Putinism as the governance of emergency

After the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the military support of eastern Ukrainian rebels, Russia has risen to the top of the international political agenda. Today some experts compare Vladimir Putin’s regime with the totalitarian expansionist power of Josef Stalin or Adolf Hitler. There are a lot of definitions of the Putin’s system: “crony capitalism,” "kleptokracy," “competitive authoritarianism,” “managed pluralism,” “sovereign democracy,” “neo-feudalism,” “neo-paternalism,” etc. All of these concepts could be subsumed by the term “Putinism,” which explains the existing hybrid political system that simultaneously combines authoritarianism with democracy, oligarchy with capitalism and imperial ambitions with nation-state building. When Putin came to power in 2000, he was perceived as an “effective manager” who brought ideas of “stability” (stabilnost) and statehood to Russia. Under the discourse of stability, the social consensus about Putin’s legitimacy was established among those who experienced a loss in their living standards after the 1990s -- employees of the state bureaucracy, the regional bureaucracy, some of the intelligentsia, doctors, teachers and pensioners. This constituency formed Putin’s majority.

Over time, however, it became evident that Putin’s “stability” was not founded on the ideas of modernization and democratization, but instead on political stagnation and the exclusion of society from politics. The purpose of Putinism is the conservation of the redistributive system of power and resources through informal and illegal practices, including nepotism (kumavstvo), kickback (otkat), circle of joint responsibility (krugovaya poruka), people in one’s circle (svoi lyudi), “authorized” corporate attacks (raids) and the abuse of administrative power (administrativnyi resurs). In order to maintain and protect itself, the system employs mass media propaganda (conspirology and political technologies), manipulation of electoral processes, control over civil society and opposition, one-party system, vertical of power and loyalty and state corporations. Thereby, Putinism legitimizes “transition without transformation” and “revolution from above” through the restoration, return to the status quo and revanchism. But it is not the restoration of the Soviet governance, but rather the creation of a “vertical of power,” as a telephone or manual governance transferring signals from the Kremlin to the regions.

This new type of nomenklatura does not have the strong internal controls that existed in the Soviet time while being overseen by the KGB and the Communist Party. Putin’s United Russia has nothing in common with the Soviet Communist Party and just imitates the function of a ruling party but has never played a significant role in the regional economy. The purpose of this system is to allow the elites, Putin’s inner circle (so-called siloviki), to transform their power into property and the right to expropriate property from disloyal and untrusted people. Such type of governance can exist only under the idea of an endless period of transition -- stability as never-ending overcoming of crisis -- in which Russia is always a “young democracy and new market economy”. A Russia in which more advanced levels of development will happen in the indefinite future, but for now people are recommended to “tighten their belts.”

In other words, Putinism protects and manages the anomie, or lawlessness (bezzakonie), and limitlessness (bespredel) of the 1990s; essentially what German political philosopher Karl Schmitt called “the state of emergency.” It is not a coincidence that the popular Russian ideologue Alexander Dugin applies Schmitt’s political ideas for his theory of Eurasianism. In particular, Dugin uses Schmitt’s bipolar interpretation of the world: the land power (Russia as continental state) versus the sea power (the United States). He also refers to Schmitt’s friend-enemy distinction, according to which there are two types of enemies: the enemy within one’s own imaginary territory (in Russia’s case it is the non-systemic opposition -- the so-called “fifth column” or “foreign agents”) and the absolute enemy in the distant, or the hostile outsiders (the United Sates or NATO). Under the state of emergency, Putinism neglects any idea of revolutions -- either the 1990s as the revolutionary time of independent Russia, or color revolutions in the post-Soviet space or the Arab Spring. From this perspective, Putin interprets the revolutionary crisis in Ukraine as an anti-constitutional coup d’état organized by nationalists, neo-Nazis, Russophobes and anti-Semites. According to this logic, Russia represents a protector of Eurasia or Russkiy Mir (Russian World) from the possible revolutions and chaos.

Instead of creating new institutions and reforming an autocratic political system, Putinism builds what Michel Foucault names “govementality,” the political practices based on control and discipline techniques, rather than on the development of modern institutions. In this sense, Putinism could also be historically compared with Napoleon III's Bonapartism, German Weimar Republic and Benito Mussolini’s and Silvio Berlusconi’s premierships. Putinism, along with oil and gas, is exporting from Russia a new type of far-right political model. For instance, Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, France’s Marine Le Pen, the Netherlands' Geert Wilders and even Britain’s Nigel Farage are openly admiring Putin’s politics including his annexation of Crimea and war in Eastern Ukraine. Putinism, along with other critical topics, will be further explored at the Tufts EPIIC Symposium, which will run from Feb. 25 to March 1.