Author's Response: A Russian Reckoning?

The only thing better than reading a smart review of your book is to read four smart reviews, as is the case with this Asia Policy book review roundtable. I thank Aleksandar Matovski, Christopher Miller, Andrew Monaghan, and Mark Katz for their close readings of Weak Strongman: The Limits of Power in Putin's Russia. They not only provide many useful insights but also raise important questions that can help set a research agenda for studying Russia going forward.

All book reviews are written in the shadow of current events, and few events have recently loomed larger than Russia's invasion of Ukraine. I was pleased to see that the reviewers found the book's emphasis on Russia's institutional pathologies to be a useful framework for understanding the invasion in all its senselessness. I address some of these issues in more detail in a new foreword to the paperback version that will appear in September.

I was also pleased to see the broad acceptance of the main arguments of the book, such as the benefits of looking beyond Putin, the importance of a comparative perspective, and the value of social science research for comprehending Russian politics. Rather than dwell on the points of agreement, though, this essay will focus on the reviewers' calls to give greater attention to particular issues. I am sympathetic to this call for more detail. In writing a book aimed at the intersection of specialist and general interest readers, I recognized the trade-off in achieving the depth necessary to persuade the specialist reader while not straining the patience of the general interest reader. This made for some uncomfortable choices and hard cuts.

Matovksi and Miller applaud the book's emphasis on the importance of public opinion for Putin's regime but each would like to push the argument in slightly different directions. Matovski calls for a deeper probe into Russia's national identity politics and makes the very helpful suggestion of comparing Russia to other post-imperial countries like Weimar Germany and Turkey, to which one might add Britain and France as well. Miller makes a similar insight by noting that "we will need to explore how this apparently deep-set nationalism interacts with the wobbly state apparatus and political structure" to understand Russian politics.

This critique to pay greater attention to nationalism has much going for it. In trying to downplay the "magical" qualities often attributed to Vladimir Putin's popularity, such as his publicity stunts, personal charisma, and Russians' supposed support for strong leaders, I urged observers to look at the more mundane factors that are often critical to a leader's popularity but often discounted in general discussions of Russian politics. I argue that performance matters for the popularity of leaders like Putin—not just information or propaganda about performance, but actual performance. It matters for Putin's support that living standards in Russia soared, that Russia annexed Crimea without bloodshed, and that pensions have been paid on time. Green and Robertson find that even controlling for personality traits, respondents whose economic situation improved in the last year were more likely to vote for and approve of Putin.¹

But Matovski and Miller are surely right that we need a better understanding of the causes and consequences of nationalism and national identity. Recent works have made some progress. Gulnaz Sharafutdinova uses social identity theory to argue that Putin has exploited the trauma of the 1990s.² Green and Robertson point to the intense emotional appeals that bolstered Putin after the annexation of Crimea.³ Matovski's own work on Putin's exploitation of crises and fears of political instability fills an important need.⁴

These are all important contributions, but this is hard work. Nations have multiple identities that change over time. One person's historic trauma is another person's historic opportunity. National identities are not given in nature but are contested political creations. Identities and interests interact in ways that are difficult for observers to capture. Understanding why and when appeals to identity strike home is not easy. After the anti-government demonstrations of 2011, Putin banged...