The Kremlin Emboldened

A virtual unknown at the time of his rise to the Russian presidency in 1999, Vladimir Putin has moved to the center of international attention. From armed incursions into neighboring Ukraine to covert attempts at undermining democracies, he has acted aggressively to elevate Russia’s stature abroad. At home, amid an upsurge of bellicose patriotism and an ever-harsher crackdown on regime opponents, his approval ratings have shot sky-high. Putin has shown himself adept at changing colors with the times. He cuts an ideologically ambiguous figure in comparison to such leaders as Venezuela’s late Hugo Chávez, and makes no claim to represent a holistic doctrine on the model of his Marxist predecessors. Yet commentators have given his name to a new political system: Putinism.

As Russia prepares for presidential elections in 2018, we have compiled six articles that take a closer look at Putin’s rule. How has Putin’s preoccupation with stability shaped his political strategy? To what extent is his support in society genuine, and from whence does it spring? What does the drive to project Russian might and influence abroad really mean for Russia’s citizens? How long can Russia’s emboldened autocracy maintain its hold? Might the eruption of large-scale, geographically diffuse anticorruption protests in March and June 2017 have marked a turning of the tide?

The authors of the essays that follow offer incisive, if sometimes conflicting assessments of these and other critical questions. M. Steven Fish highlights as Putinism’s defining features conservatism, populism, and personalism. Arguing that Putin has cultivated a distinctive, status quo–oriented form of populism, Fish also identifies built-in limitations to Putinism’s hold and appeal. In comments on Fish’s essay, Leon Aron stresses the pivotal role of international adventurism in shoring up Putin’s support at home, while Vladislav Inozemtsev contends that the foundations of Putinism lie deep in Russia’s economic structures, social habits, and long imperial history.

Graeme Robertson and Samuel Greene, scrutinizing the regime’s online efforts to mold domestic opinion, take a less deterministic view: They assert that the challenge of appealing to popular ideas and emotions has shaped the evolution of Russia’s new authoritarianism. Lilia Shevtsova makes the case that the increasing harshness of Putin’s rule is also a form of brittleness. Finally, Vladimir Kara-Murza describes not only Putin’s assault on independent civic and political institutions, but also a rising wave of popular frustration, particularly among the young, that poses a new challenge to his long-lived and hitherto unaccountable regime.

The Editors