Russia: Strategic Culture & International Political Economy
The policy orientation of the Russian state can be seen as predominantly toward the raison d’etat, both from within the state apparatus and from a nationalist economic elite – with both heavily dependent upon the fossil fuel and general primary economic sectors of the economy. The heavy influence of fossil fuel and other extractive industry elites acts as a blockage upon the development of an energy transition, as well as other non-primary sector industry and export service sectors. The nationalistic orientation has been reinforced by Western actions, with sanctions even forcing a limited level of import substitution. Although having a massive geographical presence on the Eurasian continent, Russia is a relatively weak power with its strength drawing upon the military and energy inheritances from the Soviet Union.
As has historically been the case the geographically sprawling nation is seen as surrounded by possible aggressors and competitors. With the increasing alliance with China, these concerns are now predominantly focused on a West that is considered to have repeatedly through history (whatever Russia’s political economy) shown its unwillingness to accept Russia as an equal and independent partner. These concerns are exacerbated by the multi-century antipathy of Poland, the Baltic States, Finland and a Western Ukraine which competes as the historical home of the Rus’, and fought for independence during the Russian Civil War, fielded divisions for the Nazi army and fought a guerilla-war against the Soviet Union in the immediate aftermath of WW2. At the same time there are concerns about the radicalization of Russia’s Muslim population (approximately 10% of the population), which partially explains the support of Russia for those fighting Muslim terrorists in the Middle East and its actions with respect to Chechnya.
In response, the Russian state can be seen as taking an extremely limited and defensive stance when faced with events such as the war with Georgia, the Libyan regime change, Ukrainian coup (which endangered Russia’s Black Sea naval base and the Russian diaspora), and the attempted destabilization of its ally (and the site of its only foreign naval base) Syria. Russia is operating from a position of weakness, not one of strength. In this respect, the increasing alliance with China provides a lifeline (and a classic balancing coalition strategy) while also providing the risk of Russia becoming a subservient partner. Russia’s fostering of its relationships with other powers, such as India, can be seen as a way of protecting itself from such an outcome.
In 2003 Bobo Lo painted a picture of a generally Eurocentric Putin that was highly effective in balancing the different national coalitions to maintain stability and power, “He has come to dominate the political class through stealth and guile, in not dissimilar fashion to Stalin who in the 1920s was able to split his potential rivals by playing on their mutual suspicions, while initially at least, appearing inoffensive” (Lo 2003, p. 20) and created a stronger position for the state with respect to economic actors. This was written before the actions taken against the oligarch Khodorkovsky, and the alienation of Russia from the West. Even in 2003, Lo saw Putin as dominating the foreign policy agenda and controlling the state with the aid of a small coterie of trusted individuals, many of which he had worked with during his days in St. Petersburg. The actions against Khodorkovsky and other oligarchs did rebalance state-oligarch relations in favour of the state, this authoritarian state and its leader must still balance the interests of a Russian capitalist oligarchical class heavily focused on resource extraction and rent seeking (approximately one hundred US$ billionaires), the siloviki (nationalist state security forces, of which Putin himself was a member) and Putin’s own circle largely populated with trusted colleagues from his days in St. Petersburg; Putin is certainly not a new “Tsar” as some in the West have described him (Myers 2015). Together with a state budget that is approximately the same as the US equivalent in terms of GDP, a government focused on balanced budgets, a significantly neoliberal economy, and extreme inequalities in wealth and income, Russia can be seen to significantly resemble the US. The problem with Russia is not its ideology - with Communism going the way of the Soviet Union, nor its general workings, but that its elite and strategic culture is nationalistic and resists subjugation and exploitation by the US and the West in general.
With the de-legitimization of communism from the time of Gorbachev onwards (e.g. see Remnick 1993), and an aversion to ideology in general, Putin’s legitimacy rests upon his ability to maintain stability after the chaos of the previous years and improve the standing of the Russian people and Russia as a whole. The rapid growth during the recovery of the economy from the collapse period, together with positive domestic policies and the reinstatement of Russian “pride” after the humiliations of the 1990s, did provide the Putin administration with a high degree of legitimacy. By effectively balancing the different coalitions Putin maintains stability and power but is limited in his ability to push bold new policy positions that may threaten a given constituency; the gutting of his proposed climate change legislation being a good example of this. Putin may have somewhat lessened the Medici vicious circle where economic and political power reinforce each other (Zingales 2017) but it is still very much an inertial factor within present-day Russia.
The balancing act carried out by Putin tends toward inertia, especially in domestic economic policy as moves to reverse the deindustrialization of the 1990s and foster new green technologies are stymied by the interests of the fossil fuel, and other extractive elites whose dominance would be threatened by a rebalancing of the economy and a move away from fossil fuels. Limited reindustrialization has been mostly carried out with the oversight of the security services overseen by the siloviki, and a military industrial complex that maintained much of its capabilities during the 1990s through exports – as evidenced by the recent additions of advanced weapons to Russia’s arsenal and the nation’s position as second in weapons exports only to the US. Outside the MIC, and unlike the Chinese state-directed focus on the continual upgrading of the economy and its technological base, there is no concerted focus and effort from the Russian state to remedy the severe shortcomings in the advanced manufacturing and green technology sectors:
There are still no clear political or economic decisions for addressing further development of domestic production or for scientific and technical development of the country. The contemporary leadership and its economic advisers generally reject import substitution, the state industrial policy, and seek maximum economic openness … Russia is becoming less able to generate innovation a la Schumpeter, or even to maintain the high technology inherited from the Soviet Union … International monitoring of scientific research (for example, the Thomson Scientific survey) shows a consistent and sufficiently rapid drop in our country’s role in the scientific world, especially in the natural sciences and engineering. (Sherstnev 2014, p. 83).
With his long tenure and extensive previous security service experience, Putin can be seen as having the same orientation as the Chinese leaders, focused on the raison d’etat – but without the institutional power of a CCP behind him and having to carefully accommodate diverse interest groups and oligarchic private interests. Given this, and the weak geopolitical position of Russia, the long-time horizon and extreme care exhibited by his administration’s foreign policy is understandable. As with the Soviet Union, Western official discourse has tended to create the mirage of strength from weakness with respect to both Russia and Putin. A gifted player with a weak hand is still a player with a weak hand.
The inability of Putin to institutionalize his power and remove coalitions that given the chance would partially or substantially remove what he sees as his achievements, can be seen in his need to remain in power. The retirement of a US President, or even of Xi Jinping may create significant policy changes but would not fundamentally change the ideological bases upon which policy is based (e.g. “liberal capitalism” and “socialist market economy”); that is not the case with Putin. The maintenance of the domestic political economic balancing act is heavily dependent upon Putin as an individual, and therefore a change in leader would create the possibility of significant domestic instability. The recent Russian constitutional amendments made it possible for him to rule until 2036 (if twice re-elected), increased his control of the state (e.g. in being able to remove judges), made international law subservient to national law, and placed residency and citizenship limitations upon state office holders. These point to a determination to embed the new political economy and foreign policy orientation of Russia. The residency and citizenship requirements follow on from the previous changes designed to severely limit and control the operation of foreign NGOs within the country.
With the inability to overcome economic stagnation, and as the memories of the 1990s fade into history, a more diverse basis for state legitimacy may be required. In recent years there has been an increased celebration of Russian culture, utilizing both the Russian Orthodox Church and pre-communist history. Putin’s more recent conceptualization of Russia as an anti-liberal conservative bulwark against an antagonistic liberal West does fall upon fruitful ground given both historical and recent events and serves to delegitimize the pro-Western and liberal elements that still exist within the elite. As Laruelle (2016, p. 278) notes, “Since at least the eighteenth century, Russian intellectuals and official circles have used a civilizational grammar to define Russia’s identity and place in the world” using non-binary constructs; “a European country that follows the Western path of development … a European country that follows a non-Western path of development … a non-European country”. Putin’s reconceptualization falls within this civilizational, as against nationalist, grammar – seeing Russia as fitting within the second option, in contrast to the Yeltsin years that heavily tilted toward the first option (and which is still supported by the liberal opposition). Putin’s language lacks the xenophobia of a nationalistic tilt, especially with his view of an integrated Eurasia with a free flow of goods and people.
The current dynamic of the international system, places Russia as a secondary power with significant military capabilities (including a nuclear arsenal only second to that of the US) inherited from its previous existence as part of the Soviet Union while being much weaker than the combined Soviet bloc. In its European sphere it is faced with a NATO and a European Union that are at odds with significant aspects of its national interests, and generally with a US which seems to see Russia’s subjugation, including possible regime change, as the only acceptable geopolitical outcome; evidenced by “the failure of the Euro-Atlantic community to create a security system that acknowledges Russia’s interests” (Milosevich 2021). In response, Russia has increased the closeness of its alliance with China in the past few years, and become more assertive in protecting its national interests – shown with the annexation of Crimea in response to the Ukrainian coup and its actions in Syria to forestall regime change in the nation hosting its only Mediterranean naval base. The Russian economy and the state are heavily dependent upon the export of fossil fuels, something that was not politicized during the Cold War, but which has now been weaponized by the US; with both sanctions designed to restrict the development of the fossil fuel sector and pressure brought to restrict new fossil fuel pipelines to Europe.
Although the above does provide a relatively nuanced view of the present, and provides some insights into future state policy making, it does not provide a vision of the historical processes that created the current Russia, nor their possible impact going forward. It also takes the present as a given, without problematizing its elements; how and why the present came into being may have significant exculpatory value with respect to how the future may progress. Since the Middle Ages, Russia has been treated as the eastern Other by Europe, reflecting both memories of the Mongol hordes and the result of the Great Schism. It has also had centuries long conflicts with its neighbouring nations, such as Poland, the Ukraine and the Baltic nations of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia that colour the present after being subsumed during the period of the Soviet Union. With Russia becoming a great power after the defeat of Napoleon, Britain also turned from an ally into an enemy that demonized it as a despotic threat to civilized Europe. Consisting of a huge landmass that sits between Europe and Asia, Russia has occupied an indeterminate position that is neither European nor Asian. Peter the Great pointed Russia toward Europe, and its elite remained Westernized (including conversing in French rather than Russian) until the fall of the monarchy in 1917 – even while being treated as the Oriental Other by the West. This Othering was extended during the time of the Soviet Union and then the Soviet bloc and has returned with the renewed nationalism of Putin.
Gorbachev and Yeltsin both strived for acceptance within the West, and the latter was heavily dependent upon Western support and technical advice. The West did not provide the financial aid required to blunt the effects of the Russian shock therapy of the 1990s, contributing to the 50% collapse and extensive deindustrialization of the economy. In parallel, the West extended NATO and the EU toward Russia’s borders, abrogating the commitments made to Gorbachev when the unification of Germany was being discussed. At first, Putin followed an orientation toward the West and offered important support to US efforts in Afghanistan after 9/11, but this slowly changed from 2003 onwards with his actions against the oligarchs that rebalanced power between the state and the capitalist class. These actions may have forestalled the sale of a significant share of Russia’s fossil fuel assets to US interests. The response to Putin’s actions from the West was rapid with Putin being denigrated as an autocratic devil incarnate when earlier he had been seen as a friend (or assumed subordinate) of the West. In 2003, there was also a wave of NATO enlargement with the inclusion of the Baltic States (Poland had become a NATO member in 1999 and joined the EU in 2004) and Western support for colour revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine. Since this period, Russia has progressively moved toward the East as the West has taken increasingly aggressive steps such as the support for the Georgian invasion, the 2014 coup in Ukraine, sanctions and other US actions to stop the Nordstream 2 pipeline. The unwillingness of the West to treat Russia as anything other than a supplicant, together with the escalating propaganda against Putin and Russia, has led to some rebalancing of forces within the Russian strategic culture. Putin has both reduced the possibility of Western interference in Russian domestic affairs, with limitations on foreign NGO’s and state functionaries with foreign passports or residency, taken an increasingly oppositional stance to the West, and moved to facilitate the continuation of his own rule.
The strategic culture, as well as that of the general population, is heavily affected by the lack of any bourgeois or democratic revolution in Tsarist Russia or the USSR. The state has always been an authoritarian one, notwithstanding the brief glimpses of democracy after the 1905 revolution (1905-1917, undermined by the absolutist-minded Tsar Nicholas) and after the collapse of the Soviet Union (from 1991 to 1993 when President Yeltsin ordered the storming of the parliament building). The lived experience of many Russians of the chaotic move to a deeply corrupt and rentier capitalism in the 1990s, combined with economic collapse and widespread deindustrialization, may have darkly clouded their view of liberal capitalist democracy. This is reflected in the very low approval ratings among the populace for multi-party systems and the market economy (Pew Research 2019).
From the 1980s onwards the authoritarian state carried out a revolution from above, accelerating the move to a corrupted form of capitalism based upon primitive accumulation by those with power and connections, rent extraction, and financial speculation; including the dissolution of the Soviet Union against the wishes of the population expressed in a 1991 referendum on the subject. The nature of this move may have been significantly affected by the death of so many of the nation’s best leaders and thinkers under Stalin, leaving only relative mediocrities that as a group stayed in office overseeing a fossilized bureaucracy until they died (with the exception of Khrushchev). This produced a corrupted and mediocre state with self-interested elite nomenklatura factions and fiefdoms that had been built up and reinforced over decades; covering up much of its failing with fossil fuel foreign currency revenues that also facilitated large-scale embezzlement and misuse. Russia today somewhat resembles a weaker version of its Soviet predecessor, still very much dependent upon fossil fuel revenues to hide the weakness of the economy, with an autocratic state and powerful security forces, and many of the same nomenklatura in both the siloviki and as part of the new capitalist class. Although GDP per capita in 2018 was approximately 90% higher than at the high point of the Soviet Union (a level equalled only in 2003 after the economic collapse of the 1990s), it has stagnated in the past decade (Jutta & van Zanden 2020), mirroring the oil price to a large degree. With levels of income and wealth inequality much greater in the present than during Soviet times. the welfare of the majority of Russians may not be that much better than at the height of the USSR. This is very different to the experience of the average Chinese citizen, who has seen their standard of living grow enormously in the past three decades and looks forward to more gains. With memories of the recovery of the first decade of this century receding, the Russian state is at the risk of reduced legitimacy if it fails to reignite the growth in living standards.
Putin himself has stated that he sees the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and what followed as a tragedy, to be added to the deprivations of the two world wars, the post-revolutionary civil war, the invasion by Napoleon, the Crimean War, the Time of Troubles, and the Mongol invasion; a sentiment that we can assume is shared by the siloviki. This positions the centralized autocratic state as a protector of stability and sovereignty; reinforced by the ability of Putin to reverse some of the chaos and destruction of the 1990s with the help of rising oil prices (although as noted above this basis of legitimacy may be declining). Russia can be seen to have been in conflict with the West for more than two centuries and with Poland and the Baltic states since the seventeenth century, making the sprawling nation’s concerns about being surrounded with possible enemies not a case of paranoia but a rational position based upon both historical and more recent events.
The heterogeneous Russian elite have few connections with Western elites; especially in the case of the siloviki and St. Petersburg groups. The separation of the capitalist class from the West has been increased through Putin’s actions against specific oligarchs (e.g. Khodorkovsky, Gusinsky and Berezovsky), his close relationship with others (e.g. Deripaska) and the more recent Western sanctions – although some may be open to comprador status if it were a profitable bargain. This capitalist class is not fully autonomous, being balanced by Putin and his inner circle and a siloviki that has not been heavily coopted by the capitalist class nor developed relationship networks with Western security complexes. Together with the ongoing high levels of popularity of Putin, such an elite makes it extremely hard for the US and the West to co-opt a significant group with which to undermine Russia from within; while underlining the importance of Putin with respect to Russian foreign policy. The strict controls over foreign NGOs and the monitoring of US and other Western diplomats also reduces the possibility of any such co-option. Some Western analyses have seen the siloviki as dominating an aggressive militarized state, but this seems to be greatly overstretching reality as the siloviki itself is not monolithic and “the correct inference to draw from extant data is that perhaps Russia’s top political leadership came to be dominated by siloviki during the Putin presidency but its elite as a whole definitely did not” (Rivera & Rivera 2018).
The deepening alliance with China offers Putin some ability to overcome the inertia inherent in his domestic balancing act, as the Russian MIC benefits from increasing sales to China (at least in the short and medium term) and Chinese capital could be used to develop non-fossil fuel sectors of the Russian economy; strengthening the none resource-extractive elite sectors. In parallel though, the increasing Chinese needs for fossil fuel imports and energy security does lend support to the fossil fuel sector. The importance of fossil fuel revenues for both the Russian elite and state is a central long-term challenge to Russia given the probability of a low carbon energy transition that Russia will tend to forestall for as long as is possible.
Without the capabilities and elite orientation to develop manufacturing output and services to replace fossil fuel revenues, and with little if any capability in the green technology sector, Russia is unable to escape the staples trap when its main staples may become increasingly in less demand. It has an even greater dependence upon fossil fuel rents than the USSR, and much of its manufacturing sector was lost in the depression of the 1990s. Any further falls in global oil prices and/or export volumes will inevitably lead to domestic economic retrenchment. Hence, Russia is at great risk of longer-term decline as nations replace fossil fuels with alternatives, especially the electrification of transport that will displace oil demand. The resulting policy may be to sell as much of its fossil fuels “while it can” and continued obstructionism in international climate change negotiations in an attempt to extend the period that its fossil fuels will be in demand through a retardation of any global actions to decarbonize.
In this respect, Russia fulfills Nyman’s (2018) thesis of a fossil-fuelled increase in short-term security leading to a longer-term decrease in security, but in a novel geo-economic form. With Russia being the largest Arctic nation, and Arctic Amplification driving climate change in that region at multiples of the global pace, Russia may also fulfill Nyman’s main thesis at a quicker pace than others. That much of Russia’s fossil fuel infrastructure sits upon permafrost may only add irony to that thesis.
The increasing levels of interaction between the elites of the Chinese developmental state and Russian elites may help reorient the latter, although Russian elites may also be careful to not become subordinated to their Chinese counterparts and there is a lack of the shared language (as us the case of the UK and British settler colonies) and cultural affinities that benefit the linkages between US, European and settler colony elites. Notwithstanding such concerns, Chinese political-economic learnings and Chinese capital may be the only viable option that could aid Russia in escaping an inevitable decline.
Update with respect to the Russo-Ukraine War
The seizure of Russian oligarch assets by the West, and sanctions against specific oligarchs, has meant that those oligarchs are much more dependent upon the Russian state for asset security – tipping the balance of power more in favour of the Russian state. The ongoing war has also increased the position of the soloviki and its MIC. The extremely derogatory treatment of Russian citizens and Russian culture in the West, such as banning Russian players from Wimbledon and cancelling concerts including Russian works, has hardened the attitudes of many toward the West. In addition, this hardening has led to a significant number of liberal leaning citizens to leave the country and allowed the state to close/reorient liberal media and non-governmental organizations. In effect, the Western actions have tended to increase Putin’s political legitimacy and reduce the remaining liberal elements within the country while producing a predictable patriotic “rally around the flag” response to the war with Ukraine.
The effect of Western sanctions has also been to lend support to the reorientation of Russia to the East, even in the area of Chess where the Russian Chess Federation has left the European federation after its players were discriminated against and joined the Asian federation; with the Russian footballers considering doing the same (AFP 2023). Such things as the closing of Western air space to Russian aircraft, together with the removal of access to Western credit cards (e.g. Mastercard), will only serve to alienate the general population of Russia from the West as they travel to friendly nations. The refusal of the world outside the West to sanction Russia, and many of those nations support for a more balanced view of the conflict (i.e. not only blaming Russia for the conflict) also reminds the Russian leadership and the population in general who their friends are.
With the ability to trade with the rest of the world and aided by the measures taken in past years to make Russia more sanctions proof, the Russian economy only shrank 2% in 2022. The exit of Western companies from Russia, and refusals to service equipment (e.g. European made aircraft) has served to both deepen trade relations with non-Western nations and provided opportunities for some reindustrialization. With Western pressure increasing on both Russia and Iran, the Ukrainian conflict has also produced a deepening relationship between the two. The supportive position of China can also only have improved the already close alliance between Russia and China.
Instead of forcing the collapse of the Russian economy, Western actions have served to reinforce Putin’s and the Russian state’s domestic power and legitimacy while deepening its ties with China and Iran and improving Russia’s image outside the West. If Russia was to prevail in Ukraine, which looks increasingly likely, its defeat of the combined West will serve to burnish its image among many of the nations outside the West.