Salzburg Global Fellow Witold Rodkiewicz outlines Western misunderstandings of Russian politics and society
This op-ed was written by Witold Rodkiewicz, who attended the Salzburg Global Pathways to Peace Initiative titled “Bear With Us: What Is to Be Done About Russia?” from October 18 to 21, 2023.
In this brief and very subjective essay, I will concentrate on those features of contemporary Russia’s political and social landscape that are often misunderstood by Western observers. These misunderstandings are due to fundamental differences between Russian and Western assumptions about politics and society. Russian political culture and social mechanisms are often based on assumptions that contradict Western (especially in its liberal variant) beliefs about what is “natural” and “normal”.
Russian Federation as a political system sui generis
The current Russian political system has been constructed over the last three decades from institutional fragments of the Soviet state, along the lines dictated by Soviet and pre-Soviet “Muscovite” political culture, and creatively adapted to the contemporary technological and cultural circumstances. Its creators were those members of the Soviet ruling caste who demonstrated adaptability and political imagination to retain or recover their dominant position despite the total collapse of the previous political system. The striking feature of this old/new elite is that its core consists to a large extent of the so-called силовики, i.e. functionaries of the Soviet internal repression and intelligence apparatus, with their peculiar mentality, “Weltanschauung” (worldview), and values. They were deeply influenced by the experience of the collapse of the Soviet system and the chaotic conditions of the early 1990s.
The most important impulse present at the inception of the current system was Gorbachev’s attempt to change the source of political legitimacy in the Soviet Union from Marxist-Leninist ideology, with its claim to special insight into the “objective laws of history”, to an electoral mandate. The political events between 1989-1992 demonstrated that, for the first time in Russian history, the electoral mandate has become the only acceptable basis for exercising political power in Russia. This represented a radical departure from Soviet/Russian political culture.
Paradoxically, the old/new Russian political elite which first successfully invoked that mandate against both Gorbachev himself and the authority of the Communist Party then proceeded to make sure that the mechanisms of democratic accountability could not be used against it. By manipulating and then establishing effective control over elections, it constructed a “façade” or “virtual” democracy. It preserved the outer trappings and appearances of electoral democracy while depriving voters of a real possibility of voting the incumbents out.
The main aim of the system is the perpetuation of the ruling elite’s hold on power, first by shielding it against any challenges that might emerge from the society, and second, by regulating the intra-elite rivalries and managing the rent distribution. So, the state is treated by the elite as if it were its collective property through neo-patrimonialism. Neither citizens’ welfare nor economic development are among its primary goals.
A characteristic feature of this system is its dual nature. The formal political institutions largely play the role of a façade. The political scene is carefully managed and regulated by the executive authority and as a result, politics understood as a competition between different political forces offering alternative programs to the voters does not exist.
Real politics takes place outside the view of the public and consists of a rivalry or competition conducted between stakeholders of the system for influence and resources. Those stakeholders are not social groups or political parties but bureaucratic structures or state agencies, large business corporations, and informal coteries based on personal ties, which in post-Soviet Russia were usually referred to as “clans”. Within clans, relations are based on the principle of patron-client relationships and the entire system can be described as a hierarchy of patron-client networks.
The system assumes, on the one hand, the depoliticization of society and restrictions of politics to a narrow elite which is recruited through a mechanism of cooptation. The system assumes a strict division between insiders and outsiders and functions on a need-to-know basis. Real political information, such as that concerning the behind-the-scenes maneuvers of the stakeholders, is not public but is restricted to insiders based on the principle of “neglasnost” (non-transparency).
The power in the system is highly centralized and concentrated in the hands of the president. This is only partly due to the wide prerogatives that the Russian constitution of 1993 granted the presidency. Equally, if not more important, are informal instruments that Vladimir Putin was able and willing to use to dismantle various institutional and political limitations on his power. This leads us to another great feature of the Russian political system, namely that informal relationships and instruments are at least as important as legal and constitutional principles. This importance of informal relationships was demonstrated during the presidency of Dmitry Medvedev when Putin remained the predominant figure in the system.
The crucial role he plays in the system is due to his indispensability as an arbitrator between formal and informal stakeholders, thus preventing their rivalry from getting out of hand and endangering the stability of the system as a whole. He is also indispensable because he provides the system with democratic or rather pseudo-democratic legitimacy.
The role of the arbitrator as boss or chief is to maintain a balance between the clans and enforce the informal rules of the system. In this system, there is no room for a division of powers and a checks and balances system. On the contrary, political authority has to be indivisible and all-encompassing. In the Russian Federation, the parliament is composed of people who were thoroughly vetted by the presidential administration and who gained their seats in the electoral process that is controlled and manipulated by the administration, with the main role being played by the Central Electoral Commission. Similarly, the courts, including the constitutional court, are fully, even if purely informally, subordinated to the executive or, to be more precise, to the presidential administration.
An extremely important feature is the absolute subordination of big business to political power. Despite their vast fortunes and ownership of firms worth tens of billions of dollars, Russian oligarchs are politically powerless. In fact, they realize that the possession of their Russian assets is dependent on them remaining on good terms with the Kremlin. In other words, property rights in Russia are weak and the Kremlin can easily expropriate those owners who dare to provoke its wrath. But oligarchs are wedded to the system and are vitally interested in its survival. They know that the privatization of Soviet assets which was carried out in the 1990s has never been seen as legitimate in the eyes of the majority of the population. Hence, any authentic democratization in Russia is very likely to be accompanied and followed by demands for the revision of the results of the corrupt privatization of the 1990s. Any business activity requires “political”, at the higher level, or “security”, at the lower level, protection which is referred to as a so-called “krysha” or roof.
At the center of the system is a presidential administration which to some extent functions similarly to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet System. Its various departments are responsible for controlling and informally "overseeing” internal politics, state institutions, and business. Its interventions and “instructions” are usually done informally, in a way that ensures total deniability and thus avoids any legal or political responsibility, and hence accountability.
The instrumental approach and instrumental treatment of the law is another important feature of the system. Law is treated as an instrument of rule, not as a system of norms regulating relations between the state and its citizens.
Putinism as a neo-totalitarian system
With the outbreak of the war, the Putin system has acquired a number of features that give grounds to describe it as neo-totalitarian.
First of all, one can observe the further concentration and centralization of power in the hands of President Putin and the weakening position of other top functionaries of the system.
Second, with the adoption of new legislation further restricting freedom of speech and with stepped-up repression of the so-called non-systemic opposition, which reduced the space for independent political or even quasi-political activity almost to zero, the degree to which the system relies for its survival on direct repression, as opposed to manipulation and propaganda, has grown significantly.
Last but not least, the fundamental principles of the “Putin system” before the war was an implicit “deal” between the state and the society according to which the people kept out of politics while the state kept out of the private lives of its citizens. After the breakdown of the war, the state began to increasingly encroach into the private sphere and started to demand an active demonstration of support for the war and the war effort from citizens. It was also accompanied by an intensification of propaganda and the creation of an official messianic ideology according to which, Russia’s mission is to liberate the non-Western world from the colonial and neocolonial exploitation by the West and protect it from Western aggressive designs to impose its post-modern values. This is accompanied by an introduction of ideological indoctrination at all levels of the education system and by the introduction of standardized and revised history textbooks. Advanced militarization of society, including children through the Yunarmiya youth organization, may be considered another sign of the neo-totalitarian nature of the political system.
This system has three weaknesses. First, it lacks a tested mechanism for power succession. With the constitutional amendments made in 2022, this problem was kicked forward but not solved. Second, it restricts the information that is passed to the top and thus increases the probability of the adoption of faulty or misguided policies. Third, it makes the system hard but brittle: in a crisis, there is a high chance that if faced with a serious internal crisis, the system is likely to collapse, similar to how the Russian monarchy collapsed in February 1917 and the Soviet system collapsed after the August 1991 putsch attempt.
Russian society
Russian society is extremely variegated and fragmented in a way that prevents it from formulating a common agenda and makes it very difficult to mobilize it for political purposes. There is a huge gap between the middle class in capital cities, which are large urban centers, and the population living in the provinces, small towns, and countryside.
The majority of the population shares what I would call a pre-modern attitude towards politics, meaning it is deferential to the powers that be, it is basically non-political, i.e. it assumes that politics is the game for elites and that the authorities “know better”. It is pervaded by a deep sense of helplessness against the power of the state and the futility of any attempts at collective action directed against it. It shares with the elites the preference for the patron-client personalistic model of social interaction. This is fostered by low social capital, including a distrust of formal institutions and procedures and suspiciousness towards other individuals. These attitudes are rooted in what might be called a pre-Enlightenment view of human nature as sinful which translates into an assumption that social relations tend to be based on the principle “homo homini lupus” (man is wolf to man). Individuals therefore cannot be trusted to enjoy too much freedom because they are likely to misuse it to harm each other. Hence, a necessity for a strong state that would ensure stability and protect individuals from each other.
Incidentally, this Darwinian view of social relations is also projected onto the international arena. Hence, the Russian population automatically accepts the claims of the Kremlin propaganda that “the West” has consistently sought to “harm” or “destroy” Russia to capture its natural resources. Both the Russian society and Russian elites subscribe to the notion that Russia historically was always on the “good side” and made sacrifices for the benefit of others. Hence, any criticism or suspicion of Russia’s intentions is a sign of “Russophobia” and ingratitude. Unlike Western societies, Russian society still believes in the intrinsic goodness of Russian imperialism; they are convinced that other people always joined the Russian state voluntarily and that Russian rule was always beneficial. Moreover, Russians never exploited their imperial possessions; on the contrary, they always subsidized them to their own detriment.
The Russian society clearly shares with the elites the deep fear of instability and a conviction that there is nothing worse than a revolution in the form of radical and violent political change. Any political regime is better than its breakdown. The prevailing attitude is the fear of change based on the assumption that change is likely to lead to the deterioration of the situation of “the little man” rather than to its improvement.This is combined with a distrust of democratic mechanisms as likely to be inefficient, beneficial to a narrow elite of political activists, and likely to produce chaos rather than pragmatic solutions leading to improved welfare of the “little man”. This attitude has been reinforced by the memories of the early 1990s when the collapse of the Soviet system combined with Gaidar’s economic reforms led to widespread pauperization and the feeling of existential insecurity.
Paradoxically, the authoritarian political system, the aim of which is the exploitation of the population by the elite, has been largely built by the elite’s skillful manipulation and exploitation of attitudes and values that are intrinsic to large sections of the Russian population.
From that unhappy but sober and realistic picture at least five conclusions seem to follow:
- The negative consequences of Russia’s war against Ukraine and its conflict with the West are unlikely to lead to massive and effective opposition to Putin and his ruling cohort
- Even if there is change at the very top, such as if Putin is replaced or followed by a form of “collective/oligarchical” leadership this will not lead to a democratization of the political system
- Politics in Russia is going to remain elite-driven and authentic, spontaneous grass-roots movements are unlikely to emerge
- The West will never be able to beat the Russian elites in the game of influencing or manipulating the Russian population
- Significant change in the political system in Russia is likely to come only in a mutation-like form caused by external factors like a crushing and undeniable defeat in a major conflict, which would force the Russian elites to fundamentally revise the Russian political culture
Witold Rodkiewicz was an analyst at the Centre for Eastern Studies and is now an adjunct professor at the Centre for East European Studies at the University of Warsaw. He received his M.A. in History from the University of Warsaw and his Ph.D. in History from Harvard University.
Witold attended the Salzburg Global Pathways to Peace Initiative titled “Bear With Us: What Is to Be Done About Russia?” in October 2023. This program enabled experts to convene at Salzburg Global Seminar for a high-level dialogue exploring scenarios and questions about what options exist to engage, contain, and hold Russia accountable in a post-war context.
