Sunday, June 26, 2022

A detailed and unusual analysis of the prospects of Putin's regime

Vladislav Zubok, a scholar of the Collapse of the Soviet Unionn, argues that looking at that collapse is not the best way to understand the prospects and weaknesses of Putin's regime. Particularly interesting is his discussion of the "four Russias"
Like many other authoritarians, the Russian president has also learned to exploit economic inequality to establish a firm base of support, leaning into the differences between what the Russian scholar Natalya Zubarevich calls “the four Russias.”

The first Russia consists of urbanites in large cities, many of whom work in the postindustrial economy and are culturally connected to the West. They are the source of most opposition to Putin, and they have staged protests against the president before. But they constitute just one-fifth of the population, by Zubarevich’s estimate. The other three Russias are the residents of poorer industrial cities, who are nostalgic for the Soviet past; people who live in declining rural towns; and multiethnic non-Russians in the North Caucasus (including Chechnya) and southern Siberia. The inhabitants of those three Russias overwhelmingly support Putin because they depend on subsidies from the state and because they adhere to traditional values when it comes to hierarchy, religion, and worldview—the kinds of cultural positions that Putin has championed in the Kremlin’s imperialist and nationalist propaganda, which has gone into overdrive since the invasion of Ukraine began.

Putin, then, doesn’t need to engage in mass repression to keep himself in command. Indeed, recognizing the seeming futility of opposing the state, many members of the first Russia who are truly fed up with Putin are simply fleeing the country—a development that Putin openly supports. He has declared their departure to be “a natural and necessary self-purification of [Russian] society” from a pro-Western “fifth column.” And so far, the invasion has done little to erode his support among the other three Russias. Most members of those groups do not feel connected to the global economy, and they are therefore relatively unbothered by Russia’s excommunication by the West via sanctions and bans. To maintain these groups’ support, Putin can continue to subsidize some regions and pour billions into infrastructure and construction projects in others. He can also appeal to their conservative and nostalgic sentiments—something Gorbachev could never do. Russia’s turbulent history has led most of its people to want a strong leader and consolidation of the country—not democracy, civil rights, and national self-determination.
There is much more good stuff here.

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