of bad governance in the 2000s and 2010s. However, although numerous other post-Communist countries faced somewhat similar problems after the collapse of Communist regimes, their trajectories of governance differ widely. While weakening of the states amid the economic transformation recession had visible negative effects on quality of governance in the early 1990s, later some of these countries were able to overcome these growing pains over time, while others struggled with protracted and complicated diseases. What does this experience tell us about the possible ways of overcoming bad governance both in the short and in the long term?

Overall, analyses of post-Communist reforms in Eastern Europe have demonstrated that large-scale renewal of the state apparatus and high elite circulation ceteris paribus contribute to the success of structural reforms and improving the quality of governance.67 But in post-Soviet Eurasia immediately after the Soviet collapse these opportunities were missed or did not emerge at all. In particular, the incomplete democratization in Russia at the start of the 1990s was curtailed after the “democrats” took power in 1991; this resulted in a narrowed recruitment pool of elites and the preservation of the old guard in the state apparatus in key ministries, to say nothing of subnational governments.68 It is unsurprising that newcomers to the Russian government in the 1990s found themselves isolated and facing many obstacles in the pursuit of policy reforms.69 Many of their policies were compromised from the beginning and did not improve the quality of governance either as a whole or in individual policy areas.70 Moreover, they were not aiming to open new windows of opportunity for political recruitment and elite circulation and served as the junior partners in a new winning coalition of regime supporters. The entrenchment of ruling groups, the sluggish vertical mobility of elites, and the narrowing of their recruitment pools played an important role in the preservation of bad governance: under these conditions, incentives to effectively govern the economy and the state were undermined.

In their case study of the success story of Estonia after the Soviet break-up, Neil Abrams and M. Steven Fish present a perceptive account in their analysis of relationships between post-Communist regime dynamics and the quality of governance.71 They observe that the end of the Communist regime and Estonian independence opened a window of opportunity for a radical restructuring and large-scale cadre renewal not only among ruling groups but also within the apparatus of the state as a whole. The changes in Estonia’s elite were more radical than those in other Baltic countries,72 and rejecting the use of a “good Soviet Union” as a role model served as a driver for structural reforms. The impact of the sizeable Russian-speaking minority (who shared a more positive perception of a Soviet Union as a paradise lost)73 on politics and policy-making in Estonia was severely constrained after the Soviet collapse.74 It is hard to say whether such a deliberate exclusion played a positive role in building barriers against making bad governance. Policy changes in Estonia involved borrowing and implementing best practices of state governance from advanced Western countries (and its Nordic neighbours in particular), paved the way for successful market economic reforms, and helped overcome bad governance. Moreover, after the Soviet collapse Estonia successfully used certain advantages of its relative backwardness75 in terms of infrastructure and institutions, and effectively used advanced technological solutions such as digitalization, alongside deregulation, to improve the quality of governance.76 Thus, one might argue that the positive impact of democratization on the quality of governance was achieved not only through elite competition, but also as a mechanism for restructuring the state apparatus by means of elite circulation and the breakdown of previous power hierarchies.77 This was a solution that preemptively diminished the pernicious effects of bad governance.

As long as major political changes are postponed, combatting bad governance may turn into an increasingly difficult task requiring extraordinary efforts of political leaders in terms of overhauling previous elites and restructuring the state apparatus. The experience of Georgia is telling in this respect. The 1990s featured devastating political decay, aggravated by severe economic troubles, elite turmoil, and the loss of two breakaway territories, Abkhazia and South Ossetia.78 The overthrow of the highly corrupt and unpopular regime during the Rose Revolution in 2003 provided a chance to launch large-scale policy reforms. The new leader, Mikheil Saakashvili, brought a number of new people, including young professionals, into key positions in the state apparatus and contributed to implementing several structural changes in major policy areas, ranging from the economy to education and police.79 Some of these reforms, aimed at deregulating the economy and transparency of services,80 resulted in major improvements, such as reducing red tape and petty corruption, and an increase in government effectiveness. These advancements were used by Saakashvili to promote Georgian policy reforms (and of himself) in the eyes of his domestic audience and international donors and present his achievements as a success story.81 However, as Ketevan Bolkvazde correctly points out, even this example demonstrates the limits of the effects of elite changes: Saakashvili and his entourage pursued those policy changes that they expected to increase their own power. It is no wonder that administrative reforms in Georgia soon reached a saturation point. When the new self-interested elites under Saakashvili faced challenges from their political opponents, further policy changes were curtailed.82 In the end, in 2012 Saakashvili lost the election, having been accused of numerous wrongdoings (including large-scale illegal police violence) during his election campaign, and soon after fled the country due to the threat of criminal prosecution. Still, the results of policy reforms under Saakashvili were not reversed in full, and some policy changes continued after his departure, though their pace and scope slowed down to a certain degree.83 Improving the quality of governance in Georgia was partial; however, without major elite changes and a certain political will from the leadership, even this relatively modest advancement could not be realistic for Russia.

But if post-Communist elites become entrenched, then regime changes, though often seen as democratic breakthroughs, do not always undermine bad governance, and indeed may even aggravate its pathologies. The case of Ukraine may serve as a prime example of this paradox. During the entire post-Soviet period, this country exemplified “pluralism by default” due to a configuration of elites driven by embedded regionalism and unavoidable competition between interest groups.84 President Yanukovych’s attempt to impose his political monopoly and grab the most possible rents greatly contributed to his overthrow in 2014.85 Setting aside the subsequent chain of events, which involved the annexation of Crimea and a bloody conflict in Donbass, the “revolution of dignity” of 2014 resulted in the emergence of a competitive “neopatrimonial democracy” in Ukraine.86 However, democratic elections as such have not improved the poor quality of governance by default. Rather, state capture from inside by Yanukovych and his cronies was replaced by state capture from outside by competing oligarchs.87 The new Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, was a wealthy oligarch himself, and his political career was largely opportunistic. More important, despite the call to purge former representatives of Yanukovych’s regime, little elite turnover was visible, especially in the state apparatus. In particular, structural and personnel changes in Ukrainian courts,88 and in several law enforcement agencies, were delayed indefinitely. The belief that post-Yanukovych Ukraine had merely replaced one group of crooks and thieves with another, while bad governance remained nearly the same, was not a wild exaggeration. In July 2019, Poroshenko lost his presidential re-election bid to a new leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, a former stand-up comedian, who became widely known after starring in the TV series Servant of the People, where he played the role of a school history teacher who was elected president of Ukraine. In a sense, the TV dream came true, as over three quarters of Ukrainian voters endorsed Zelensky during the run-off, and his newly established party bearing the name “Servant of the People” soon acquired a parliamentary majority after the new elections. There was certainly a popular demand for major elite changes, but the new government and the presidential administration were largely unsuccessful and conflict-ridden, and soon replaced by new nominees who have also failed to demonstrate a strong performance. The pace of reforms remains slow and does not affect the core of bad governance.

In a similar vein, Scott Radnitz, in his analysis of regime changes in Kyrgyzstan in 2005 and 2010, argues that elite-driven mass mobilization preserves the predatory and rent-seeking nature of governance, even in cases where it results in replacing ruling groups.89 Politicizing the governing economy and the state and incentives for bureaucrats’ loyalty at the expense of their effectiveness are typical for a number of competitive democracies in almost the same way as for electoral authoritarian regimes. In short, the political competition of elites, which lies at the heart of democratization, is not a panacea for overcoming bad governance, at least in the short term. In certain circumstances, such competition à la pluralism by default, may only aggravate corruption and unrule of law,90 and the chain of weak and ineffective governments may become hostages of competing cliques of elites and oligarchs.91 From this viewpoint, one might argue that democratization should be perceived as a necessary yet insufficient condition for improving the quality of governance. At minimum, major elite changes and a deep reshuffling of the entire state apparatus, alongside long-standing and systematic efforts to improve the quality of governance driven by the political will of domestic actors, and thorough oversight by the international community are key ingredients to combatting bad governance in post-Communist countries and beyond. Without all of these ingredients, these countries may experience major setbacks in the quality of governance, as the experience of Hungary, described above, demonstrated.

Under such circumstances, even the rotation of corrupt and ineffective rulers after free and fair elections only contributes to the preservation of the politico-economic order. At best, governments can resolve the most acute problems by muddling through, while the principles of bad governance remain unchallenged: corrupt and ineffective governments, seeking rent extraction, may put an end to any attempts to constrain bad governance for decades, if not centuries. As bad governance itself serves as an obstacle to sustainable economic growth and development, there is a high probability that over time the corruption and ineffectiveness of governments may be reproduced repeatedly. In this scenario, post-Communist countries could be doomed to durable bad governance in the same way as the states of sub-Saharan Africa (despite obvious differences in degree of socioeconomic development).92

A Perfect Storm: The Pandemic Crisis and Bad Governance in Russia

The COVID-19 pandemic that hit the globe in 2020 has been a sudden and simultaneous stress test for all countries. It has clearly exposed both their strengths and weaknesses in terms of policy-making in many areas and in many layers of governance, thus becoming a perfect storm for assessments and evaluations of numerous issues of the quality of governance in the country. In general, the success and failure of various countries have been explained through the mutual impact of state capacity (with regard to infrastructural power of the state),93 legitimacy, political leadership, and public health policies.94 For many, including developed countries, the existing conditions of their national health care systems turned out to be the weakest link, if not the bottleneck, as hospitals across the globe struggled to cope with excess pressures during a surge of infections (especially in some European countries like Italy that had high shares of aged residents, the most vulnerable to the pandemic). Some political leaders, such as Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil or Donald Trump in the United States, responded to the pandemic challenge sluggishly, and behaved inconsistently, ineffectively, and often irresponsibly vis-à-vis pandemic threats. In certain countries, such as Sweden, alternative strategies of pandemic response chosen by politicians and state officials have also contributed to their dubious performance. In Russia, however, all these components of reaction to the pandemic were greatly affected by the consequences of the bad governance presented and analyzed in the previous chapters of this book.

From the viewpoint of structural conditions, Russia had strong potential for a relatively efficient response to the pandemic crisis. A relatively low population density, large distances between major cities, and not particularly high domestic and international transport connectivity (except for major hubs and transborder areas) created the possibility for a slow spread of the virus across the country. A relatively developed public health infrastructure and large number of medical personnel also made a successful performance possible. Moreover, COVID-19 reached Russia fairly late relative to other major European states, so Russia had enough time to prepare for the crisis. In addition, Russian citizens were much more tolerant of the numerous pandemic-related restrictions imposed by the state than their European counterparts and did not strongly object to the government’s actions. However, in 2020–2021, Russia rose to the list of top developed countries in the world in terms of excess mortality rate, which was mostly driven by COVID-19.95 According to some expert statements, by the end of 2021 excess mortality in Russia exceeded one million, although this data (based upon population registers) may be rather incomplete.96 In essence, the political priorities of Russia’s leadership, alongside the policy effects of bad governance, greatly contributed to such an outcome.

At the exact time when COVID-19 reached Russia, its leadership prioritized other issues than dealing with the pandemic, as it was driven by the nature of Russia’s political regime. At that moment, a large-scale revision of the Russian constitution was in full swing, with a handful of amendments approved by the parliament on March 10, 2020, designed to allow Putin to retain power in Russia until 2036. As the regime built its legitimacy in the eyes of its citizens on the basis of voters’ support for an undemocratic leader, a quasi-plebiscitary “popular vote” was set for April 22, 2020, to formalize these changes with a demonstration of citizens’ approval of the constitutional amendments and of the continuity of Putin’s rule.97 It comes as no surprise that constitutional amendments turned out to be priority number one for the Kremlin. Had the pandemic not happened, this plan would most likely have been successfully implemented. Not surprisingly, the coronavirus was initially perceived by the presidential administration as just a minor bump on the road to the main goal. However, the scale of the infection surge forced the Kremlin to postpone the upcoming approval of constitutional amendments until a later date. This unexpected and unwanted change in the Kremlin’s political strategy and its search for new legitimation of Putin led to Russia’s late and largely inefficient response to the pandemic challenge. To put it bluntly, Russia effectively failed the coronavirus test for the sake of the regime’s continuity. The lives and health of Russian citizens were not prioritized by authorities: as doctor Alexander Myasnikov, the spokesperson in charge of state information management during the pandemic, openly stated in his speech on Russian TV: “Those who are supposed to die will die.”98 This reasoning was not based only on cynicism but also reflected the strategic considerations of the authorities. As human losses themselves did not challenge the preservation of the political regime and the mechanisms of governance, they were considered to be of secondary importance at best. The Kremlin perceived risks not from the pandemic as such but rather from the political disequilibrium it could cause.

As a result, politics was prioritized over policy-making, and the potential risks of anti-regime mobilization and avalanche-like decline in Putin’s public support were perceived in the Kremlin as more serious threats than the direct (COVID-19 victims) and indirect (economic recession) impact of the pandemic. No wonder that the major package of anti-crisis measures adopted in Russia in late March 2020 included, inter alia, criminalization of fake news regarding the pandemic and imposition of strict control over the spread of unwanted information on the ground—doctors and nurses across Russia were at risk of being fired, if not prosecuted, and shared information with journalists and observers only under conditions of anonymity.99 At the same time, the rise of the “information autocracy”100 (in other words the regime that is based upon extensive use of lies as a tool of dominance)101 has proved to be a double-edged sword under the conditions of the pandemic. It provides strong incentives for intentional distortion of information and production of Kremlin-desired good numbers at all layers of the state hierarchy, ranging from regional governors and city mayors to directors of local hospitals and the like.102 When the meaninglessness of official Russian statistics on the number of infected people and of pandemic-related casualties was demonstrated by experts, who used advanced quantitative techniques of analysis, these disclosures caused a furious reaction from Russian state officials, and vicious counterattacks against international media.103 The response of the Russian state was a further change in regulations aimed at further decreasing official numbers and obscuring the real picture.104 From this perspective, Russia’s rulers followed the role model of the “good Soviet Union,” outlined previously, as Soviet officials tended not to disclose bad news regarding major disasters105 and often even failed to gather certain statistical data if indicators demonstrated negative tendencies.106Although the reliance upon distorted information was not helpful in combatting the pandemic, the power vertical that prioritized loyalty over efficiency, most probably pursued other goals than the health of Russian citizens, and the media provides evidence of Russian state officials passing the blame in the midst of the pandemic.107

The overregulated state in Russia provides yet another set of incentives for inefficient combatting of the pandemic. The awkward combination of high density and poor quality of state regulations in the field of public health has provided negative incentives for directors of hospitals as well as for doctors and nurses on the ground. They have had to minimize risks of being fired by their superiors, if not prosecuted by law enforcement, for any real or imagined wrongdoings. The ongoing ill-designed “optimization” of public health facilities in Russia aimed at making huge conglomerates of big hospitals at the expense of local medical centers (especially in small towns and rural areas) has only aggravated the situation. 108 This is why loyally following any directives from their superiors, who in turn are interested in whitewashing statistics and portraying a rosy picture of successfully combatting the pandemic, remains the only available strategy for almost every worker in the Russian public health system.

At the same time, the Russian state leadership has become flawed both in personal and in institutional terms on the medical front. Unlike in many developed countries, responsibility was transferred not to the Ministry of Health or any other specialized state agency in charge of medical affairs, but to the state watchdog agency Rospotrebnadzor, primarily responsible for numerous regulations in the consumer market. This agency (which set sanitary norms and had broad discretion over punishment for their violation) had previously gained a notorious reputation for being involved in the ban on food imports from “unfriendly” countries such as Georgia. While public health agencies are based on a two-tier system of subordination (most hospitals are subordinated to and funded by subnational authorities, and the federal ministry performs functions of coordination), Rospotrebnadzor is based on the strict top-down hierarchy of its own power vertical, and was perceived by the government as an organization that could implement top-down orders without consulting with other agencies. This is why the government nominated the head of Rospotrebnadzor, Anna Popova, to be in charge of all regulatory actions taken by the state during the pandemic. The territorial branches of this agency became veto actors in the regions regarding the pandemic, as governors were requested to get its approval on all related actions, and it gained discretion and funding without bearing any responsibility for public health performance. According to journalists’ reports, Popova received carte blanche from the top leadership, and her political patron, the deputy prime minister Tatyana Golikova, counseled Popova at the beginning of the pandemic to act such that, in their words: “Everything will be all right and afterwards you will not be ashamed [before superiors].”109

In the wake of the pandemic outbreak, many necessary steps came with delays and were guided by the political motivations of Russia’s authorities. The first stimulus package for the economy was approved only in May 2020, used about 1.5 percent of the GDP (which was highly insufficient by the standards of developed countries),110 and mostly focused on support for large state companies rather than small and medium businesses. As for compensations for Russian citizens, they were fairly limited. Rather than making any bold moves in the wake of the outbreak, Putin refused to announce a state of emergency or a major lockdown; instead, he officially declared a “week off” in March 2020 and then extended it several times up until May 2020 (the same trick was repeated in May 2021, during the new outbreak of the pandemic). Ultimately, the authority to combat the coronavirus was de facto entrusted to the chief executives of Russia’s regions. They gained rights and responsibilities to handle problems caused by the pandemic, including regulating work, travel, and services, preparing medical facilities for the influx of patients, and the like.

Administrative decentralization in itself could have been a justified measure during the pandemic. Russia is a diverse country, and the scale of the problems caused by the coronavirus varied greatly between the provinces. Yet the entire mechanism of governance in Russia was insufficient for the country to provide an effective response to the pandemic crisis at the regional level. First and foremost, many provinces had limited amounts of resources to resist the pandemic, while the transfers from the federal budget reached regional coffers with a major delay. Second, the conditions of the overregulated state caused a failure by both federal and regional governments to provide the resources needed to deal with the consequences of the pandemic (due to the risk of being accused of misusing state funds). Third, the power vertical was not designed to deal with such crises, as apart from delivering required voting results at any cost and avoiding mass protests, the regional and local officials’ objective was to achieve targets imposed in a top-down manner, measured as percentage points of performance indicators against previous years.111 Therefore, it is hardly surprising that during the pandemic the governors of some Russian regions provided official reports to the Kremlin of nearly unchanged numbers of cases and (mostly unsuccessfully) attempted to hide excess mortality data.112

As to more substantive measures for combatting the pandemic, the Russian authorities put major efforts into developing Russia’s own COVID-19 vaccine. Thanks to overconcentrating resources necessary to develop and produce a vaccine, and a rush to launch it, Russian authorities proudly registered a vaccine, labeled Sputnik V (official title Gam-COVID-Vac) on August 11, 2020, earlier than other similar products by global pharmacological companies such as Pfizer or Johnson & Johnson. Such a prompt approval of Sputnik V was met with criticism in the mass media and discussions in the expert community about whether approval was justified in the absence of robust scientific research confirming safety and efficacy.113 However, in February 2021, an interim analysis from the trial was published in the Lancet, the major global medical journal, indicating 91.6 percent efficacy without major side effects.114 In many ways, Sputnik V’s launch was perceived by Russian authorities as a grand success story. However, its trajectory became not so dissimilar to some other success stories in Russia, as analyzed in chapter 6. First, amid the pandemic, Russia attempted to use the supplying of new anti-COVID medicine as a tool of aggressive “vaccine diplomacy,” demanding major concessions from member states of the European Union for priority supply of the vaccine. Russia’s vaccine-related pressure on governments in countries like Slovakia and the Czech Republic, aimed at changes in their policies toward Russia, caused major political scandals.115 Some other countries faced delays in procuring Russian vaccines. In the end, Russian attempts to conquer international vaccination markets had limited success, as Sputnik V failed to get quick approval by American and European regulators. Second, and most important, the domestic campaign of vaccination largely failed. Russia had officially started vaccination with Sputnik V as early as December 2020 (the use of foreign vaccines was not permitted in Russia). However, by late December 2021 only 45 percent of Russians had received at least one dose of the vaccine—a much lower share than in most developed countries.116 The Russian authorities paid little attention to persuading citizens to be vaccinated, while the state propaganda aimed at discrediting the European and American experience of combatting the pandemic (including vaccination efforts abroad) intentionally or unintentionally spread many nonsensical ideas about the pandemic and therefore disoriented many ordinary Russians. Only in June 2021, when the new outbreak of COVID-19 caused a new spike in the number of victims, did the government seek to increase the vaccination rate at least among public sector employees and service sector workers. To what extent these belated measures will help to combat the pandemic in Russia remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, the “popular vote,” conducted on July 1, 2020, was probably the most massive and shameless instance of fraudulent voting in Russia’s post-Communist history. Using various means, ranging from large-scale workplace mobilization of voters (mostly public sector employees)117 to routine ballot box stuffing and delivering entirely fake results, the Kremlin reached its target. According to official data, the turnout was about 65 percent of Russian voters, and almost 78 percent of them voted for the constitutional amendments, although mass surveys demonstrated a much lower degree of approval,118 and some experts argued that about thirty million votes were added to the real numbers. 119 Still, even this fraudulent procedure has not shaken the legitimacy of Russia’s regime, at least as of yet. Before the “popular vote,” the Kremlin’s mouthpieces openly declared that their goal was to cement the status quo for as long as possible and to demonstrate to all Russians that everything in the country will remain the same, so that “after Putin there will be Putin,” as the speaker of the State Duma summarized the message.120 It is hard to predict to what extent these dreams of averting major political changes in Russia forever will come true, but the long-term continuity of Russia’s current political regime will almost inevitably result in further political decay and aggravating the numerous vices of bad governance analyzed in this book.121

Concluding Remarks: Is Bad Governance Forever?

In 1348, Ambrogio Lorenzetti, the author of the Allegory of Bad Government (presented on the cover of this book), fell victim to a pandemic—like many residents of Siena and other medieval cities in Europe, he died of the bubonic plague. But almost seven centuries from that time, his frescoes remain on the walls of the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena and still serve as a powerful reminder of the causes and effects of good and bad governance across space and time—be they discussed in medieval Siena, in contemporary Russia, or anywhere on the globe. Neither the city portrayed by Lorenzetti nor the numerous cities and towns of Russia are doomed to be governed badly because of their unfavorable structural conditions. Quite the opposite, these polities exhibit various manifestations of bad governance because their rulers, similarly to the main character of Lorenzetti’s fresco, behave like tyrants and tend to minimize any constraints on arbitrary rule. In the absence of domestic and international constraints, tyrants rarely have strong incentives to govern their domains in an effective and efficient way, and this is why numerous vices of bad governance, so vividly presented in the fresco, often become a constituent core of mechanisms of governance in various states and nations.

Judging from this perspective, contemporary Russia represents a pure case of intentional building of bad governance on the ruins of the Soviet system after its collapse and troubled transformation. This outcome was not predetermined by Russia’s legacies of the past, nor was it an effect of the individual characteristics of Putin and other Russian leaders. Rather, Russia’s rulers were able to pursue their own self-interest and reach their goals, while rulers of many other countries were not able to do so for various reasons. The consolidation of authoritarianism in Russia during the first two decades of the twenty-first century undoubtedly entrenched bad governance and exacerbated its major effects, such as corruption and rent-seeking. However, bad governance in Russia does not necessarily lead the country to immediate total disaster and major failures in all key policy fields. The mechanisms of governance built in Russia in the twenty-first century imply elements of fool-proofing, and many prudent technocratic solutions have enabled an aversion of the worst risks. Moreover, under certain circumstances, success stories of strong government performance have demonstrated major achievements in different policy fields, but even though these successes often became limited and unsustainable over time. This is why neither hopes nor fears of inevitable collapse of bad governance are relevant to Russia, at least as of yet. Rather, Russia has exhibited a pattern of durable bad governance, or low-level equilibrium, which may not be shaken even if sooner or later the country faces major political regime changes. Democratization is a necessary yet insufficient condition for overcoming bad governance, as the recent experience of Ukraine suggests.

What are the lessons that might be learned from the experience of bad governance in contemporary Russia? First and foremost, political foundations lie at the core of mechanisms for governing the state, and personalist authoritarian regimes provide fertile grounds for building bad governance, especially if these regimes prove to have a certain durability, as in Russia’s case. Second, regardless of loud rhetoric, the dreams of authoritarian modernization have not been significantly converted into reality, as political leaders rarely invest systematic efforts into improving the quality of governance unless they face major domestic and/or international challenges and constraints. Third, irrespective of Russia’s foreign policies, its practices of bad governance have a high chance of turning into a role model for many rulers of other countries who would like to govern their states in a similar way to Putin. Finally, one must admit that while bad governance may initially emerge in any given country and be further aggravated by conscious poisoning by politicians, it will not disappear by itself without tremendous and systematic efforts by the political class and society at large, and the success of such efforts is relatively rare. For these reasons, bad governance is most likely to turn from growing pains of post-Communist state-building into its chronic diseases, which may be not fully curable.

All metaphors, which are so widely used in social sciences, are imperfect as they are only partly congruent with complex realities, and the medical metaphor of the causes and effects of bad governance employed in this book is no exception. In the world of medicine, a patient who behaves irresponsibly about his or her disease, that is, ignores professional recommendations, refuses medical treatments, and worsens his or her health using alcohol and smoking, usually dies prematurely. But in the world of twenty-first century politics, states and societies, unlike individuals, are immortal—for good or ill, they are not dying at all, not disappearing from the global map by themselves nor being conquered by other powers. Rather, the miserable countries affected by the chronic disease of bad governance may endlessly continue their mediocre, hopeless, and meaningless existence under these worsening conditions, and over time be left with fewer and fewer chances for their recovery. This is the real threat for Russia and for other countries that are not immune to bad governance. After a certain stage of decay, the declining quality of governance may reach a point of no return. If so, then it will not be possible to improve the Russian state by any available means. Rather, the question for scholars and experts may be how to eliminate it without causing major harm to the human beings in the country and across the globe. To what extent such a question may become a major item on Russia’s agenda in the foreseeable future remains to be seen.