The Putin System: An Opposing View

4 THE FUTURE OF AUTOCRACY IN RUSSIA ^{What Do We Have to Tolerate (and for How Long)?}

In the previous chapters, I have analyzed the political system that has taken shape in Russia and have identified its essential features as a political organization within peripheral capitalism that allows us to characterize it as a peripheral authoritarianism. This means that the political system that has taken shape in Russia is a leader-oriented authoritarianism, with all its typical traits, including monopolistic control of one ruling circle or team, single-handedly led by one person, over all government institutions in the country; the absence of working mechanisms to ensure an involuntary replacement of the ruling circle with another group of people; and the ideology of a unified and indivisible power as the universal principle of governance. It also views the law as an auxiliary tool to use in ruling society, but it does not limit this power or make it accountable.

The economic underpinning of this power has been the ability to allocate administrative rent, derived from monopolistic control over major economic assets. This enables the ruling circle and its leader to command the political life of society as they see fit, by using their control over most of the financial flows and information/propaganda resources—even if, formally, they preserve the channels for feedback from society and the mechanisms of political competition (including a multiparty system and periodic national and local elections).

Thus, the extent of the authorities’ power and the limits of what they can do within the existing framework are primarily determined by the amount of administrative rent they are able to extract and to distribute. The larger the amount, the more opportunities there are for the ruling group to maintain its control over society without applying direct physical pressure. The system’s ability to neutralize potentially destabilizing external impacts also plays an important role. The ruling circle must possess the requisite tools and resources to give them an edge over outside forces that are capable of influencing key segments of society in a direction that is undesirable for the system.

All of this constitutes the common, generic features of authoritarian rule as such. In today’s Russia, these are combined with significant characteristics and elements resulting from the peripheral character of Russia’s capitalism. This is evident in the underdeveloped and undiversified economy; the absence of an economic and political elite embedded in society and its history; the extreme weakness of public institutions, such as political parties, with support in various strata of society; the failure of representative bodies to serve as platforms for interaction among political forces in the pursuit of mutually acceptable solutions; a lack of executive agencies with clearly defined purposes and responsibilities; the failure of the law as the regulator of relations within society; and so on.

Ultimately, this is a manifestation of the dependence of Russian capitalism upon global centers. This dependence accounts, on the one hand, for the lack of autonomy of Russia’s business elites within Russia and their subsequent migration outside of Russia’s territory and, on the other hand, for their anti-Western sentiment, which is generated by their sense of their own parochialism, their subordinate position, and their vulnerability.

All of these features, taken together, help to explain the characteristic traits of Russia’s authoritarianism. There is the authorities’ lack of a sense of their public service mission. There is a reliance upon corruption as a method and instrument of governance, the general public’s lack of faith in the possibility of change (“There is no other way, no matter what we do”), and xenophobia as the basis of political stability. There is a pursuit of isolation from any external influences. Finally, there is a cult of peculiar “traditional values,” used to justify the existence of deep gulfs of socioeconomic inequality and the population’s generally low levels of personal and public consumption relative to the consumption in global centers like the United States and Europe.

At the same time, none of this is exclusive to the global periphery. Moreover, corruption and purposeful conditioning of public opinion by the establishment exist in the global centers in much more intricate forms, and thus on a much larger scale, than on the periphery. The difference is that, in the peripheral-type economies and societies, these are used less for the redistribution of the products of development and more as a universal instrument of governance. Furthermore, reliance upon these instruments largely makes development itself impossible, as it precludes the use of more sophisticated and more efficient tools of governance.

As has been shown, Russia developed this kind of political system gradually, step by step, but quite consistently and steadily, and its shape was to some degree objectively conditioned. The outcome of this was the formation of the full-blown autocracy with markedly peripheral traits and tendency toward stagnation that we see in Russia today. In my opinion, this is best illustrated by the events of 2014, when all of these attributes became fully formed and plain to see. By an arbitrary decision of the president, who was given the legal authority to use military force abroad with no reservation or prior discussion by the parliament’s upper house, Crimea was taken under control and driven toward annexation, and the separatist movement in southeast Ukraine was initiated and supported. To justify these steps, a new edition of the “Eurasian” empire-building ideological campaign was launched, presented as an alternative to European values. The propaganda machine also resorted to lies to deny responsibility for the downing of a Malaysian Airline Boeing 777, which resulted in heavy civilian casualties.

However, it seems not enough to simply record as a given the fact of the formation of such a political system in post-Soviet Russia. If we claim to understand the logic of this system’s development and functioning, then we must to some extent envision the possibilities of its evolution and the scenarios for its future. Despite the infinite possibilities of tomorrow, and knowing that future scenarios always include uncertainty, we still can outline some patterns of development inherent in socioeconomic systems. These patterns are familiar to us from world history and are accounted for by the logic of relationships among social phenomena and events. We shall now investigate how these patterns are playing out in Russia.

The first question that I would like to tackle is whether the evolution of a political system may be predetermined in any way at all. Are there any templates that history uses to chart a system’s trajectory?

In my past writings, I have noted that the developments at the turn of the century prompted many of us to reassess our views on this subject. Only twenty years ago, mainstream thinkers and experts in the West tended to believe that, sooner or later (more precisely, in the coming decades), all societies were going to end up accepting the basic principles of political order that are most often called “liberal democracy.” These principles include the separation of power among government’s distinctive branches, the legal impossibility of usurping power and establishing a monopoly on its exercise, competition among political parties for the right to form the executive branch of government, elections to representative bodies based upon universal and equal voting rights, the supremacy of law and respect for minority rights, and a number of other, second-level principles. Essentially, these principles are inherent (or at least are supposed to be inherent) in the competition-based model of the political organization of the state. These principles not only were recognized as universal basic values but also were viewed (in the spirit of Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history”) as the inevitable outcome of a progressive development of any existing national community, regardless of the historical and cultural differences among them. From this point of view, any autocratic regimes still existing at the end of the twentieth century were viewed as anachronistic holdovers that the course of history itself was going to remove from the stage in a relatively short period of time.

Even today, this point of view is at the very least prevalent among Western academics and experts, though not nearly to the extent that it was fifteen or twenty years ago. Under the influence of several factors, the model of a “universal future” began to recede from its dominant position and was partly modified, with its ongoing reassessment going in at least two directions. On the one hand, the theory of multiple civilizations has abruptly gained popularity. This theory views many of the tensions in international (as well as in interethnic and interfaith) relations as an irreconcilable and intractable “clash of civilizations.” Strictly speaking, this theory was virtually ubiquitous during the Middle Ages, though it was described in the simple and relatively unsophisticated forms that suited those times, and, with some qualifications, it was part of the state ideology of most countries—to the extent that we can apply the term “ideology” to that era in history. In the second half of the twentieth century, it seemed that faith in the power of a humanistic approach to the world and in the significance of progress and universal “democratic values,” as well as the spread of the notions of political correctness during the century’s final few decades, had completely marginalized the theory of the “clash of civilizations” and that it was disappearing from the stage. Meanwhile, the values that were usually called “European” had seemingly achieved the status of “universal human values.”

Nevertheless, by the end of the twentieth century the theory of the multiplicity of civilizations suddenly started acquiring new followers, including followers in the Western world, and, so to speak, becoming legitimized in the scholarly community.[1] Furthermore, the basic tenets of this theory began to shape the practical activities of politicians in such areas as foreign and defense policy and even, at least to some extent, in the humanitarian sphere. For example, the practice of using double standards, which is widespread in today’s international relations, is essentially nothing but a practical political reflection of the concept of “different human civilizations.” In this framework, the actions of one’s own civilization that its representatives view as acceptable and ethical appear unacceptable and unethical when practiced by others. And the opposite is also true: what is viewed as completely unacceptable, an “absolute evil” in civic terms, within one’s own political system is recognized as not only acceptable but even convenient and useful within political systems organized in somewhat different ways. This framework can serve as a convenient tool for dominant groups seeking to consolidate their power, as it is easier to rally mass support for themselves by identifying an alternative “civilization” as a common enemy.

At the same time, the assumptions about a “natural” universal world order, which had been characteristic of mainstream Western thought at the end of the twentieth century, were being subjected to reassessment from yet another end. Namely, it became increasingly in vogue to view international relations as nothing more but a geopolitical game. In this perspective, strong players wrestle with each other to expand their respective spheres of influence, while the weaker ones try to gain as much advantage for themselves as they can, using the opportunities provided by this struggle and its associated tensions. From this point of view, even the disappearance or a significant relaxation of global ideological conflicts (as, for example, the de facto disappearance from the international stage of so-called world communism as a global ideological alternative to “liberal democracy”) does not alter the logic of world politics as the struggle among various states over influence, power, and resources.

To put it otherwise, this current of thought denies the primacy of ideology in international relations, viewing it as merely one of the factors that shape the configuration of the struggle among competing global players. Accordingly, in this framework, the blurring of ideological differences is bound to be compensated for by other factors that justify the need to play the global game and win control over resources (broadly defined, including the resource of political power). Meanwhile, the essence of global politics as a game remains the same, from time immemorial to our own day. Zbigniew Brzezinski, the author of The Grand Chessboard, is often cited as virtually the foremost representative of this analytical current.

In reality, this logic is indeed pronounced, though not as much in present-day writings on geopolitics as in the ongoing commentary by practicing politicians, intended to shape the opinions and decisions of others. Yet this way of thinking does not and never has had anything novel or groundbreaking in it. Often it is essentially nothing more than an extrapolation into our times of the perennial view of international relations as a tussle among princes and states pursuing expansion of their own power. It is nothing but an attempt to thwart the temporary dominance of “politically correct” views about the practical feasibility of establishing a minimally harmonious and sustainable universal world order in the future.

In any case, the universal convergence of various political systems on the basis of universal liberal democratic values, which so recently seemed to be forthcoming and unavoidable, is already viewed by many as a utopian vision. Although authoritarian political systems are still viewed as most likely to collapse or to be transformed into competition-based systems, in the intermediate future this probability no longer looks as obvious and inevitable as it once did. At present, the trajectory and time frame of the evolution of existing autocracies are seen by developed countries as more convoluted than they appeared just recently.

It is increasingly acknowledged that the expectations of the impending, ineluctable collapse of all dictatorships and “tyrannies” as a result of the spread of education and political activism among the masses have been mistaken and impractical. There is also a growing recognition that the process of liberal democracy conquering the world is a lengthy one and, on some terrains, is easily reversible. Granted, the vision of a competition-based (“democratic”) political system, with broad guarantees of individual rights and the rights of various minorities, as the decisive stage of the political history of the world is still prevalent in the public consciousness. Yet, at present, this vision accepts, at the very least, the possibility of a protracted existence and internal development of alternative political systems.

These alternative systems include various types of autocracies, including theocracies and semifeudal systems of rule based on direct personal service of local power holders to more powerful authorities and on outright violence by warlords or field commanders. They also include totalitarian regimes built upon the theories of ethnic or ideological superiority, as well as all kinds of mixed and transitional systems. It is worth noting that the time horizon of their existence is no longer estimated to be just a few, or ten, or fifteen years at best; instead, it is expected that they may be able to exist and go through changes over extended periods of time while possibly enjoying high degrees of stability.

I believe that this relatively new approach to the potential prospects of existing autocracies is much closer to reality than the prior notion of their predetermined internal exhaustion, their lack of capacity to adapt to existing realities and their looming collapse. Moreover, the direction of changes within these systems is not an a priori given; it may vary greatly depending on circumstances. In some instances, these changes may result in the consolidation and even improved effectiveness of the monopolistic exercise of power by the ruling group. Of course, as the society under their rule and the tasks they face become more complex, the advantages of a competition-based political system over its authoritarian counterpart become increasingly more tangible—both from the point of view of efficient resource utilization and in terms of lowering the risks of major blunders and ultimately of a potential collapse of statehood as such.

Nonetheless, it must be noted that several factors present in the world today increase the possibility of a protracted survival of authoritarian political systems, even though these systems are out of sync with their surroundings. The first of these factors is the long-term division of the world into the “center” and the “periphery,” with the periphery facing objectively lower demands than does the center in terms of the efficiency of governance and of its success in accomplishing its socioeconomic tasks. To put it simply, to serve as a supplier of certain kinds of raw materials to the developed world, a peripheral country is by no means required to build a modern, socially responsible system of governance that would ensure progress in science and technology or to strike a balance among various social, territorial, and ethnocultural groups, let alone to undertake an effective pursuit of economic, technological, or political leadership in the world. To serve as a raw materials provider, it is quite sufficient to have the minimally required material infrastructure and to protect it against destructive forces, which is a manageable task for even the most archaic authoritarian systems. Dozens of countries have managed to fit into the world economy in one way or another, even if only as a remote and isolated outskirt, without having a functionally proficient modern state or even planning to develop one in the foreseeable future.

Another factor consists of the objective changes in the economic underpinnings of contemporary developed societies, which have been reducing the significance of control over territories as a source of the country’s well-being. Merely two hundred years ago, a decline in the power and effectiveness of a given state would almost inevitably bring with it the loss of control over territories, to the advantage of its more powerful neighbors, leading to a change in the composition of the ruling circle, if not of the entire system. Today, in contrast, weak and ineffective states may exist for a long time without being viewed by stronger powers as a potentially desirable acquisition that they would like to incorporate or to control. The prosperity of the developed world is increasingly based on sources that have nothing to do with controlling territories of others. In my previous book, Realeconomik, I wrote quite a bit about rent derived from one’s historical advantage (historical rent) and rent on intellectual capital (innovation rent), which serve as the sources of large-scale revenues for developed countries without their having to maintain control over foreign territories.[2] It is easy for developed countries to gain access, through international trade and investment, to raw mineral or energy resources that are physically located in specific territories. Under these circumstances, even the so-called “failed states” can linger for decades without being physically taken over by anyone willing to take advantage of their infirmity.

Finally, the third factor that would seem to increase the possibility of the protracted survival of authoritarian political systems is a general softening of the developed part of the world, sometimes called its weakness, its spinelessness, the extinction of its spirit, and so on. This is a condition of society in which everyday life and the relative well-being of most of one’s fellow citizens (who are also voters and whose sentiments have to be taken into account in politics) are becoming more valuable than the vision of a global transformation, of bringing other parts of the world in line with one’s own views about the desirable organization of society, and other similar collective and supranational goals. This helps to explain why countries that view themselves as the political leaders of the Western world, with a mission to “spread democracy” everywhere, are actually unwilling to expend any substantial amount of financial or other resources toward this purpose. These countries widely tout their support for the “struggle for freedom,” and yet, even with regard to autocracies whose prospects for an institutional transformation seem to be quite realistic, their support is typically limited to rhetorical stunts, along with very modest financial contributions to those whom they identify as the opposition to authoritarian rule and as “friends of the West.” And when some of these Western countries resort to costly military campaigns to advance these goals, as the United States did in the Iraq campaign, for instance, they typically do it in response to specific situations and to domestic political needs, which does not have much to do with any strategy of promoting democracy. Moreover, the new regimes to emerge after such campaigns are rarely a significant improvement over their predecessors.

Therefore, if present-day authoritarian regimes ever lose their grip on society, it usually is caused not by some external impact or by a lack of international competitiveness; rather, it typically comes about for internal reasons. Foremost among these internal causes is the regime’s inability to ensure that the economic, political, and social developments within its jurisdiction remain controllable. And this failure, in turn, may occur simply because several things go wrong at the same time or, more often, because mistakes or erratic decisions are made by the ruling circle or the autocratic leader. Absent the mechanisms for the system to auto-correct these errors, the regime is led into a dead end, where it is incapable of meeting the challenges it faces.

Nevertheless, there are certain patterns in the evolution of political systems, and this must also be applicable to the peripheral authoritarian system that has taken shape in today’s post-Soviet Russia. Despite all the caveats and uncertainties mentioned earlier, some of the changes within the system are more probable than others, and the direction of these changes is determined both by the system’s internal logic and by its environment. Since both of these variables are fairly predictable, we can also forecast and describe the most probable scenarios for prospective developments in Russia.

Identifying and describing the highest-probability scenarios for the future has been made simpler by the fact that, starting in 2014, Putin’s authoritarian tendencies, which had been dormant or barely nascent over the previous ten to fifteen years, have now come to the fore. Earlier, it was not clear how fast they might develop and how far they might go. Even now, there is still no full clarity in this regard, but at least Putin’s authoritarian impulse has emerged in a much more discernible way, and the probability that the current direction of developments will be reversed is many times lower than it used to be.

What I mean is mainly the sum total of the facts that have become clear to Russians since 2012, once the so-called castling of 2008 (whereby Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev switched their official positions, with Putin becoming prime minister and Medvedev president) was reversed and Putin began his third presidential term as the undisputed head of Russia’s ruling circle. This may be labeled Putin’s new agenda, but in reality there is nothing fundamentally new about it; it is just an acceleration and a continuous unshackling of the trends that were already inherent in the political system and the public consciousness.

Russia’s ruling circle has intensified its ideological and political confrontation with the center of the global capitalism, and, as players in world politics, they have conspicuously refused to abide by the rules proposed by the center. These elites have been striving to develop their own official ideology and to actually make it the government ideology, that is, to impose and defend it with all the might of government resources and power. They have tended not just to put a squeeze upon any organized alternative political current but also to restrict as much as possible all kinds of opposition, including intellectual opposition, which has no real resources that would enable it to pose any noticeable threat to the authorities.

It is easily noted that all these trends are closely intertwined, so that each of them makes perfect sense in light of the others, while also reinforcing them. The outcome is a quite powerful trend pushing the system as a whole toward totalitarianism, even if it is not as in-your-face as the most familiar twentieth-century political systems of this kind. In any case, the model of the political organization of society toward which Russia has been clearly drifting in the past several years contains several features of totalitarian systems. These features include the dominance of one set of views in the public sphere, affirmed and protected by the government, and the portrayal of any alternative views as inimical to the state and the people. The government also has a tendency toward the deliberate isolation of society from all external influences, which are interpreted as being directed against the nation, hostile, and debilitating for society and the country, as they induce Russians to commit treason. I also observe the brainwashing of the public to believe in these mythical threats even as they also face real ones. In sum, the people at the top of the power system are increasingly portrayed to the Russian people as the supreme authority, whose decisions can no longer be questioned.

The first element of Putin’s new set of policies, noted earlier, is its orientation toward an outwardly uncompromising rejection of the rules of international politics that are set by the powers of the global capitalist “core”—the United States and the large European powers that determine the policies of the European Union. Plainly, this attitude is nothing completely new, nor is it unexpected. The critique of the rules of the game established by the West has been an important component of post-Soviet Russia’s domestic and foreign policy for at least the past fifteen years. Suffice it to recall such incidents from the recent history of international relations as the crisis in the former Yugoslavia, and the EU and NATO interference in that crisis; the war of the NATO members against the regime of Saddam Hussein and the subsequent occupation of Iraq; the tense arguments between Russia and the United States over the deployment of American antimissile defense systems; the enlargement of NATO through its incorporation of Eastern Europe; the Russian–Georgian conflict of 2008, resulting in large-scale military operations; and so on.

Each of these events led to acute disagreements between Russia and leading Western powers. These disagreements not only narrowed the opportunity for potential constructive interaction between the two sides but also were actively exploited by all parties in the process of shaping their domestic public opinion. Every time these disagreements sharpened, both sides became increasingly convinced that there was not and could not be a consensus about the rules of behavior in situations of conflict, and thus that any diplomatic efforts to reduce the differences, or at least to find some common ground on issues, could only have a limited and temporary effect.

Meanwhile, the Western powers predictably assumed, as something self-evident, that their role as the core of world capitalism (and thus of the contemporary world as a whole) entitled them to use their advantage to set the rules of international behavior according to their own perceptions of justice and international law. Thus, they viewed anybody else’s attempts to resist playing by the rules established in this manner as negative behavior, and they considered the initiators of these attempts to be, at best, spoilers of the West’s political triumph and, at worst, enemies trying to subvert the established world order. Even before recent allegations of Russian interference in European and American elections, Western countries had settled upon a view of Russia as intent upon spoiling their party. For their part, Russia’s leadership and the public opinion that it controls had convinced themselves that playing by the West’s rules is of no benefit for Russia but in fact works to Russia’s detriment, leading to losses every single time.

Yet, starting in about 2013 or 2014, the disagreements between Russia and the West became increasingly acute. With every turn of events around Libya and Syria, and then with the intense political crisis in Ukraine,[3] the Kremlin became convinced that Russia’s subordination to the rules that were being set by the West could only lead to Western disregard of the Kremlin’s opinion and interests, as understood by its denizens. When the Kremlin takes what the West considers a “constructive” stance, Russia does not and cannot derive any benefit from it, and neither would it be compensated by anyone, in any way, for its potential losses. Thus, rather than trying to adapt to the Western rules, it makes more sense for Russia’s leadership to act entirely at its own discretion, at least within the limits set by their available resources. As for the international (Western) response to their actions, Russian elites believe that they should simply be ignored.

Essentially, this was precisely the Kremlin’s position on the issue of Syria. It did the same, except even more explicitly, and even defiantly vis-à-vis the West, in its response to the political crisis in Ukraine and the attempts by Western politicians to find a resolution to this crisis without deference to the Kremlin’s position and interests. These attempts were perceived as a particularly painful slight, as an expression of total disrespect for the Russian political elite’s expectations about how the Western community of countries should treat Russia— requirements that the elite saw as unquestionably justified by history.[4]

The West, for its part, categorized present-day Russia as a threat to international stability, which was to be removed through various means, namely, political and economic sanctions and, possibly, coercion. Regardless of the specific measures chosen as the West’s immediate response to the Kremlin’s actions in the Ukrainian crisis, governments and mass media in Western countries offered their publics an unequivocal interpretation of these Russian steps as a challenge to the familiar world order—a challenge that could not be left without a response. This is their long-term assessment, and it seems unlikely to change, even if the Kremlin and the West find some formula for a mutual adjustment of their interests and demands on the issue of Ukraine.

The conflicts that have been shaking the Kremlin’s relationship with the global West since 2014 have led to a predictable outcome: in the view of many, Russia has decidedly split from the international community, in its Western definition, likely for the long term. And its ruling circle has decided that a conspicuous isolation or self-isolation of Russia from the West suits them better than attempts to adjust their behavior to the West and its rules. While some observers, both in Russia and in the West, claim that this decision was made by one man—Vladimir Putin—it is hardly possible to deny that these kinds of sentiments are widespread in Russia’s ruling circle and within its political class as a whole.

For the same reason, the Kremlin’s official adoption of this “new” course in international affairs, first and foremost in the former Soviet regions, did not meet with even muted resistance; in fact, it was received with genuine enthusiasm by most of Russia’s elite. The long-standing popular view of Russia as cosmopolitan, closely tied to the West by its business and everyday interests, had turned out to be at odds with reality. Instead, it became clear that the bulk of Russia’s administrative and business elite was well aware of the actual source of its affluence and was not ready to risk losing it for the sake of tenuous benefits to be derived from their interactions with the West, whether at the same level as before or even at a more intensive level.

Understandably, the Kremlin’s official, public position, which is bound to be somewhat deceitful, refers, as before, to the importance of dialogue, to the need to seek common ground, to the desirability of cooperation and the benefits that it brings to both sides, and so on. Nevertheless, we must lucidly acknowledge that the changes that have occurred in this sphere are very far-reaching. Under the present circumstances, any “return to the early 1990s,” when Russia’s still embryonic authoritarianism was outwardly ready to accept the prescribed role of a subordinate and externally controlled piece in the big picture of the global order, is unthinkable. For the Kremlin, the state of confrontation with the West and the denial of the role that had been prearranged for it is becoming not merely acceptable but even comfortable. It provides the ruling circle with the opportunity to set up a mobilization-oriented framework of domestic political development, effectively thwarting the protestations by those forces inside Russia that are trying to counteract this situation.

Moreover, by emphasizing in its propaganda that it has been the initiative of the West to punish Russia as a violator of the rules, through the use of economic sanctions, the Kremlin absolves itself of its responsibility for the impending deterioration of economic conditions in Russia, where high consumption levels and, especially, further economic growth depend upon close ties with its global metropole, the West. It is worth noting that the role played by the Ukrainian crisis in the authoritarian regime’s turn toward self-isolation from the West should not be overstated. The crisis only provided a convenient pretext for Russia’s ruling elite to make a show of its “divorce” from the West. The political and economic preconditions for it had ripened earlier and were merely awaiting for an appropriate occasion to come to the fore and to propel the Kremlin into action. Had this action been taken at a later stage, it might have been less showy but more thorough and irreversible in its impact.

In my view, the economic preconditions for this turn away from the West were more definitive. Namely, the resource export–oriented framework of Russia’s economy had exhausted its capacity to serve as the engine of economic development and consumption, not merely in theory but also in practice. This conclusion became a point of consensus among almost all political forces in Russia and was repeated nearly ad nauseam; yet, for quite a while, Russia’s elite was not truly and completely aware of what this actually meant. It was only after the 2008–2009 crisis and the evaporation of the hopes for the resurgence of the economic “mini miracle” of the “fat years” (2003–2007) that it became plain to see: the growth that relied upon oil and gas exports was actually petering out, and no new impetus for Russia’s economic development could be generated just by intensive connections with the West.

Accordingly, Russia’s political elite viewed these ties as an asset of diminishing value, and the possibility of formal and informal sanctions by Western countries was no longer a constraint for the Kremlin. The disappearance of prior benefits from the growth of raw materials exports to leading industrial countries was ascertained as a fact by the bulk of Russia’s elite that was not directly involved with these industries. Meanwhile, the opportunities to diversify the range of industries and economic activities specifically through close interactions with Western economies either were nonexistent to begin with or were never seized upon by the ruling circle. As a result of all of these factors, Russia’s economic elite never put up any significant resistance when the Kremlin began its turn toward political confrontation with the West at the expense of economic ties both with the West and among the elites themselves.

Evidently, the political prerequisites for this turn were primarily related to the outlook and psychology of the man at the top of the authoritarian hierarchy. Specifically, Vladimir Putin found himself a square peg in a round hole in the club of global chief executives; they did not see him as one of their own, let alone equal to them. They viewed even his very presence in the Group of Eight as a leftover from the Cold War, a consequence of Russia’s ownership of a disproportionately large stockpile of nuclear weapons and now out of sync with Russia’s far humbler role in the world economy, trade, and investment. Meanwhile, the Russian leader’s denial of this situation and his aspirations for a larger role were the source of constant mutual irritation and displeasure. Sooner or later, these feelings were bound to erupt, morphing into tough, intransigent actions.

It is also plain to see that the widespread perception of Russia’s top elite as a cosmopolitan group, whose economic interests and personal plans connected it tightly to the West, were also at odds with reality. Even those among Russia’s business and political elite who, on a personal level, would like to integrate with the “greater West” felt like disrespected and disavowed waifs there, because of their differences from the Western elite in education, psychology, mind-set, and personal experience. They could never get rid of a certain kind of psychological discomfort, which instinctively produced a feeling of being offended, and even a sense of their own superiority over the representatives of the Western elite, whom they saw as pampered and narrow-minded. Most of Russia’s high-ranking officials and businesspeople never managed to secure sources of income and social status in the developed world that would be on a par with what they had at home, nor were they able to escape the feeling that the outside world viewed them with a certain disrespect, as global “provincials” of sorts. Naturally, all this affected their outlook, which was reflected in their inability and unwillingness to put up an earnest resistance when the Kremlin created the impetus for hateful and contemptuous rhetoric toward the West.

In this regard, it was entirely natural that the drive toward isolation from the outside world (a result of the Kremlin’s actions, which violated the rules established for it) rapidly accelerated and was far-reaching in its development. It was particularly helped by the fact that the Kremlin’s actions were accompanied by territorial acquisitions and the associated upswing in patriotic, pro-government feelings—a politically important gain for the ruling circle. The threats issued by the West in this connection even sparked a certain enthusiasm among the elite, rather than scaring them, because this was viewed as a sort of acknowledgement of their grandeur. The Kremlin could afford to act as it saw fit, without worrying about the “international community.” The prospect that Western governments could freeze and seize the foreign assets of Russia’s high-ranking officials, particularly those of the uniformed agencies, was only welcomed—both by Putin, their unquestionable leader, who had already been pursuing a policy of “nationalization of the elite,” and, one might say, by Russia’s population as a whole.

Judging by objective indicators and facts (to the extent that we can), it appears that the upper crust of Russia’s government bureaucracy, including its economic officials, was rather unfazed by the Kremlin’s proclamation of its willingness to drastically minimize Russia’s political and, for the most part, even economic relations with Western countries. In any case, during the period when this turnaround became clearly and unambiguously pronounced, there were no resignations or any visible activities on the part of any government officials that could be interpreted as an attempt to publicly indicate resistance to these policies. There are other trends as well, to be discussed later in this chapter, that reinforce the turn toward isolation from the outside world and, furthermore, that obstruct the path to a potential reversal of these policies. In light of this, there is a high probability that the period of decline in or freezing of the Russian elite’s connections with the outside world (or, more precisely, with the outside world’s most developed part) will continue for as long as Russia’s new authoritarianism continues in its present form.

Still, much will depend upon the dynamics of the Ukrainian crisis. Indeed, an attentive and unbiased analysis of developments in Ukraine shows that, while the internal determinants of this crisis were very significant, one of its primary causes was located outside of Ukraine. Namely, this cause lay in developments in Russia, where the system of peripheral authoritarianism continuously tried to extend its “living space,” to spread into former Soviet countries, and to fulfill its desire to rigidly impose upon these countries its own rules and ways of life. This behavior was an inherent element of the ripening and consolidation of this system.

Given the exceptional significance that the tragic events unfolding in Eastern Ukraine since the spring and summer of 2014 hold for Russia’s future, as well as the political consequences of the annexation of Crimea, let us digress a bit from the framework and flow of our analysis and take a closer look at the Russian–Ukrainian situation. In terms of their culture and history, Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus belong to the European civilization; the European path is the only practically available path for their further development. There is simply nothing else available to them, provided that these countries want to preserve their statehood in the twenty-first century. Attempts to move in a different direction are a deviation from their natural historical development, as was the Bolshevik experiment of building socialism/communism. The difference between now and then is that, nowadays, the outcome of such an attempt would be even more destructive for the countries that would experiment with it. The special significance of the Ukrainian crisis is that it has been the first large-scale, overt expression of an attempt to deviate from the European path and that it was directly caused by the disruption of the natural process of European-oriented development in the post-Soviet space.

As I mentioned earlier, Russia played the central role in the crisis in Ukraine. By increasingly pursuing “Eurasianist” domestic and foreign policies since the turn of the century, Russia has been stubbornly trying to follow a development direction that is widely characterized as anti-European. In its turn, Russia’s refusal to follow the European path, both in its practical actions and at the level of the Kremlin’s political rhetoric, means that the post-Soviet space is being torn apart, pulled in different directions. The Ukrainian crisis is a consequence of this, as Russia tries to pull Ukraine in an anti-European direction instead of moving together with it in the opposite direction.

Meanwhile, relations between society and government in Ukraine were, for quite a while, essentially based upon a certain kind of social contract: Ukrainians were willing to temporarily put up with a regime that was ugly, corrupt, and inefficient, provided that Ukraine continued to move toward Europe. This was the principal hope and dream of a great many people all over Ukraine. Moreover, on the eve of the signing of the treaty on Ukraine’s association with the European Union, it was clear that the choice in favor of Europe was not a divisive but rather a consolidating decision for the country, even though the ramifications of this step were not going to be uniformly beneficial for everyone. In the mind-set of the Ukrainians, the choice was starkly clear. It was a choice between a European future (however idealized and oversold it might have been) and the kind of present that no one wanted to live in for long. But the Ukrainian government tore up this social contract. As a result, people felt that they had been cheated and humiliated. They revolted; hence the emergence of the Maidan as a political force.

One driving force in Ukrainian politics and street activism is a regional factor focused, first and foremost, on Western Ukraine—former Galicia (Halychyna and the Lviv region) and Bukovina (the Chernivtsi region). For more than five centuries, these regions were not incorporated into Russia, and the culture and mind-set of their populations are certainly different from those of Eastern and Central Ukrainians. The people from these territories who participated in Kyiv’s Maidan were more stubborn and radical than, for example, the Kyivans. And yet, as I will discuss, this was not the most important reason why the situation radicalized.

If the powers that be seek to block the development of a society that is energetic, capable of advancing, and demands serious institutional changes, and if the authorities put a straitjacket on that society in order to suppress it, the change will nonetheless occur. The baby will be born, so to speak, but it will be deformed by these restrictions. Take the rule of Russia’s Nicholas II as an example. At the time, Russia’s government was detached from society and refused to change. This led to the situation in which the desire of Russia’s elite to act in the spirit of its times—to transform the autocracy into a constitutional monarchy and thereby create the necessary conditions for Russia’s further development—instead produced the Bolshevik monster.

Today, a hundred years later, Russia’s ruling circle is much more avaricious, petty, and vindictive, while also being less educated and cultured than the prerevolutionary autocracy. It views the development of society as a threat to itself and tries to pretend, in an irrational and preposterous manner, that no such development is possible. It restrains society with a stiff straitjacket of restrictions, prohibitions, perversions, and lawlessness, yet, by doing this, it ushers in the birth of yet another social and political monstrosity, whereby Russian politics will be dominated by outright illiterate, populist, and radical people.

Russia’s peripheral authoritarianism perceived developments in Ukraine as an assault upon the essence of Russia’s existing political system. Yet the Kremlin did not dare to defend the Eurasianist system directly; instead, it proclaimed itself to be a fighter for Russia’s interests. It demonstrated this, first, through the illegal annexation of Crimea, which was bound to increase its popularity, and second, through the defense of Russian speakers against Ukrainian nationalists (widely known in Russia as “Banderists,” after Stepan Bandera, the leader of one of the most militant nationalist groups in Ukraine during World War II).

Even so, the gist of the actions undertaken by the Kremlin was related less to Crimea (which is just an additional trophy) than to the preservation of the power of the ruling circle in Russia and to the defense of Russia’s authoritarian peripheral-type system against an onslaught. (And this was the second such onslaught, at that. The first was the exposure of the fraud perpetrated in the course of Putin’s reelection to the presidency in 2004.) This was also the case in the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956 and of Czechoslovakia in 1968; these invasions were not about territory but rather were a response to the countries’ rise against the authoritarian system of rule. This is precisely why Russia was irreconcilably against Ukraine’s association with the EU in any shape or form.

Moreover, Russia’s ruling elite set upon the task of stimulating the process of destruction of Ukrainian statehood and proving to the rest of the world that Ukraine in its present borders is a failed state. Ultimately, Russia’s ruling elite has been seeking to redraw/partition Ukrainian territory and to chop off Crimea and Eastern and Southern Ukraine so that Russia can take them over, one way or another. This does not have to be accomplished through annexation; instead, it can be achieved through the creation of a “buffer zone,” in some shape and form, between Russia and the West. It is conceivable that Western Ukraine and a part of Central Ukraine may then be able to exist as an independent state, and that Russia will even put up with their accession to the EU and possibly even to NATO (depending on how this “operation” turns out and what kind of territorial configuration emerges as a result.)

In any case, the Kremlin’s operation, “Ukraine-2014,” was aimed at reinforcing the non-European, “Eurasianist” character of the Russian state. It is a state that interprets human rights and international law in its own way, that assumes the role of an adversary of the West, and that ultimately maintains all the principal components of the “sovereign” criminal-oligarchical system of governance created after 1991. In the event that this operation is a success, it is quite possible, and even probable, that its zone will be extended into other former Soviet territories as well.

Regardless of the future course of events, however, Russia’s slide toward anti-European policies has already created a novel and toxic environment for all of its neighbors, producing among them a strong desire to distance themselves from it as much as possible. Its persistent promotion of quasi-alternative (in fact, nonexistent) Eurasianist values results in a conspicuous disregard for civil and political rights, in a rejection of the principle of citizens’ equality before the law, in a weakening of the separation of powers and the rule of law, in the nurturing of an oligarchical system of property ownership, and in a lack of competition in Russia’s politics and economy.

Nearly every country that neighbors Russia has significant pro-European forces that are countering the Kremlin’s plans to maintain its tight grip upon these countries. Therefore, by its refusal to move in the European direction, Russia gives rise to an extensive geographic belt of instability. In the near future, Russia has a considerable capacity to generate instability in Ukraine by using its economic leverage (Ukraine’s dependence upon Russian markets and energy resources) and by fueling secessionism through infusions of money and media propaganda. Because of this, the prospects of a European future for Russia are among the key issues for Ukraine and for the post-Soviet region as a whole.

Only a shared pan-European vision can be commensurate with Russia’s intent while also being capable of exciting its people rather than scaring them off. The concept of a “Greater Europe”—from Lisbon to Vladivostok—undoubtedly holds such a promise. And this is not just lofty rhetoric or hot air. This is a weighty, effective approach, and it is the only practical alternative to both the blind alley of steady decomposition into which Russia’s society is being driven today and the “new” but actually old myth about nationalism as the only possible driving force of a liberal revolution.

For Europe (and for Russia and Ukraine as its inherent parts), self-identification with this notion of a Greater Europe and consistent efforts to put it into practice in the economy, in politics, and in military strategy are the only means to survive and to rise to a new, significantly higher level in global affairs and in economic competition with North America and Southeast Asia in the twenty-first century. On its own, Europe will never be able to succeed in this regard—and certainly the Eurasianist Russia that rejects the West and considers it a threat will not.

Overall, Europe can be strong and promising only if the European way of life keeps expanding and continues to transcend its present boundaries. If Europe stops growing and decides that the political definition of Europe is limited by the borders of the former Soviet Union after the accession of the Baltic states to the EU, then such a Europe, deprived of the energy of moving forward, will become increasingly bureaucratic, frozen, and prone to decay. Moreover, Russia and Ukraine, with their cultural and historical experience, their traditions, and their power of creativity, which they have preserved against all odds, can play a positive role in addressing many of the challenges that Europe faces.

As I noted in chapter 3, a classical authoritarian power tends not to be overly concerned with developing an integrated universal ideology; instead, it focuses on control over the resources of financial and administrative power, without seeking to rule the minds and thoughts of the population it governs. It does not pay that much attention to what the population thinks, and when it does, this attention is usually limited to a bunch of platitudes loudly proclaimed as the official ideology—typically along the lines of being on the side of everything that people view as good and being against all evil.

This principle is undoubtedly true when an autocracy is in its formative stage or is at its peak and is confident enough to have no need for an additional prop in the form of a universal and mandatory ideology. This is also the safer course, as the use of such an ideology as a tool of governance carries with it not only potential benefits but also certain complications and risks. Ideologies often invoke deeply held feelings and instincts that are easy to arouse but extremely difficult to control or tame when government interests require it.

Yet, in the section of that chapter titled “In Search of an Ideology,” I noted that the period when Russia’s present-day authoritarian regime was thriving and exuding self-confidence did not last very long. By approximately 2010, it became plain to see that the prior rapid and tangible growth of Russians’ incomes could not be sustained. Simultaneously, the opportunities for the elite to appropriate and distribute a hefty bureaucratic rent reached a hard limit as, in fact, the amounts of this rent stopped growing.

At the same time, the authorities embarked upon a more active pursuit of an additional source of support, in the realm of ideology. Eventually, they discovered it in the conservative valorization of the status quo, which included a quasi-religious veneration of the powers that be; the notion of a “peoplehood,” understood as an inseparable bond between the people and its government; and an emphasis upon “traditional values.” This ideological mix also included a cult of the princely symbols of national “grandeur,” coupled with overconfidence regarding the potency of the widely touted symbiotic relationship between the authorities and the people, as well as xenophobia, with its perception of a hostile international encirclement and a country besieged by its enemies and their minions. By about 2010, all the ingredients of this mix became fairly pronounced and firmly implanted in the style and political content of government-owned and government-oriented media and in the official statements and pronouncements by members of the ruling circle and pro-government cultural figures.

Finally, I have noted that the increasing ideological zeal of Russia’s authorities, and their attempts to find an additional source of support through a more aggressive brainwashing of the public, has had two implications. On the one hand, it attests to the fact that the system has already passed the peak of its resilience. It is in the process of losing, or has already lost, its prior confidence that the relatively comfortable, safe strategy of nonideological control over the situation in the country is sufficient for its purposes. On the other hand, such actions by the authorities are extremely risky, as they awaken and energize forces within society that are capable of causing havoc and that will be quite difficult to keep under control.

Under these circumstances, a natural and rather tempting solution to this quandary is to remake the state in an ideological mold. In such an ideologically defined state, defending, promoting, and asserting the ideology that suits the authorities becomes an item on the government’s agenda. Meanwhile, all opinions that are not officially sanctioned are excluded from the range of the acceptable and are effectively suppressed. In other words, the authorities set themselves upon the slippery slope of a transformation of their authoritarian system into a totalitarian one, with all the implications of this change.

These are precisely the trends that, in recent years, have been increasingly infiltrating Russia’s political life and, moreover, that have started to turn into a permanent fixture. All the main features of the Kremlin’s “new” set of policies have become full-fledged components of the official ideology—even though all the ingredients of its eclectic mix were simply borrowed from various periods of Russia’s history, from early medieval autocracy to the Soviet era.[5] They have replaced the residual rhetoric of “transition,” with its ritualistic vows of loyalty to the principles of democracy, human rights, and economic freedom. The course toward political isolation from “Western” influence has made these incantations not just unnecessary but even detrimental in terms of mobilizing popular support for the new ideological direction. This is why all the “programmatic” statements and documents that have emanated from the top of the hierarchy of power since about 2015 have already been virtually devoid of any trace of the liberal frame of mind. Instead, they are single-mindedly focused on the notion of a unified and monolithic power, its direct reliance upon the “will of the people” (without any mention of the tools of representative democracy), and the building of relations with the outside world entirely on the Kremlin’s own terms and from a position of power.

A huge part of this new ideological framework is the premise that it is the authorities’ duty to protect and invigorate traditional values, safeguarding them from potential “corrosion” or dilution by external influences. The propaganda firmly binds these traditional values to Russian ethnicity and Russia’s landmass and, further, envisions them as a given (as “primordial foundations”) that is not subject to change, rethinking, or even adjustment based on new realities. Essentially, this new ideological construct no longer envisions government as a product of some social bargain but rather views it as the direct expression of the popular or national spirit, the “spirit of the turf,” whose raison d’être is to organize Russian resistance to the a priori hostile and alien outside world.

Such a model of government organization and functioning leaves no room for any separation or distribution of power among competing agencies, nor for any mechanism of holding this supreme authority accountable for its actions. At most, what can fit into this construction is a modicum of control, however ineffective, over the activities of the lowest levels of the government machinery, exercised by the population “from below.” That is, the authorities may consider cooperating with citizens in holding junior government staff to account, but nothing more.

It is natural that the shift in ideological emphasis necessitated adjustments in the editorial policies of the national TV channels, which have served as the primary tool in the authorities’ engagement with public opinion. These channels now began deleting references to the existence of viewpoints different from the official policy, even if those references were critical of these alternate views. And when these viewpoints do get mentioned, they are invariably accompanied by comments about the existence of a “fifth column” in the country, which works to advance foreign interests. Those who represent other ideologies have been reclassified from intellectual schismatics to committed enemies of Russia’s national statehood who must be denied even the tiniest place in public and political life. Meanwhile, the intensity of propaganda has been maximized and is now bordering on hysteria. The authorities have been purging all the institutions that have any access to public opinion—from the State Duma to the Chamber of Nongovernmental Representatives under the presidential administration—of “troublemakers” who have used their membership in these agencies to convey their antigovernment opinions to the public.

Simultaneously, the Kremlin upgraded the role of the dominant ideology as the theoretical justification for political and everyday xenophobia as well as for the exceptional importance of state-oriented consciousness among Russians. Prior to that, the notion of the “Russian world”—the worldwide community of Russians, mostly defined by ethnicity, language, and/or affiliation with the Russian Orthodox Church and used as a counterweight to the idea of Russia’s multiethnic civic nation—was primarily of interest to nationalistic intellectuals. Now this vision has become not only a part of the official doctrine but also the unofficial basis for the Kremlin’s foreign policy strategy in the post-Soviet region, interpreted by government-affiliated ideologists of Russia’s political and territorial expansion as an ethnonational state. In essence, if not explicitly, the slogan of “gathering the Russian lands together” and “unifying ethnic Russians” has become the new officially sanctioned idea.

It goes without saying that the rejection of universal values of democracy and human rights has become a major component of this official ideology. The propaganda attributes these notions to the “hostile West,” which enables it to manipulate them as it sees fit, if not to deny them outright. Restricting these rights in every possible way, and narrowing them by every means, becomes no longer a violation of the fundamental norms of human coexistence but rather an assertion of the government’s natural right to protect Russia’s security and distinctiveness, allegedly rooted in national traditions and values. Essentially, this is an affirmation of what was already tried at the beginning of the century under the label of “sovereign democracy,” but now it is a component of an already more cohesive official ideological doctrine.

In other words, the ideology spontaneously developed by Russia’s post-Soviet authoritarian regime has occupied an expanded role in government and society and has acquired the embryonic shape of an ideology of a Eurasianist state, portrayed as the embodiment of centuries-old Russian polyethnic values. These values allegedly consist of the rejection of individualism and greed and the dissolution of the individual into a distinctive social organism, a symbiotic relationship between the people and the authoritarian power that is imbued with a metaphysical sense inaccessible to average mortals. And this authoritarian power is envisioned as preexisting from the beginning of time and independent of contemporary society, as if detached from any specific individuals in time and space.

Certainly, the elements of such an ideology existed long before present-day Russia’s authoritarianism; some of its roots are centuries old. This ideology was shaped as a cohesive whole on the fringe of twentieth-century philosophy. Now Russia’s homegrown peripheral authoritarianism has put it to use because, overall, it suits the regime’s need for ideological tools of consolidation of its power and its defense against domestic and foreign threats, both real and imagined. Moreover, the Kremlin’s sense of its need for such a protection turned out to be so strong that it offset even the evident drawbacks in terms of governance.

Using such an ideology for this specific purpose under Russia’s current conditions presents obvious difficulties. First, too many people belonging to large, primarily ethnic minorities begin to experience an indelible sense of ambiguity with regard to their position within the Russian state. Second, some of the institutions inherited from the previous period are now up in the air because of the uncertainty about whether and how they fit in with this new ideology. These institutions include, for example, political parties that had been created within a different framework of political development; the educational system, whose current organization allows for a multiplicity of viewpoints, which is unacceptable under the new ideology; and a few others.

Nevertheless, it appears that Russia’s supreme authorities have made their political choice. All subsequent moves will be toward consolidating Russia’s government-centered Eurasianism as the basic idea of the Russian state, and currently existing governmental and public agencies and institutions will be adjusted to it. Soon, as with any official state ideology, the Kremlin will have to decide how rigidly it will be applied, and to what practical political purposes. We will find this out in the immediate future.

Finally, the third among the authoritarian tendencies listed at the beginning of this chapter has been the drift of the regime toward a highly rigid, vertical framework for its power hierarchy. This became particularly visible during the “Crimean campaign” of 2014 and its immediate aftermath. The gist of this development is that the “Putin system” of rule seeks to get rid of the elements of political competition that are alien to it and out of place in today’s Russia, as well as of any alternative sources of power in the country. In chapter 3, I discussed the fact that today’s authoritarian regime grew out of the eclectic realities of post-Soviet transition. Its growth and consolidation were the outcome of a lengthy, largely spontaneous and unreflective search for a political framework that would articulate and protect the interests of the new ruling class—the post-Soviet nomenklatura.

Naturally, this search was neither simple nor unidirectional. The twists, turns, and breaking points associated with this search became especially visible at certain distinctive moments of Russia’s post-Soviet history. To begin with, these were the first years after the collapse of the Soviet system, years that ended with the notorious events of the fall of 1993—the disbanding of the legislature by President Boris Yeltsin, followed by violent confrontation in the streets of Moscow. The political framework that was designed in the wake of these events was fundamentally new—the framework of a presidential (or, according to some experts, superpresidential) republic.

The second of these moments was the presidential election campaign of 1996, when the ruling circle that was then in power abandoned, for the first time, the idea of having truly competitive elections. Yet another turning point was in 1999, when that ruling circle for the first time resorted to a behind-the-scenes transfer of power and Boris Yeltsin, the leader of the ruling circle, who was physically unfit to continue his duties as president, effectively appointed his official successor to the “throne,” Vladimir Putin. Then, in the beginning of the next decade, the Kremlin began setting up what is known in Russia as the “vertical of power,” the system of full command from above, from the head of state down through the whole chain of government, from the federal level to the local level and including the powers of legislature and law enforcement. The gist of this process was the curbing of autonomous political activity of any kind in Russia’s regions and political parties.

In 2012–2013, the Kremlin reinstated gubernatorial elections, though in a truncated form, and somewhat relaxed the restrictions on the activities of Russia’s political parties. This seemed to signal a certain departure from the mainstream policy of curtailing political competition. Yet, by the beginning of 2014, the political climate in the country had deteriorated as never before: the authorities questioned the very principle of political pluralism, and the boundaries between opposition work and political subversion became completely blurred in the official media and rhetoric.

What was so distinctive about the situation and the trends in this area that became plain to see in early 2014? First, at the time, the political profiles of the officially ruling political party (United Russia) and those opposition parties that were represented in the Duma (the Communists, the Liberal Democrats, and Fair Russia) became completely indistinguishable from one another. The proceedings of the legislature were now entirely devoid of any critique of Putin, not only in response to his actions in the Ukrainian crisis but also on any other issue. This change could not be explained by nationwide patriotic fervor, as some tried to do, nor by the claim that it would have been inappropriate to criticize the supreme authority at that critically important and momentous time. If political parties are competing with each other and represent different groups within the elite, then subtle and not-so-subtle differences in their approaches to the most important political issues of the day never disappear completely, even in the face of an actual foreign threat.

What is there to say about conditions if there are no obvious indicators that such threats are getting stronger or more imminent than before, or when survival of the state is much more dependent upon the character and substance of the authorities’ response to domestic challenges? In such a situation, the touching unanimity between the government and the official opposition reveals something else: either all of these political parties are no more than different subsidiaries of the same ruling circle and are essentially in the service of one set of interests or, just as likely, the ruling circle has decided that intra-elite disagreements may present an unacceptable danger to them and should, at the very least, be pushed deep down below the surface and not be allowed to show up in public, even in the gentle form of parliamentary debates.

Whatever the case, Russia’s federal representative bodies, starting with the State Duma, have by now become part and parcel of a monolithic authoritarian rule that does not permit even the slightest opportunity for organized political alternatives to crystallize within the framework of political legality. The only way to rule out such a possibility while still having multiple political parties is by eliminating anything that even remotely suggests that these parliamentary parties may actually represent alternatives to the powers that be—or by eliminating the multiparty system as such. Evidently, the ruling circle has selected the first of these two paths, employing their relations with the bosses of these “opposition” parties and their extensive ability to influence them with either sticks or carrots. This is also related to the intense ideological hardening of the regime, its drift toward ideological totalitarianism, which I characterized earlier. The very presence of an official ideology that is a mandatory article of faith for anyone who does not want to be listed among the traitors and the enemies of the state implies political unity and the absence of entities that might offer themselves as alternatives to the powers that be.

Of course, in this situation, parliamentary elections are becoming entirely devoid of any practical sense. In the preceding period, the ruling circle viewed such elections as a super-representative opinion poll, used to legitimize the role and the status of the country’s unquestionable leader. Now, given the lack of any distinguishable differences among the parties (apart from their leaders’ names), holding elections does not make sense even as an opinion poll. They either become a farce, a show closely following a predetermined script, or they get abolished altogether. Time will tell which of these two paths will be selected by Russia’s authorities; most likely it will be decided ad hoc, depending on the context. Yet, however it ends up, under the conditions of today’s Russia, parliamentary elections, being an alien element in a totalitarian or semitotalitarian system, appear to be doomed to extinction.

A second trend that has emerged since 2014 is the consolidation of the ruling circle’s economic interests, with drastic curbs on economic lobbying. In the first decade of the new century, there were several distinguishable subgroups within Russia’s ruling class, each oriented toward its own sector and industry focus, from the resource industries and large-scale infrastructure projects to manufacturing and even the technologically advanced clusters of the economy. There was also a separate group of the elite that was betting on the development of modern finance (or, in their own words, “the transformation of Moscow into an international financial center”). On top of that, there were subgroups that represented diverse regional interests and priorities, such as those who emphasized the need for an accelerated development of Russia’s Far East, those who lobbied for the utilization of Arctic resources, and so on.

These groups worked to produce some theoretical justification for their activities, and visions of economic and social development that were distinguishable from one another. While some of them stressed the need to concentrate financial resources and investment activities in the government’s hands and to implement the megaprojects that had been prepared for either existing or projected government-owned corporations, other groups emphasized the need to reduce the tax burden on businesses and to incentivize primarily small and medium-size entrepreneurship. There was a blueprint for developing Russia into an “energy superpower”; this was countered by a plan for “modernization-oriented growth” that would rely upon the high-tech clusters of the economy. These various groups and currents also had different views about the role of foreign capital in Russia.

The arguments and debates between the proponents and the opponents of individual projects and economic development plans filled the pages and the airwaves of mass media. They were also reflected in behind-the-scenes clashes among various expert groups who were fighting for a benevolent attitude from the Kremlin and for access to additional sources of influence and money. Eventually, these currents of lobbying and economic thought even acquired certain institutionalized forms, such as various councils and associations that had the ability to convey and defend the collective interests of their specific groups.

Granted, this was not quite the same as political competition in its traditional sense; yet, undoubtedly, the rivalry among lobbyists and interest groups, each vying for a larger share of the financial and administrative pie, also involved some elements of a political contest. Even given the tight restrictions under which they operated, these groups nevertheless were increasing the flexibility of the system and providing it with a feedback mechanism, which to some extent enabled it to adjust in response to the changing challenges.

Nowadays, the increasing rigidity of Russia’s political framework has affected these aspects as well. Under budgetary constraints, reinforced by the drastic decline in economic efficiency and the rising costs incurred by self-isolation, the wiggle room that generates competition among economic interests has narrowed. Putin’s “new course” imparts a peremptory style to the decisions it makes about the industrial and geographic priorities of its economic policy, thus making lobbying efforts largely meaningless. Meanwhile, the new ideological “braces,” as they are called by the media, have drastically diminished the value and the worth of any intellectual support for competing economic interests. This is exacerbated by the trend toward an even greater concentration of decision-making power in the hands of one individual—Vladimir Putin—who, on top of that, is increasingly impatient with those who disagree with him or raise any objections to his viewpoints and is increasingly judgmental in his statements about individuals and groups who express their discontent with developments in the country. As a result, even this modicum of competition is viewed as a threat and becomes a target for coercive pressure.

A final trend is the rejection of the horizontal ties between the elements of this political system and the outside world. The policy of self-isolation implies that any international contacts with individual agencies that do not directly involve the people at the top of the pyramid of power are becoming not just a nuisance but even a potentially dangerous activity. This affects not only nongovernmental organizations and semigovernmental entities (including academic, analytical, cultural, educational, and charitable institutions) but also official agencies of the government, such as regional governments, territorial associations, administrations of local and other units subject to special economic regulations, and the like.

As a result, the overall amount of international contact inevitably begins to shrink, and this also indirectly constrains the economic activities of foreign players or of business entities with foreign participation on Russia’s territory. The policy of attracting foreign capital is being replaced with indifference or even hostility to it on the part of the authorities. While Russia is not yet being shut off from the outside world, it is a significant step in this direction and may be fraught with grave implications for the long haul. (At present, this development is still at a very early stage, but some of its obvious indicators are already discoverable and can be evaluated.)

In this regard, the government’s surveillance of its citizens’ foreign contacts will not focus only on civic activists and roaming oppositionists. It also will target individuals from the ranks of the seemingly docile bureaucracy who have opportunities for unrestrained contacts with the outside world and are able to acquire some kind of assets abroad. Just a few years ago, the bureaucracy appeared to be permanently entitled to such “unpatriotic” behavior; nowadays, this entitlement is being questioned by the people at the top of government hierarchy. Thus, the elite have serious reasons to believe that the new policies aimed at their cosmopolitan members are being introduced in earnest and for the long haul. It is easy for the Kremlin to pivot the campaign of “de-offshorization,” or repatriation of Russians’ assets from the tax havens, and of the “nationalization of the elite” precisely toward cutting off any independent contacts of government officials with the outside world. And there already are indications that a full-fledged movement in this direction, greatly facilitated by US and UK sanctions, is already under way.

In the previous chapters, I sought to show that authoritarianism as a political system is essentially an unavoidable or nearly unavoidable result of the domination of a peripheral-type capitalism in the country. The reason for this is that, being peripheral, this type of capitalism relies upon a narrow range of rather unsophisticated resources and, therefore, by its very nature, does not generate sufficient prerequisites for a full-fledged functioning of the institutions of political competition. The types of resources that it relies upon may include the raw materials that are of interest to the countries of the core of global capitalism, or it may be an abundant, cheap workforce or the opportunity to minimize material and transportation costs.

Whatever the case, such a country has few opportunities to integrate into the economy of world capitalism, and these opportunities are rather simple and plain to see. Therefore, the section of the ruling stratum that occupies the key positions of executive power can easily dominate and monopolize these opportunities. This group of power holders inevitably brings under its control existing as well as emerging economic entities, and this, in turn, undermines the very possibility of an open and relatively fair competition among various political forces and groups. Thus, the ruling circle suffocates the alternative to its rule through economic means, by depriving the alternative of the opportunity to acquire an autonomous and legally tenable material foundation. No genuine political competition is feasible in a system in which all the main economic resources are under the control of a single group of people.

This pattern applies to all countries of the global periphery, though with certain country-specific variations, and it is the case even if the authorities in these countries officially affirm the existence of political freedoms, multiple political parties, the role of elections, and everything else that is conventionally viewed as an indicator of a political democracy. In its basic traits, the Russian variation of such a system confirms the validity of this relationship, but it is complicated by the oligarchical structure of the ownership of large-scale economic assets as well as by the conditional—that is, revocable—character of this ownership, which was inherent in the loans-for-shares auctions of the mid-1990s and in other forms of arbitrary redistribution of wealth in post-Soviet Russia.

Regardless of these differences, however, a peripheral capitalism is very hard to transform politically in the direction of a competition-based system and the rule of law. Thus, within such a system, there typically is no room to secure funding for public projects independently of the ruling circle—whether for political parties, for civic organizations, or for dependable, free mass media that would reflect a broad spectrum of professionally credible opinions on the salient issues of the day. Within this framework, it is impossible to set up the legal system in such a way that it does not depend upon the will of a single group of power holders occupying the key positions in the executive branch and thus having the power to steer the major flows of financial and other material resources whichever way they want. In such a society, it becomes impossible to determine a development direction through interaction among different interest groups (which, after all, is the real gist of political democracy). Instead, the country’s future is shaped by the unfettered dominance of individual whims and by the selfish pursuits and beliefs of a narrow circle of people with a monopolistic grip on power and on the management of large-scale economic assets.

On the other hand, the authoritarianism that develops in the countries of the global periphery also has a peripheral character in its relation to the core of the present-day world. While such a regime has enormous power to control its host society, it trails behind world leaders in international affairs and is incapable of influencing either global development or its own.

At the same time, the condition of any given society and state is not determined solely by its economy and its position in the world economic system. Other significant factors include political will, the state of the elite (or even their very existence), and the integrity of the national consciousness and its dominant ideological concepts. Otherwise, history would not contain examples of countries and societies that managed to make a breakthrough and move up to a higher orbit in their trajectory, substantially closer to the center of global development. No society is ever a priori doomed to eternal backwardness and to always being on the remote periphery of the world economy and the global community. In the same way, the fact that a given country has gained a place in the core of this world economy is no guarantee that it will always remain there.

Granted, changing one’s fortune requires deliberate and persistent effort. This is just as true for countries and peoples as it is true for individuals. To make a transition from the periphery to the center requires not only time and resources but also intellect, knowledge, and maneuverability. It requires the ability to find one’s way out of unfavorable situations and even out of situations in which a loss cannot be avoided, including by playing upon the tensions among one’s competitors and upon their weaknesses.

It is incumbent upon society’s elite to lead the country along this path. Such an elite must be not just educated but also energetic, goal-oriented, and capable of confronting the most inert, reactionary part of its own society and of prevailing in this conflict. And for this, in turn, such an elite must be equipped with a fitting ideology. They must aspire to be an active participant in the international struggle for economic and technological leadership, without fearing competition, without expecting others to give them a break or an entitlement, and certainly without expecting to be given the coveted high status without any effort on their part. This elite must realize that, in the harsh world of international competition, neither past achievements (whether real or imaginary) nor self-proclaimed historical grandeur nor claims to a leadership role without underlying practical capabilities and resources counts. Furthermore, the elite must be unafraid of admitting their own mistakes or, for the sake of getting things done, of playing the role of a junior partner that cannot impose its own views and understanding of the situation upon the key players in world politics.

On the other hand, if the elite turn out to be devoid of all such characteristics, then it becomes virtually impossible to close even some of the gap separating it from the center of the world system. In this instance, the impulse to avoid taking part in this struggle, by hiding behind the slogan of self-sufficiency and an a priori spiritual superiority, becomes a natural response. And then the condition of being peripheral—which by itself is not incompatible with pursuing the goal of gradually overcoming this condition—turns into parochialism.

The distinctive feature of this parochialism is a pronounced reluctance to change one’s position on the global order of things, as well as the conviction that the familiar status quo and the concomitant way of life are the best options that are realistically possible. The media start portraying poverty as beneficial and describing stagnation—defined as a confidence-instilling stability, inertness, and the unwillingness to change—as fidelity to tradition. And the sense of one’s greatness becomes an a priori given that requires no validation through practical achievements or through victories in a competitive race. From this point of view, and taking into account everything that followed from the crisis over Ukraine-2014, including the annexation of Crimea and the hybrid war in Eastern Ukraine, we need to add some further precision to the characterization of Russia’s authoritarianism as peripheral.

First of all, it has to be said that peripheral is indeed what Russia’s authoritarianism continues to be, in spite of its regular declarations about its exceptionalism, its sovereignty, and its principle of autonomy in relation to the rest of the world. By rejecting the possibility of taking part in the system of global governance, even if as a second-tier player, Russia validates its peripheral character. Though it refuses to play a role as even a secondary participant in managing world affairs, it nonetheless remains part and parcel of these affairs, but it occupies a passive position. Now, instead of Russia having some degree of influence in resolving international problems, these problems will be resolved without Russia at the table and without taking its interests into account.

At the same time, by insulating Russia from the global capitalist core—in political and, therefore, in economic terms—its authoritarianism transforms itself into a parochial regime. From being on the outskirts of a large metropolis, with every opportunity to become a part of it and thus to gain a voice in its governance system, this regime tries to turn itself into an obscure village, about which the metropolis essentially couldn’t care less.

Granted, no one will interfere with the regime’s distinctive way of life within this village, which is based on its own mental structure—even if this means the way of life and the mores of many centuries ago, where might makes right, where the weaker members of society have no rights at all, and where anything that moves or even stirs without permission from the powers that be gets suppressed. But neither will anyone let this regime interfere with the life of the global city from now on, whether directly or not, whether by economic coercion or by armed force—if the regime even manages to maintain such a force.

Indeed, the authoritarian regime that is taking shape in today’s Russia is not just a peripheral-type but also a parochial one. It exults in its peripheral position and strives to stabilize it for the sake of maintaining power in the hands of the currently ruling group. It takes the territory under its control out of the global developmental process while consciously pitting itself against the forces of global governance and trumpeting its disagreement with the principles on which this governance was built after World War II. One such principle is the principle of the ladder of power and responsibility, according to which anyone’s claims to be a force that shapes the rules of international behavior must be backed up by the economic, financial, and organizational capabilities that match this role.

Thus, the path toward upgrading one’s status within the system of global governance lies precisely in building up these capabilities instead of ditching the rules because they have been set up by someone else. After all, these rules, which had taken a more or less steady form by the end of the twentieth century, emerged as the outcome and the product of numerous wars waged over many centuries by European powers striving to validate their respective exceptionalisms. These wars crushed tens of millions of human lives and destroyed untold fruits of their labor. And this unwritten code of rules, soaked in human blood, will not be amended to fit the ambitions and the notions of justice held by a single national leader, or even a group of such leaders who are unhappy with their present status in the world community.

A parochial authoritarianism in its Russian avatar acts differently; it seeks to demonstrate to the entire world its own, different rules of existence. It is narrow-mindedly confident that this is just the way everything has worked, everywhere, from time immemorial to our days and into the foreseeable future. It aspires to maintain these rules unconditionally within its domain, whose boundaries it arbitrarily redefines as it sees fit. In our specific case, the “Russian world” is just a euphemistic name for a province that includes Russia’s full expanse throughout its history. However, in practice it is not feasible to make these rules “legit” on a global scale.

Granted, Russia has considerable military capability, especially taking its nuclear stockpiles into account. Yet its economic capabilities are extremely limited, regardless of its huge territory and abundant natural resources (which do not necessarily or always provide an economic advantage to their owners). At present, moreover, the use of so-called soft or smart power—the power that capitalizes upon society’s cultural and intellectual resources—is out of the question for Russia. In this regard, the global periphery is never able to compete with the center, just as a village cannot compete with a city and an area of massive impoverishment cannot compete with a consumer society. Finally, the periphery’s propaganda is ineffective, even if the media tools that it uses are up to date. This propaganda is not in the least capable of defining a message in the global media mainstream and it therefore turns into a senseless waste of already scarce resources, squandered upon building castles in the air and fooling one’s own population.

The outcome of all these efforts isn’t difficult to predict. The logic of the development of a parochial authoritarianism drives it further and further from global politics, toward self-isolation, toward dealing solely with itself, with a clear-cut prospect of a collapse through implosion. Objectively speaking, moving off of this path is a necessity not only for Russia’s society as a whole but also for its political class—and even for the authoritarian regime itself, whose lot will be quite unenviable if the ongoing trends continue.

And the key question, the answer to which will determine our future, is the following: Will Russia’s political elite and intellectual class be able to find and mobilize its internal power to turn these currently dominant trends around, to try to put the country’s trajectory back into the global context, to find a worthy place and a future for Russia there?

Taken together, the trends that I have described have been shaping the new look of Russia’s authoritarianism. Its form, here and now, is a logical extension of its preexisting features, but these features are today of a different caliber, due to the hardened external conditions in Russia, the first and foremost being the narrowing range of economic opportunities. In its turn, this shrinking of opportunities was an unavoidable outcome of the peripheral character of Russia’s capitalism. The overall slowdown of the growth of the world economy, and the increasingly pronounced distancing of its core from industries and areas of economic activity that had been traditional for it, have complicated the functioning of the economies of the capitalist periphery, including the Russian economy. These economies have no opportunity and no resources to reorient themselves toward the industries that provide more dynamism and a better return on their expenditures. As a result, they are becoming less efficient and are facing a decline in revenues and in capabilities—as well as growing dissatisfaction on the part of the most energetic and ambitious strata of society. These people either begin to look for employment opportunities abroad, on a mass scale, or they express their discontent in whatever ways they can.

Furthermore, the growing problems and constraints in the global economy result in fewer opportunities to provide the requisite conditions for economic prosperity for every country. Hence, the stronger players on the world economic stage are bound to think less about the condition of the periphery of global business and to pay less attention to its interests in world politics and international affairs. In Russia’s case, these changes are especially painful to endure, because its national elite thinks of itself as having a more important role and place than they are given by the outside world. World leaders get annoyed by Russia’s elite, who loudly claim more influence and rewards than they are able to secure. These leaders feel that Putin is trying to violate the implicit rules of the game (and, with the annexation of Crimea, is just doing whatever he wants, without regard for anybody else). This, in turn, adds insult to injury and leads to even more negative reactions.

Essentially, all this was bound to produce the outcome that we see—instead of gradually converging toward the Western political mainstream, Russia’s post-Soviet autocracy has evolved toward closing in upon itself and strengthening its totalitarian features. Let me make it clear, though, that, in the present context, “convergence” does not mean the elimination of differences, let alone the subordination of one’s behavior to the interests of a more powerful party. The similarity of political systems based upon internal political competition certainly does not eliminate international competition. Those who speak of the need for a “European path” or a “European choice” for Russia (or at least those among them who truly care for the future of Russia and its people) are well aware of the inevitability of such competition. Thus, when their accusers say that proponents of the European path are going to knuckle under to the West or to the United States, this is nothing but a propagandistic lie.

If we take an unbiased, impartial look at world politics, we notice that the competition among the countries within the global capitalist core is more intense than the competition between the core countries and the global periphery. This is like the animal world, where competition within the same species is far more acute than competition between different species. Individual companies and their groups tussle with each other over markets, and thus over the promise of future big revenues, more fiercely than did medieval princes fighting over new territories that they sought to utilize and to plunder. The frenzy and the scale of plotting, as well as the pressure, arm-twisting, and resources expended in this economic warfare, are such that many of the wars waged over the past centuries look like Boy Scouts’ games in comparison.

And certainly, had Russia been able to accomplish a historic leap from the global semiperiphery (where it belonged at the peak of the Soviet period) into the core of global capitalism, its relations with the other parts of this core would not have been tranquil by any means. Yes, Russia would have had to give consideration to the stronger powers and to yield to them on a number of issues. But, at the same time, Russia would have been able to elbow its way among competing powers and into those areas where it might amass a prevailing concentration of resources; it would have been able to build coalitions, to plot intrigues if needed, and to achieve its goals. As a result, it would have been able to grow not just in relative but also in absolute terms, thus raising its status in the global pecking order of wealth, power, and influence.

Unfortunately, history turned in such a way that Russia lost this opportunity for the long haul. Nothing that has happened so far is truly irreversible, and yet, once the steamroller has accelerated to a certain speed, it is hard to stop, especially if the driver has no intention of doing so and, quite the contrary, is thrilled to see everybody else freaking out and running for cover.

Nonetheless, a steamroller is only good for what it is designed to do: to pave over everything on its path. It is not for road racing or for honing survival skills. In the global race of industrial, postindustrial, and simply modern economies, authoritarian regimes are bound to lose over the long haul—unless they begin to evolve in the direction of advanced, competition-based systems that are equipped with the tools needed to identify and achieve collective societal goals, to ensure “positive selection” of talent in public service, to self-adjust, and to safeguard against foolishness and major blunders with long-term repercussions. However, Russia’s political system is not only not moving in this direction but is in fact drifting the opposite way.

These days, many people are saying that Russia has reverted to Soviet times, meaning the later part of the Soviet period, the so-called age of stagnation from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, under Leonid Brezhnev. Others are saying that in fact the Soviet era never ended in Russia. However, this isn’t true. The present-day situation in Russia is not a return to the period before perestroika. Rather, it is an attempt by the authorities to leapfrog even further back in history, into Russia’s remote past, by juxtaposing it with the European—or, as we tend to say these days, the Western—world in a contrived, vulgar, and manipulative manner. This is the undoing of what has been achieved in every direction of the country’s development, from modern public institutions and the organization of its economic life to culture, education, and ideology.

This is nothing but an attempt to step aside from the actual struggle for Russia’s place under the sun, to dodge this struggle by indulging in the elite’s weaknesses, fears, and illusory dreams about building its own “Russian civilization.” It is an attempt to hide from actual problems and from having to look for rational and sustainable solutions for them. The elite try to escape from this by freezing all development in society and supplanting it with the pointless pursuit of nonexistent or fake mental constructs. This is an irresponsible attempt to distract the public from actual present risks by warning of bogus “mortal dangers,” and it shows an equally irresponsible willingness to endanger the future of Russia’s statehood in its present shape and boundaries. Finally, it is an explicit attempt to make the territory of a huge country, which is not at all devoid of any promise, into a global wasteland with no prospects of becoming one of the actual world leaders of the twenty-first century.

How long will they continue this insanity, this dangerous game in which the fate of the country and its people is at stake? The future is fickle, and at present it is impossible to give a definitive answer to this question. Certainly, it will depend to a significant extent upon the external environment, that is, upon the behavior of other international actors. Regardless, the duty of all healthy political forces in Russia is to make an effort to develop and to put forward a realistic alternative, a truly practical plan to overcome the present crisis. If necessary, this plan may need to be imposed upon Russia’s fearful and disoriented political elite, which may have to be forced to fulfill its responsibilities toward the country and its people.