Political Mutations in Present-Day Russia

On April 17, 2023, Ilya Budraitskis and Ilya Matveev—both of whom were forced to flee Russia to avoid arrest for their open opposition to Russia’s war against Ukraine—sat down with anthropologist Alexei Yurchak to discuss the war, its origins, and its implications. How, in retrospect, might we trace a red thread from the authoritarian neoliberalism of the early Putin era to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and its pronounced dictatorial turn? What does this new form of Russian authoritarianism at home imply for the rest of the world? How useful are existing concepts from Marxism and critical theory—imperialism, Bonapartism, fascism, ideology—for understanding the situation both locally and globally?What follows is a transcript of the conversation, lightly edited for readability.alexei yurchak: The first question I would like to address to both of you. You have written and spoken about the radical transformation of the political system in Russia in recent years and especially since the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Also, you have referred to Putin’s system today as a “qualitatively new type of regime.” What is your assessment of the present-day mutations of Putin’s regime? What has changed inside the regime in the past several years and since the beginning of the war?ilya budraitskis: The subject of today’s talk is very much related to both of our personal situations. In fact, both of us left the country in March 2023, just after the start of the invasion of Ukraine, and even in the first week after the invasion started, it became quite clear that some very important and very dramatic shifts had happened in Russian society and with the Russian political regime, which turned into an open dictatorship and which I think one would be quite justified to call a new form of fascism. I’ll return to this definition, which of course may sound a bit shocking or controversial. In fact, we saw the rapid destruction of all elements of civil society, of political opposition, of independent media that still existed right up until the moment of invasion. Of course, this mutation, this fascist shift, it didn’t come from nowhere. During the last decade I would say probably even before the annexation of Crimea [in 2014], in the beginning of the third term of Vladimir Putin in 2012, we already saw this, let’s say, conservative turn within the regime that took a very aggressive attitude toward political opposition. The use of the language of the “culture wars”—so the language of a kind of silent, hardworking Christian traditional majority with Vladimir Putin as its single voice against the minority of the “national traitors” [as Putin labeled the political opposition as far back as 2014]. During this decade we saw how the counterrevolutionary idea became a very important or even central obsession of this political regime. So even the turn to this aggressive conservative language in 2012 happened mostly as an answer to the growth of the opposition movements, the growth of mass mobilizations against the regime. We saw how this development of this counterrevolutionary logic led to the invasion of Donbass and the annexation of Crimea. I think that a very important element not just of the rhetoric but of the rationality of the Russian political regime was that it was intended to prevent any kind of revolutionary changes like we saw with Maidan in Ukraine from happening in Russia. So in this sense we can see how the external and domestic logics of the regime were represented as two sides of the same coin. We can say that the war against Ukraine was also a war against Russia itself. It was a war against Russian society, it was a war against any political openings, and now we see that the mutation of the Russian political regime in the fascist direction is also organically related to the war condition. The war, in one way or another, became the only mode of existence of this political regime.The last thing I want to add to this is the question of the ideology behind this mutation. During the last year we saw the rise of the “Z ideology,”1 the new ideology of war, which includes elements of the previous aggressive counterrevolutionary rhetoric but also has some new qualities. This ideology holds that society has to express loyalty to the regime in a more, let’s say, active and unspoken form. In this way we see how this process of “fascization” from the top infiltrates society itself. Of course, this very eclectic set of ideas that you have behind this political mutation—with a mix of all possible elements coming from the Stalinist tradition, the tradition of the prerevolutionary Russian empire, some Far Right conservative ideas borrowed actively from the West (like the concept of the culture war)—I think that the controversial and contradictory form of this ideology is something that is actually typical of ideology itself. That is how ideology works. It is always about ruptures, contradictions—it isn’t about any kind of consistency.2 In this sense Z ideology is a very dangerous thing that is also related to global trends; it is not only a Russian thing.ilya matveev: Thank you. Responding to Alexei’s question, of course I agree with what Ilya said, but I would add a few details and something related to political developments in Russia specifically. I think there is a certain paradox here in terms of the Russian political regime: everything changes in order to stay the same. The main pillars of authoritarianism in Russia emerged twenty years ago. Control over the media, control over political parties, the parliament, the electoral process—all these key features of an authoritarian regime were already present twenty years ago, but this regime faced a series of challenges and crises. Each crisis prompted a response from the Kremlin. The biggest crises, I think, were the protests of 2011 and 2012, this eruption of protest activity. This was something new for the regime, because it previously relied on a completely apathetic, completely apolitical society and suddenly there was this explosion of politics and there was a need for some kind of response. This is the root of the conservative, reactionary counterpoliticization. So what Ilya is describing—the adoption of an extremely reactionary ideology—I would say that it was not really present in the 2000s, but it was latent and fully emerged as a response to this protest activity. The regime was searching for some new foundation, and ideology became this foundation—along with new repressive tactics. The regime became much more repressive after 2011–12. After 2014 this ideology became even more articulated. Nationalist tendencies became very pronounced. And I would say that the constitutional amendments in 2020 [whose purpose was to remove term limits for the Russian president] were a crucial event, because the elimination of the constitutional norm that the president cannot be elected for more than two terms in a row—this was the last thing limiting Vladimir Putin’s power—opened a new era of complete free-for-all, a downward spiral. When this happened, there was a discussion about what kind of decision Putin would make, because at first he announced these constitutional changes but didn’t clarify. So, what was he going to do exactly? What kind of strategy would be chosen? Eventually Putin settled on the most straightforward way of resolving the problem of the transition of power: he just remains in power and there is no transition. This was a point when I personally understood that everything is possible in Russia. Everything including this kind of war is possible because there are no longer any limits on the actions of a completely unaccountable regime and an unaccountable leader. This to me was a pivotal moment. After this we saw a new wave of repression; in fact, it came before the war. In retrospect, we can see it as a preparation for war in 2021 when all remaining independent media was destroyed. Hundreds of people were sent to prison, and all the organizational bases of the opposition were crushed. The next step was the war itself. The war resulted in the introduction of what I would call de facto martial law in Russia. It is not officially pronounced, but in fact all the building blocks of a state of emergency are in place. At the moment, any expression of protest is criminalized, not just some specific action or instrument of protest, but disagreement with the authorities in any shape or form. You cannot voice your opposition to what is going on in any way. This is perhaps the ultimate step in the transformation of the regime, even though fundamentally it is the same regime that was established twenty years ago: a personalistic authoritarian regime where one leader controls everything. The main elements were established twenty years ago, but there has been this transformation to face challenges that have emerged since then.ay: Now that you have spoken about the internal mutations of the Russian regime, can you change the scale of your perspective a little and discuss how these mutations of the regime look in a global context? What becomes visible about this regime from the perspective of trends that have been happening globally and not just in Russia? Does that perspective clarify or add something to your conceptual analysis?im: I think that maybe this particular combination of features is unique to Russia, but no specific individual characteristic of the Russian regime, or of the Russian economy, is unique. First of all, Russia is a semiperipheral country with extreme inequality, very low living standards, lack of social protections—so the population is very vulnerable—and the economy has been stagnant for more than a decade now. This is of course present in many other countries. But at the same time, Russia is an imperialist power that actively participates in and meddles in the affairs of other countries across the world. It has interests all across the world, in fact, including military presence. Apart from Ukraine, we know that the Russian military has intervened in Syria and all over the Middle East as well as in Africa, where the private military company Wagner is present. Finally, it is an authoritarian regime with a very reactionary ideology that Ilya just described. We know countries that have some of these features. For example, India is also a semiperipheral country with extreme inequality and poverty and a nationalist reactionary ideology at the moment. [Narendra] Modi is a nationalist leader. But it is also a democracy, and it is not an imperialist power comparable to Russia. Turkey probably comes closest in terms of all the features that are present in Russia with its combination of extreme class divisions, extreme inequality, poverty, and imperialist ambitions of an authoritarian leader. But of course, imperialist ambitions and military intervention from Turkey are less pronounced, because Russia has a bigger military and a nuclear arsenal that is the largest in the world. This strange combination of features is perhaps unique, though in some respects it is present in other large developing countries in the BRICS bloc [Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa]. This is how I would place Russia in a comparative context.ib: I would add to this that of course you have many things that are unique in Russia. You have the imperial tradition—not just imperialist, but imperial in its relation to the smaller nations and territories that were previously colonies of the Russian empire. You have the experience of recent wars from late Soviet history such as Afghanistan, or later of two Chechen wars. All of that is quite important in the establishment of this very aggressive reactionary culture of the regime, and in fact it has deep roots in Russian society. You can’t deny that. But also I think that the idea that you can explain this war and this mutation of the Russian regime as a natural result of the continuity of all previous Soviet and Russian history is definitely not right. Actually, this is Putin’s own story he is trying to sell to the population: “OK, Russia was always in some kind of war, was always ruled by an authoritarian leader, whether the name was ‘tsar’ or ‘president,’ so that is your historical destiny, like it or not. If you belong to this country, you should take it as a kind of destiny of this nation.” Of course, this rhetoric is totally fake. There is huge speculation behind it, and it covers the real social and political nature of the regime, which came from the radical market transformations of Russian society in the 1990s, which itself was very related to global authoritarian trends, and which feeds on the global crisis of democracy and global distrust in democracy in the United States as well. In this sense you can say that in some way Putin’s regime is the possible dangerous future of most of the Western democracies, rather than a dark authoritarian backward past. And if you look at the rhetoric of this kind of semifascist reactionary ideology you have now in Russia, you can find a lot of things that sound extremely familiar [to those in the United States]. All this obsession with LGBTQ, the obsession with the traditional family, the danger to Christian values that presents Putin and his regime like the best of how much the Russian regime from the experience of the Western Far Right and Right In this we should talk about these mutations as a of a global and as a to social across the I would like now to address one question to Ilya Budraitskis and after that question to Ilya Ilya already the several In your in you call it that this should not be There has been a lot of in the media and political about the concept of to Russia. use this term in a say that it is not still that it the real I know that you have an this also written about the mutation of the Russian regime today from an democracy to In what sense can you call the Russian system today or perhaps as you what is this system or the of that we know from the and This is a very important the is so dangerous because it can to which you can find in these recent about whether or not Russia is fascist now. of these is the of the I as name for This is not the kind of talk about that we need If you look at Putin’s behind the invasion of Ukraine, find this of the term fascism. The main idea behind the that which it, is that Ukraine is I think that the about in Russia is useful only if we take it as a very political term and also if we it as of a global as already So, if you look at the huge on in the past you find main to is course, I things The first as a kind of ideology and that we need to it in a way. this is and this is not fascist because it is some element of the The is that is a mass from that in let’s say the situation of class and in this situation (like in the of comes as a kind of is to and the revolutionary The third which I think is much more important and that is a type of political regime even more a type of social power that need to come from but mostly from the the transformation of the and the way their power over society. So the term from is not a but a coming from the top in order to society and all possible elements of its In the sense that about the transformation of the Russian regime the last two we definitely see how this regime was always in a situation of use of always challenges from society, as Ilya and the to these challenges from more and more and take the country in the direction of a new form of political regime and social power that actually is very much in the logic of market society. the of the logic of market society, you have only to a Actually, this is the of the by Putin on a global There is no only countries other and only their own In this sense I think it is quite just to talk about fascist transformation in Russia and also to it as a for other countries in the as a global In Russia you have this global in its most extreme and a to this like to Ilya a related question but a of the You have written about the war in Ukraine, and many people as a war that is You have also that this form of is from many of that we know from It emerged from a unique set of in Russia and it has unique features. you what is unique about this kind of In what way is Russia In what way can it be understood as an In what way is the logic of this war There is a kind of of now Ilya and with and I with two related to the Russian in this because I see a certain paradox On the one of course, everything on how one I think the most straightforward is of and two one state of in order to the other to do its including military This is by imperialist, and in that sense it is that Russia is an imperialist For the last twenty years the has a of to change the situation in other countries The and military But comes the The very term was by such as of course, and in the tradition is to the of It is with interests on some But in the Russian it is to see the interests behind this imperialist is a kind of but also an On the one we see extreme of on the other the of the Russian How is this possible in the have been to this answer is to look for interests of the class in this war and more in Russian point that the wars that Russia to of their But this isn’t It can’t the regime. The is the territories of Ukraine certain natural and it would be possible to and But this is a question of It in Ukraine has been in this war, so Russia is not in a to the for example, would question is What countries would this are for interests in this war and more in this aggressive of Russian is a There are only possible answer is that the the class and the is not a that in for the United where there are deep and the state In Russia, of course, there are as but there is a complete by the state of the The these even though huge is of all political This was the that Putin forced on the he of any kind of political power and over the electoral over the of the took control of and but are in the of the Kremlin. any independent political just do the This the Russian class and the regime can be This concept in The of is quite useful because when was the of the regime of in he to the fact that the state was more and more and an that of society. The state was not an instrument in the of the it was an This is to Russia as well. The roots of the situation are The Russian the Russian do not in society. do not have in itself is not in Russia. If you look at you see that the majority of people still to by a itself isn’t as something or in Russian society. For the the only is to on this of the leader and that this leader not from their But this is what has that Putin their to for but there is no way for the class to to do So when Russian to of and say, you think we can Putin to the war, you are are not far the by the class is a completely This is into Putin’s class is But there I think, an even bigger question If these cannot Putin from his imperialist what about the Ilya that the nature of the Russian regime is that the is in market are very of their own In are are and up until it that think and would not do to their own But we saw the annexation of was a to this I personally that such an was that their extremely would not to do this But it How is it possible that this a very aggressive imperialist that against this That is the question that I want to in stay at For the last question, what possible can you for the political regime in Russia, for Russian society, and for I think that the most is a of the in one way or more or less the But I think this not be a it from Putin’s Russia. I war has the mode of existence of this regime, and any kind of situation to internal a few the leader of the Wagner a in which he that in Russia you have some kind of a of the state that is to with the West and up in Ukraine, and that is all in Russia (like really need a of the and coming of In fact, this is a clear to Putin because this of the traitors” is the that Putin is trying to avoid by this war. The here is that Putin’s Russia has to this war in one way or another, because now it is an The other element in the is that that it actually if the be or not. if Russia totally the war in the moment, it be for the because it of these internal and with the transformations of the Russian state that we have been In this I think that this war can be only by a change of the Russian regime. That is the only way of this After it is the most thing to any kind of future for Russia. This is the we no longer If we a conservative to from happening is quite very important of this moment is for the with to and his of I think this that has its own with the and all of this is into a new with the West on one and this bloc of and Russia on the The war itself at some within the next of years because of a complete of military for both Russia and Ukraine. It up as a to and South kind of The bigger is that be the and this what we have in Russia. The of the of the regime can be In that things on for a very time, and this is a really but it is present. We can only for some kind of Apart from it is to But at the same I know that something can is the only that I can in response to this

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