Nikolai Petrov looks at the format and substance of Putin’s meetings with governors. Even though the information about these meetings on the Kremlin website is obviously incomplete, they still provide unique material for understanding both the general structure of the Russian political system and the situation on the ground.

Boris Knorre writes about how Church leaders and ordinary conservative clergy interpret the victory in the Great Patriotic War, combining the political with the mystical, and the secular Soviet with the pre-revolution Church.

Ilya Budraitskis writes that the Putin regime needs ideology not in the sense of a coherent worldview, but as a technology of domination that works as a set of performative practices.

Tatyana Rybakova writes that the consumer lending market is now mostly mortgages, but that is set to change, with short-term and insane-rate loans for the poor on the rise. Even Putin’s ex-wife is in the microfinance business.

Nikolai Petrov writes about the ratcheting up of political repression, the various groups that have been targeted by the government’s repressive machine and the different logic behind the government’s intimidation of them.

Mariya Omelicheva argues that the Kremlin’s inculcation of militaristic patriotism has had a strong effect on Russian society, though the Soviet legacy of cynicism and “double-think” is actually working to mitigate it.

Sergei Shelin writes about the current consensus at the bottom and top of Russian society: the majority tries to live their usual lives, while the regime encourages them to do so and attempts not to make the war total.

In his essay, Ilya Kalinin describes the political mythology of the 90s that was created by the Putin regime to legitimize itself. He shows how the various forms of civil conflict and war that characterized the decade became the disguised basis of a new political order.

The authors explore how opposition-minded Russian musicians navigate the minefield laid by the increasingly authoritarian regime and offer a tentative basis for broader social solidarity against repression.

Critically engaging with the ideas of presence and absence of Russia’s ethnic and religious minority cultures, the editors suggest, can potentially help to decolonise accounts and illustrations of Russian culture and heritage. In the best case, the outcome of such an exercise would be a more adequate involvement of minority representatives in the process of negotiating Russian national culture.

Mikhail Suslov takes us through the new Russian Foreign Policy Concept, its sources and component parts, and explains what it tells us about the Kremlin’s policy thinkers and their ideological journey.

The Russia Program Online Papers

Nikolai Petrov writes about a major purge of law enforcement and judicial officials in Rostov Region. In his view, it is a political decision aimed at further putting the country on a war footing and making judges – who are already completely loyal to the regime – a more efficient part of the repression machine.

Anna Zueva looked into private shelters in Tomsk, Nizhny Novgorod and outside Moscow to find out what kind of help women get there and what challenges the organizations face. The biggest problem, she claims, is that the Russian state does not recognize domestic violence as a problem.

Ivan Fomin draws attention to the fact that the Russian public cannot be mobilized for the war with ideology alone, forcing Putin’s regime to turn to economic incentives and promises about people’s welfare to recruit soldiers for its war.

Maxim Blant writes that the government is expanding the categories of people who receive state support while reporting a falling poverty level. However, amid the war, this policy is fraught with serious economic risks.

Cyril Hovorun writes about the deepening of the conflict between the Orthodox Church of Ukraine and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (part of the Russian Orthodox Church), expressing regret that the two churches are in a mindset of fierce competition rather than dialogue.

Georgy Chizhov on how the conflict between the Orthodox churches of Ukraine developed over the last three decades, how the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate became a victim of Russia’s war in Ukraine, and how the scandal around the Kyiv Lavra will evolve.

The Russia Program Online Papers

Nikolai Petrov writes about the State Council Presidium discussion of Russia’s industrial development. In his view, developing industry amid sanctions is currently impossible, and the State Council looked rather like a decoration at a theatre performance.

Mikhail Zygar argues that the unprecedented success of the film Cheburashka reveals how Russian viewers withdraw into a children’s fairy tail movie in order to avoid the war.

Tatyana Rybakova explains the essence of the dispute over mortgage lending between the Ministry of Construction and the Central Bank, as well as the influence of the largest developers.

Oleg Kashin writes that the anti-ideological nature of Russian society and the state in the early post-Soviet period resulted in degradation. The inhumane mores of the 1990s, refracted through the domestic prosperity of the 2000s, have produced selfish, cruel philistines indifferent to the pain of others.

A short summary of the most important political developments by Nikolai Petrov.

By Marlene Laruelle and Ivan Grek

In his essay, Ilya Kalinin talks about the lack of political imagination and the dangers of turning to the experience of world wars of the 20th century wars for explanatory models and arguments in decision-making on the current crisis.

Andrei Yakovlev believes that it is necessary to begin to develop a new socio-political and economic model for Russia after Putin. At this stage, we can talk about an expert-led analytical process featuring the participation of representatives of various elite and professional groups.

Ilya Venyavkin outlines the questions that structure the debates about the ideology of today’s Russia and also discusses the phenomenon of bottom-up 'ideological production' – how the people doing the fighting or actively supporting the war effort on the Russian side are incorporating the war into their picture of reality.

Sergei Shelin writes about profound material changes in Russia: the prosperity of the beneficiaries of militarization, the decline of the middle classes, and the steady restoration of late-Soviet domestic practices.

Andrey Movchan discusses capital outflow from Russia, criticizes the Western sanctions against Russia and wonders why no European elites have been punished for their past business ties with Putin’s regime.

A short summary of the most important political developments by Nikolai Petrov.

Natalia Yudina describes how law enforcement’s approach to dealing with the ultra-right in Russia is evolving, even as one of the goals of the “special military operation” was “denazification.”

Maxime Audinet explains how RT and Sputnik, while facing restrictions and closure in Europe after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, are looking for new opportunities in the Global South.

Sergei Shelin writes that, though the number of Russian dead in Ukraine is already higher than the Afghan and Chechen wars, the Kremlin is not facing pressure to change course. Overall, in the short and medium term, Putin has no reason to worry about problems arising back home.

Over the last thirty years, Russia’s muftiates heavily invested in becoming a national “church for Islam,” an Islamic counterpart of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), that would meet the state’s ideological needs.

Lev Gudkov writes about how the Russian “Great Power” discourse differs from the post-imperial experiences of other former empires and how Russians’ perception of themselves as subjects of a Great Power affects their attitude toward the war in Ukraine.

Alena Solntseva shares her impressions from conversations with fellow Russians about the Ukraine war and the situation in the country and the world in general. Her interlocutors tend to look after themselves and their loved ones, focusing on their own affairs without delving into disturbing and tragic news.

Tatyana Rybakova writes about the rationale behind the Western sanctions against Russian oligarchs and explains how Russian business practices are working against the people who used them to become business leaders in Russia.

Andrei Kolesnikov believes that in post-Putin Russia, a softening of the regime is more likely than even worse, fascist-like figures coming to power. He thinks there is no need to fear the future when Russia is hurtling into the past before our eyes.

Russia has returned to its previously unsuccessful recruitment of volunteer fighters in what looks to be an attempt to avoid ordering a second wave of mobilization.

The article is devoted to identifying and describing the phantasmic dimension of the culture wars, in particular the phantasmic dimension of one side of this confrontation—social conservatism. The notion of “phantasm” is used on the basis of the Lacanian tradition of social and political theory.

Little has been written about the recently translated Legionary Phenomenon (Italian, 1998; English, 2022) by Romanian Legionary ideologue Nae Ionescu. Almost nothing exists in English. The present article demonstrates that the text is consciously patterned after Julius Evola’s Revolt Against the Modern World (1934) and thus constitutes an as yet unrecognized part of the corpus of fascist Integral Traditionalism.

The central focus of this article is an in-depth analysis of the interplay between Patriarch Kirill’s ideology of “Holy Tradition” and the movement Sorok Sorokov, which we consider Kirill’s praetorian guard, in charge of “maintaining the order for patriarchal services”—services which include humanitarian and military assistance in Russian offensives, the punishment of non-traditional priests, and the on-site guards of patriarchal projects within the wider scope of Russkiy mir.

Ilya Kalinin suggests that in recent years the structural core of Russian policy, both foreign and domestic, is the historical past. The war has become a continuation of this policy, driven by the historical ambitions of the Russian leadership and its conception of the past.

Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer updates her monograph Galvanizing Nostalgia? to explore why many in the republics are against Russia’s war in Ukraine. Drawing on long-term fieldwork in Sakha, Tyva and Buryatia and with diaspora communities, she outlines an uneven legacy of revitalization and grievances in relation to the Kremlin and its policies.

Could the war shift the balance in relations between Russia’s ethnic republics and the federal center? Russia.Post asked a pool of experts specializing in regional and ethno-national politics for their take.

Sergey Mikhailov writes about the way politicians who crafted Minsk agreements are clarifying their own position and the meaning of the agreements in retrospect and argues that Angela Merkel and François Hollande chose not to notice the agreements were essentially unworkable.

Anna Zueva writes about the plight of the merchant houses of the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Buryatia. These architectural monuments could be saved, but officials are instead spending money from the regional budget on the so-called DNR.

A short summary of the most important political developments by Nikolai Petrov.

Sergei Shelin writes about the systemic liberals, who for 30 years have represented the “human face” of the Russian bureaucracy before suffering a moral and ideological meltdown in 2022. However, their competence remains beyond question: while Putin’s generals were losing battles, the “syslibs” loyal to Putin saved the Russian economy from collapse.

Thousands of Russian citizens who fled war and the economic impact of sanctions last year continue to work remotely for Russia-based companies. Some officials want to bring that to an end.

Boris Knorre writes about the Russian Orthodox Church’s view of the environmental agenda. He explains that the clergy and believers are more likely to denounce Western politics and globalism than focusing on the problems of conservation.

Mark Lipovetsky writes about a new series of comedic shorts titled Out Loud, modeled on a Soviet-era satirical film anthology. The plots are tinged with a fear of anything new, with the ghost of the dangerous Other looming in the backdrop.

Andrei Kolesnikov writes that since the outbreak of the war active support for the regime has come to imply cheering on cruelty, primitiveness and immorality. The value of human life has been reduced to the willingness to risk one’s life for Putin and his inner circle.

This essay suggests legitimizing and promoting critical approaches in Russian studies, as well as acknowledging the multifaceted diversity within Russian society.

This essay highlights the potential analytical leverage from the import of recent approaches in social and political psychology into the study of politics in Russia.

Gulnaz Sibgatullina warns against assumptions that regions like Tatarstan univocally support the idea of complete independence from Russia as a means of protecting their minority rights. Profound decolonization for Tatars implies a long-term process of relearning their own history and agency.

Ilya Budraitskis on how decolonization is being weaponized, why efforts to define what a “decolonization” program should look like are encountering serious obstacles, and why Russians need to figure it out for themselves.

Ilya Kalinin analyzes the arsenal of historical and mythological tools used by the Russian regime to justify its war against Ukraine and explains the essential flaw of the state narrative.

Adam Lenton analyzes the 2021 data for what it tells us about Russia’s changing ethnic landscape and how the politics of the census is impacting debates on the ground among ethnic minorities in Russia.

Lisa Gaufman traces some of the major elements of the Kremlin propaganda used to portray the war against Ukraine as legitimate and unify the nation. Among them associations with the Soviet victory in World war II, anti-western conspiracy theories and the "Gayropa" narrative.

The growth of global environmental problems and the strengthening of environmental rhetoric in the world have led to the awareness of the environmental issues among ordinary citizens.

While Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine has resulted in a decoupling with the West on a scale not seen since the worst years of the Cold War, Russia has not been isolated from the non-Western world and has even reinvested its diplomatic energy toward the Global South.

The Sochi Summit, in October 2019, exemplified the return to Africa that Russia has initiated in recent years.

Russia and China have developed informational influence strategies over the past decade and are now deploying their vectors on the African continent. Both Moscow and Beijing have implanted their international media in Africa in order to broadcast positive speeches about their presence and activities in the continent.

The article considers the quality of neighborhood services available to local residents as a dimension of perceived spatial segregation. The concept of “neighborhoodness” of services targets evaluation of local amenities as demanded by neighbors and positively assessed as satisfying their daily needs.

Scholarship where cultural consumption is intertwined with the issues of stratification focuses on the possibilities and consequences of using cultural capital as a signal in interaction.

This article examines two simultaneous and contradictory aspects of socialist legality: its repression and emancipation. The author investigates one particular institution of socialist legality—comrades’ courts in the workplace—in order to discover the interweaving of these two functions of Soviet justice.

The present article provides an alternative model for qualitative studies based on the discourse theory of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, with special emphasis on computer-based analysis. The model may be used for empirical research and analysis of large data corpora.

In the light of the ongoing geopolitical tensions and the situation in Ukraine specifically, Russian foreign policy constitutes a puzzling area of social science research, particularly central to international relations (IR) scholarship.

In 2022, Iran was among the countries that Russia studied closely, both from a scientific and from a political perspective. The reasoning is clear: for more than 40 years, Iran has been under sanctions. Such extensive experience may offer clues as to how science functions under conditions of external restrictions—and how it changes under sanctions.

If demand for independent Russian social sciences even exists today, there is nothing on the horizon that comes close to meeting it.

As Russia ramped up its aggression in Ukraine, it also increased its repressions at home. This included a near-prohibition of all independent media. Where did these outlets go? How do they operate? Can they effectively counter the regime’s propaganda? Journalists Roman Badanin and Mikhail Rubin, who were exiled from Russia a year before the war for their investigations into Vladimir Putin and his entourage, will answer these questions.

Guzel Garifullina discusses how selection rules in recent decades have shaped the face of Russian subnational leaders as part of PONARS Eurasia’s New Voices on Eurasia series.

Yuri Saprykin explores how post-Soviet Russian literature has borrowed from popular works of modern Western literature to create its own vision of the good and evil divide.

Mack Tubridy talked with the editor and co-founder of Groza, Leonid Spirin, about why independent student-led media is needed in Russia today.

Marlene Laruelle explores Russian public opinion on the issue of state ideology and delves into the “national-conservative” values and beliefs that seem to unite a majority of Russians.

Nikolai Petrov analyzes a recent meeting with senior government officials in which Putin lost his cool and some discussions were left off the transcript. The backdrop for the meeting was the deteriorating fiscal backdrop and the reshuffle in the command of the Russian military grouping in Ukraine.

Julian G. Waller

As Russian President Vladimir Putin doubles down on his war in Ukraine, the stability of his regime hangs in the balance. Some observers have predicted that the Russian president could be overthrown; others even hope for a breakup of the country. This raises the question: Could Russia splinter?

Denis Volkov on how Russians have adapted to wartime. Staying out of politics, withdrawing into private life, focusing on everyday problems, communicating with loved ones – these are the key strategies common people have used to keep their distance from the conflict.

Margarita Zavadskaya and her coauthors conducted a survey of new Russian emigrants, exploring the civic and political initiatives they are engaged in, their ties and attachment to Russia, and their vision of its future.

Michael Kimmage and Maria Lipman

Jules Sergei Fediunin explains why Russian warmongers get away with their angry criticism of the course of the war and the army’s poor performance, even though a newly adopted law explicitly bans criticism of the Russian military.

Ilya Budraitskis writes that the "unbroken history" of the Russian state has been proclaimed as the foundation of an incontestable official ideology. This means that the past now poses an actual danger to the prevailing order and is under attack.

Mikhail Suslov discusses why Alexander Zinoviev, quoted by Putin at the last Valdai meeting, is best suited for the role of “official” philosopher of today's Russia.

An interview with Natalya Zubarevich in which she explains why the decline of Russian economy has turned out smaller than expected, why unemployment has not risen, and who the state is supporting and who it has left on their own.

On how the war has opened new avenues for the Russian Radical Right to be heard by a broader public opinion, as their websites and social media platforms have seen greater engagement.

On why the concept of "fascism" is still problematic to define Russia as a regime and a society even after February 24, and the policy implications of such labelling.

Marlene Laruelle and Kelian Sanz Pascual on the cinematic universe of the PMC Wagner and how pop culture frames are used to promote and celebrate a mercenary realm favorable to Russia.

This study aims to explore ordinary Russians’ commitment to this conservatism using data from European Social Survey, 2010–2018. The study reveals a surge in conservative attitudes in 2014–2016 and a steady decline thereafter.

A vocal version of the manosphere à la russe has been the group the Male State (muzhskoe gosudarstvo), which gained its maximal media visibility in summer 2021 before getting banned by the Russian judicial authorities for extremism in October 2021. Dismissing the movement as just wacko hides how the Male State embodied important trends of Russian pre-war society and capitalized on them. 

Adam Lenton on how Russification continues to erode the rich linguistic landscape of the North Caucasus, while private citizens are stepping in with innovative solutions such as Avzag, a multi-language dictionary of Caucasian languages.

This article argues that interpreting Russia’s conservatism exclusively as a top-down phenomenon has obscured the possibility that there might exist a grassroots conservatism founded on very different bases than the state narrative, with different nuances, and which predates the state’s embrace of conservatism.

On the divergence between the Russian Orthodox Church’s backing state decisions about lockdowns and vaccination campaigns and the many reactionary groups and fundamentalist monks who have taken the lead on producing conspiracy theories.

Labor migrations from the North Caucasus as well as from Central Asia to Russia’s main metropoles, a dynamic Islamic Runet debating about Islam in Russian, and the marriage of convenience between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Muftiates contribute to an alignment of interests between the Russian regime and its Muslim constituencies.

Exploring developments in center-region relations between the Russian federal government and the Republic of Tatarstan, this article argues that instrumentalist accounts are unable to satisfactorily explain several key moments in Tatarstan’s relations with the federal center, whereas ideational explanations can help explain and interpret regional leaders’ actions.

This article studies the work of the Moscow-based Syrian academic scholar Taufik Ibragim. In his opposition to the dominant political “traditionalism” in Russia’s Islamic landscape, Ibragim links back to the heritage of the Tatar Muslim educational and religious reformers (Jadids) of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and advocates a reform of Islam to adapt it to the conditions of modern Russia.

This article deals with the Russian emigrants who welcomed the taking of power by the National Socialists and their motivations for collaboration.

The goal of this contribution is to propose a rough sketch of a methodological framework applied to OSINT practices for the study of conflicts and power rivalries. The war in Ukraine shows us that a more systematic approach of OSINT methods is a necessity for academic researchers dealing with empirical data from the field.

While the differences and overlaps between the two terms used to describe Russia’s national identity, rossiiskii and russkii, have been well studied, very little research has tried to quantify the balance between them and to identify the semantic space in which they are deployed. Our pioneering research quantifies the deployment of both terms in three datasets.

How the entangled histories of Soviet state ideology, Russian cosmism, and Eurasianism have become embedded into a localist nationalist ideology in Kalmykia.

How Putin’s February speeches have confirmed the construction of a narrative legitimizing the military intervention in Ukraine along three key ideological lines: a historical one, an ethnic one and a political one.

Labor migrations from the North Caucasus as well as from Central Asia to Russia’s main metropoles, a dynamic Islamic Runet debating about Islam in Russian, and the marriage of convenience between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Muftiates contribute to an alignment of interests between the Russian regime and its Muslim constituencies.

This article argues that to capture Russia’s influence abroad, one needs to look at entrepreneurs of influence such as Prigozhin and Malofeev and their digital activities. An analysis of the technical data documenting these entrepreneurs’ online activities outlines the inherent limits of Moscow’s endeavors.

With growing urban activism and huge territorial contrasts, Russia offers a good case study for testing the notion of “urban regime”. Murmansk, Norilsk, and Yakutsk each represents one form of urban regime, instrumental, organic, and symbolic.

“Polar Islam” describes the birth and structuring of Muslim communities in Russia’s Arctic cities, offering a fascinating regional case study of the development of Islam.

The life of Vasily Shulgin, the living embodiment of tsarist Russia and the White cause in the Soviet Union, passing on the memory of a bygone era to new generations of Russian nationalists.

An history of the White Russian émigré community’s contribution to the global anti-Communist struggle in France, based on declassified archives from the French police and intelligence services.

Alexei von Lampe (1885–1967) played a critical role in White Russian history as a link between the old White guard and the Nazi regime, as well as with the collaborationist Russian Liberation Army led by General Vlasov.

How the Russian far-right MMA gear and tournament brand White Rex has been able to model and cultivate professionalizing combat sport tournaments and reach out to Western far-right scenes.

On why illiberalism in Russia can best be understood as an entrepreneurial behavior by lower-tier elites signaling loyalty and usefulness to the regime center.

This contribution analyses the discursive strategies exercised by Russia’s state-appointed Islamic authorities such as Mufti Ravil’ Gainutdin, the head of a major Muslim Spiritual Directorate in Moscow. A multi-levelled analysis shows that the mufti’s lexical and rhetorical choices correspond to the discourse of the Russian Orthodox Church as a way to construct Islam as Russia’s ‘familiar’ and ‘traditional’ religion.

For Russian elites and for a large part of the population, illiberalism supplies an appealing framework for making sense of the world and structuring a rebellion against the liberal order. Illiberal views existed in Russian society before being coopted by the regime, and there exists lively schools of thought arguing that the country’s future can be secured only by embracing the illiberal project.

This article explores how the relationship between Russian state authorities, ideological entrepreneurs, and some societal actors such as the Orthodox Church is articulated along a continuum of permanent complementarity and competition in the production of ideologies.

The European far right has always had Russophile tendencies, but these were obscured during the Cold War, when rightist politics were most of all anti-Communist.