In 1991, Jurgen Habermas published the English version of The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere at a precipitous moment in Eastern European and Soviet history. Habermas emphasized the role of civil society in an oppositional role to the centralized state. Recent developments in Russia indicate the renewal of authoritarianism dimming the hopes for a Habermasian civil society. The overextension of state authority in the Russian Federation is a critical problem but a theory designed to establish a viable future for Russia must allow for closer ties between state and society. The most realistic alternative is the option Habermas carefully rejected, the state and burgerliche Gesellschaft of G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831). This paper situates Hegel in an historical context, demonstrating how he was much less conservative than he appears in the writing of historians of Russia. It then looks at how major Russian thinkers, Boris Chicherin (1828-1904) and Ivan Ilyin (1883-1954), used Hegel to advocate the presence of a strong state working in tandem with civil society in a constitutional system. Finally, it shows how actors in Russian civil society often implicitly appeal to the Hegelian model.
This article examines Yevgeny Prigozhin's transformation from shadowy caterer to rebel warlord, analyzing how his media empire and political fortunes evolved in late-Putin Russia. Using a critical case study with historically grounded, process-oriented analysis, we refine adekvatnost' as a relational skill that travels from media practice into authoritarian politics, enabling elites to anticipate shifting red lines and turn improvisation into power. First, we show how Prigozhin's "troll factory" and later the Patriot Media Group built a metrics-driven system blending astroturfing, pseudojournalism, and war reporting, providing the Kremlin with deniable influence operations. Secondly, we demonstrate how this media capital financed Wagner's expansion, allowing Prigozhin to perform authenticity on the front line-subsequently amplified by state media as patriotic spectacle. Finally, we argue that the Kremlin's post-2020 turn toward bureaucratized digital authoritarianism made Prigozhin's personalized disruption obsolete and ultimately threatening, producing his break with the regime. Tracing how adelcvatnost' moved between media and politics across his career, the article links propaganda entrepreneurship to the political economy of oligarchic media and situates Prigozhin's agency within the institutional architecture of contemporary Russian authoritarianism.
Abstract This study examines how discursive alignments during the 2018-2019 Russian pension reform debates correspond with subsequent legislative collaboration networks. Employing discourse-network analysis and frame analysis, we identify distinct parliamentary communities organized around interpretive frameworks rather than formal institutional boundaries. Inferential network analysis using Exponential Random Graph Models ( ERGM ) and Quadratic Assignment Procedure ( MR-QAP ) reveals that shared discursive positions significantly predict co-sponsorship patterns in socioeconomic legislation. Despite procedural constraints favoring the ruling party, opposition deputies coalesce around three principal frames: state economic intervention, constitutional social guarantees, and regional equity concerns. These discursive communities, anchored in common normative orientations and policy solutions, correlate with legislative behavior beyond initial deliberative contexts. The findings advance theoretical understanding of how parliamentary discourse structures informal coalitions within authoritarian legislatures, revealing that deliberative processes retain substantive association with policy outcomes even under conditions of restricted political competition.
Following upon a predecessor published a year ago in this journal, this article concludes an investigation into the conspiracy theory regarding Russia's autumn 1999 apartment bombings and September 1999 Ryazan incident. This article demonstrates that FSB Director Patrushev's acknowledgement of the Ryazan incident as an FSB training exercise does not make sense as a cover-up for the conspiracy, and actually constitutes evidence against the conspiracy theory; that Patrushev's acknowledgement is corroborated by the FSB officers' behavior in Ryazan (as alleged by the conspiracy theory) and by the FSB's conduct of other exercises; that hexogen was not (as claimed by the conspiracy theory) actually discovered within sugar sacks at a military base near Ryazan; and that the actual attacks of autumn 1999 were clearly carried out by the 'Chechen Republic of Ichkeria'. The evidence uncovered and analyzed by this article, and by its predecessor, collectively renders the conspiracy theory essentially impossible.
International sanctions imposed on Russia in recent years, along with associated economic hardships, have had a significant impact on many socially important sectors. The quality of governance in these areas is crucial for maintaining economic growth, living standards, and the position of the ruling elites. Based on the policy analysis of the Russian housing policy, this article demonstrates how the governance system in socially significant sectors retains its capacity to meet the demands and achieve the goals of various actors amid external shocks-shaping both the quality of governance and the distribution of public goods. The study draws on an analysis of open data on the Russian housing policy and the functioning of the construction market, as well as semi-structured interviews with representatives of government, business and the expert community in the housing sector. Focusing on the timespan 2022-2025 we argue that after the imposition of sanctions in 2022, the housing policy subsystem initially demonstrated coping behavior, and later began to show elements of adaptation. The initial coping measures, reflected in the chaotic implementation of deregulating tools aimed at assisting developers, conflicted with previous priorities. Subsequently, several institutional innovations were introduced, and attempts were made to resolve the policy contradictions caused by the coping phase. We also argue that the multi-level structure of governance (MLG) in the housing policy subsystem has an ambiguous impact on adaptation to the crisis. On the one hand, MLG was a source of policy inconsistencies caused by the divergent goals of actors involved in policy-making. On the other hand, MLG, as well as the market-oriented nature of the subsystem, provided opportunities for the formation of informal horizontal networks among construction businesses and for access points to the decision-making process, enabling the resilience.
An analysis of the education and career experience of 107 officials of the central government apparatus during Mishustin's prime ministership, as a contribution to the literature on the professionalism of Russian state officials. That literature is placed in the context of the widespread characterization of state officials as incompetent and corrupt placeholders within a patrimonial system. The analysis also contributes to another literature, on the presence of siloviki in civilian institutions, as well as to consideration of the role of the government apparatus in the Russian policy system. The findings are in favor of the professionalism of state officials; the limited presence of siloviki; and that the government apparatus is probably more than a bureaucratic gatekeeper.
Although the Russian Constitution formally prohibits an official state ideology, the Putin regime has consistently pushed ideological components such as patriotism, traditional moral values, and civilizational exceptionalism. Drawing on a nationally representative 2021 survey, this study finds that nearly 80 percent of respondents endorse the idea that Russia needs a state ideology. However, analysis of their preferences reveals significant diversity and ambiguity: while national-conservative orientations predominate, they do not comprise a cohesive, state-codified doctrine. This study suggests that what is labeled "state ideology" in Russia functions less as a unified doctrine than as a discursive framework in which elite messaging and popular values interact, overlap, and compete - what I call a dynamic "semantic ecology." This underscores the blurred boundary between top-down ideological promotion and bottom-up cultural conservatism in Russia.
The article aims to examine how the ruling elite of Russia has solved the fundamental dilemma of the policy towards war emigration: between the desire to have as many resources as possible for waging war, including a large number of young and educated people, and the fear of the survival in Russia of the social base for the anti-systemic opposition. An analysis of statements by members of the Security Council about emigration was conducted to determine whether pragmatic thinking, characteristic of autocratic political myths, prevailed, and fundamentalist or typical of totalitarian political gnosis. A substantial part of the statements can be classified as the myth of conspiracy. Only a few statements by Putin can be treated as pragmatic. The entire Russian ruling elite treats the vast majority of emigrants with varying levels of refutation and pejoratization as a component of the widely understood hostile West.
This article explores three cases where the Kremlin has used military force outside the Russian Federation - the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbas, the 2015 military campaign in Syria, and the 2022 full-scale invasion of sovereign Ukraine. The formal patterns of decision-making for military intervention and war fit that of a personalist regime, relying on advice from a smaller circle of decision-makers with background from the security services. Decisions are made without prior consultations with the legislature, and legislators are not in position to delay or subvert decision-making made at the top. Yet, questions arise as to why legislative approval is needed, and how such decisions are processed. The article suggests that while the legislature has little prior information as to the onset of military operations, it serves the purpose of legalizing such operations, thus providing a thin veil of legitimacy for the use of military coercive power. Moreover, it is also essential in curbing domestic resistance against war and initiate repressive measures against dissenters. While oriented towards preserving legislative status, the handwork of such approvals bears the signature of improvisation and regime-proofing subservience.
The article records the symbolic significance of the Russian President's television address as a media format in the determinants of the first `wave' of the coronavirus pandemic (COvID-19). Seven Tv addresses, synchronously aired by all Russian federal Tv channels from March to June 2020, are studied. It is determined that the television address of the President of Russia as a media format allowed setting the agenda in the media space as a whole unity. The symbolism of the Russian President's televised address is ensured using the narrative model of paternalistic trust conversations. The effectiveness of the narrative model is manifested in the level of loyalty of citizens, first, to the President as a special political actor with symbolic significance, but it is also reflected in the level of support for program political projects.
This article examines the heterogeneity of the middle class in contemporary Russia, focusing on the dimensions of progressiveness and innovativeness. Using survey data from 3,000 urban middle-class respondents, the study develops multidomain indices to measure progressiveness and innovativeness across employment, consumption, financial behavior, and attitudes. Findings reveal that while the Russian middle class is generally characterized by openness to change and stability, significant differences exist within its subgroups, especially across age groups. The research highlights that public sector employees are in line with the others in terms of progressiveness and innovativeness. Youth and those in higher professional and material positions are most likely to combine progressive and innovative traits.
Anticipating international conflicts is critical for geopolitical risk assessment and early warning. Using the Russia – Ukraine crisis as a case study, this paper presents a hybrid approach that combines theory-driven and data-driven forecasting methods. First, an analytical geopolitics framework identifies structural and agent-based drivers of instability to explain the trajectory toward war. These insights also inform the preprocessing of event data by guiding the differential weighting of conflict events based on their geopolitical salience. Second, we develop an AI -based forecasting model that leverages event data from the Global Database of Events, Language, and Tone and Global Peace Index scores to predict monthly changes in national stability. A Long Short-Term Memory network is trained on these time-series inputs and evaluated against traditional forecasting benchmarks. Results show that the model accurately anticipates key inflection points in the Russia – Ukraine conflict and outperforms classical methods in short-term prediction. By integrating causal geopolitical reasoning with machine learning, this study offers a more robust and interpretable framework for forecasting emerging crises.
Vladimir Putin insists that the West accept that Russia is a unique civilization with a “1000 year history.” This claim is key to understanding his decision to invade Ukraine. While social scientists and historians are generally uncomfortable with narratives of exceptionalism, this article surveys the discursive history of Russian exceptionalism, from the 19th century Orthodox narrative through the anti-capitalist frame of the Soviet era. The version revived by the Kremlin with particular fervor since 2012 combines elements of both predecessors. The repeated invocation of an exceptionalism narrative – in the 19th, 20th and now 21st century – testifies to the failure of other ideologies and institutions to develop strong foundations in the country, and Russia’s inability (or unwillingness) to join the European path to power and prosperity. This tends to contribute to a national inferiority complex that expresses itself in resentment at the West for failing to appreciate and accept Russia.
The article describes the party system and elections in Russia after the electoral and party reform of 2012. The number of parties has started to grow since 2012 and reached its maximum (75 parties) by the end of 2015. Then a steady decline in the number of parties began, and this process continues. Most of the changes in electoral legislation after 2003 were aimed at setting excessive barriers to candidates from getting on the ballot and parties from entering parliament, as well as reducing the transparency of voting and summarizing its results, but there were two short periods (2010–2012 and 2017–2018) when most of the amendments were aimed at improving the quality of elections. In the period 2013–2024, there were two campaigns for the election of deputies of the State Duma and two campaigns for the election of the President of Russia, as well as more than 200 campaigns for the election of heads of Russian regions and 200 campaigns for the election of regional parliaments, as well as a huge number of municipal elections. As a result of the 2021 elections, a fifth party, New People, appeared in the State Duma. The level of electoral fraud began to decrease in 2012, but increased again after 2020.
This article examines factional and individual-level legislative behavior in the Seventh Convocation of the Moscow City Duma (2019–2024), the most opposition-inclined assembly in the modern history of Russia’s capital. Roll-call voting analysis, along with a specifically constructed Opposition Index, reveals weak cohesion within the opposition, with legislative behavior shaped by individual biographical characteristics rather than by party affiliation. This outcome reflects the limitations of the 2019 electoral strategy, where casting votes for the strongest oppositional candidate in each district resulted in a heterogeneous and internally divided legislature. Regression analysis confirms that deputies with higher Systemic Political Experience, an index based on principal component analysis ( PCA ) reflecting prior institutional integrations, are more loyal, which is consistent with theories of opposition co-optation in authoritarian regimes. Reflecting broader shifts in the political climate following 2022, oppositional activity declined markedly, particularly among members of the Communist Party. By the end of the convocation in 2024, internal fragmentation and administrative pressure had undermined the opposition’s capacity, enabling United Russia to reassert near-complete control over the legislature.
Leaders in personalist regimes like Russia are continually faced with the need to ensure that their position is not challenged by other members of the ruling group. Historically, personalist leaders have responded to this situation by implementing a series of authority-building strategies. This paper identifies nine such strategies – institutional control, symbolic authority-building, alliance-making, factional development, transactional dynamics, mobilisation, policy, personal performance, and threat – and shows how these strategies have been used by Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin.
While military and environmental aspects of Arctic securitization are well-studied, economic securitization remains underexplored. This article examines how Russia has reframed the Northern Sea Route (NSR) as vital infrastructure critical to sovereignty, technological autonomy, and regime survival. Drawing on securitization theory and constructivism, the study analyzes strategic documents from 2008 to 2024, tracing how economic challenges-such as infrastructural delays and technological dependence-are discursively framed as existential threats, especially after the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The article demonstrates that securitization is operationalized through extraordinary measures, including selective protectionism, legal exceptions, and state-driven investments. These practices reflect a neomercantilist logic that prioritizes state control and geopolitical resilience over market efficiency. Additionally, the NSR is symbolically framed as a cornerstone of Russian Arctic identity and great-power status. This case illustrates how infrastructure governance in non-liberal contexts becomes a tool of strategic securitization under external pressure.
Based on a transitive approach of neoclassical realism, the following study models the influence of structural and elemental factors on US sanctions policy development. Using a comprehensive methodology that combines both quantitative and narrative analysis, as well as an adapted Chang's aggregate index for national power, the model effectively analyzes US Russia-related sanctions programs. The study reveals that the redistribution of power in the structure of international relations (IR) reduces the effectiveness of US sanctions and expands opportunities for the target country (Russia) to reduce costs and diversify risks by increasing its own components of power and alternative centers of power (China). The case of Russia demonstrates that in the conditions of a weakening US hegemony, Washington relies on a strategy of suppressing its competitors rather than balancing them, leading to a steadily increasing role of sanctions within US foreign policy. At the state level, US Russia-related sanctions are largely influenced by US political elites and their perception of Russia as a major threat. With trends in the structure of international relations gravitating towards multipolarity, the actions of the United States and its use of sanctions as a tool within its foreign policy belt will likewise continue to increase.
This article aims to identify the effect of the COVID-1 9 pandemic on value change in Russia. I focus on evolution of materialist and postmaterialist values among Russians and suppose that the pandemic could lead to increase in materialist attitudes and decrease in postmaterialist ones. Using four panel waves of the international longitudinal survey "Values in Crisis" and running a series of panel and logistic regressions, together with mediation analysis, I prove these assumptions, and also test causal mechanisms - `health risk perception hypothesis' and `political hypothesis', which highlight different aspects of the government's role in fighting the pandemic. If the state is regarded as the "last hope defender" against the virus, the rise of materialist values is not surprising. I reveal positive association and causal link between materialism and pro-statist attitudes. Another finding is non-linear effect of age: younger cohorts are more postmaterialistic, but the oldest one is not the most materialistic.
This paper analyzes how Russian newspapers reported on the 2015-16 political crisis in Turkiye-Russia relations by examining two major incidents: the downing of a Russian SU-24 warplane by Turkish forces and the assassination of Russian Ambassador Andrei Karlov in Ankara. Using media framing theory, this investigation examines the narratives and themes presented by four prominent Russian media outlets-Kommersant, Russia Today, Tass, and Sputnik-to assess their impact on public perception and diplomatic relations between the two countries. The research employs a qualitative approach, conducting a thematic analysis of the selected media institutions' coverage from November 2015 to June 2016. The findings reveal that Russian media outlets employed specific framing techniques to portray Turkiye as an aggressor and a threat to regional stability. The media coverage emphasized themes of nationalism, patriotism, and security concerns, often presenting Russia as a victim of Turkiye's hostile actions. The framing of the SU-24 shootdown and the Karlov assassination in the Russian media reflected broader geopolitical narratives that aligned with the Russian State's interests. The study suggests that the media's portrayal of the crisis played a significant role in shaping public opinion in Russia and influenced the Russian government's subsequent diplomatic responses. The research contributes to the understanding of media framing in the context of international crises and highlights the complex relationship between media, public opinion, and foreign policy in Russia. While Turkiye is a central actor in the events, the focus is on how Russian media portrayed these crises, not the events themselves or Turkiye's role.
