Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Kathryn Stoner
Journal of Democracy, Volume 34, Number 2, April 2023, pp. 5-18 (Article)
If Ukraine has become the beachhead for global democracy, then Rus-
sia is the vanguard of modern autocracy. During Vladimir Putin’s 23
years in power, Russia’s system of government has devolved from open,
even fractious politics under his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin (1991–99),
to a highly repressive, personalistic autocracy that threatens not just its
immediate neighbors but increasingly its own citizens. Russia’s war on
Ukraine should, of course, be understood first and foremost as an assault
on Ukrainians. But it has also decisively ended the liberalization of poli-
tics within Russia itself—a process that began under Mikhail Gorbachev
(1985–91) before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The authori-
tarianism that at first developed gradually under Putin and deepened
over time has intensified dramatically since Russia invaded Ukraine on
24 February 2022. The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) reports that
Russia suffered “the biggest democratic decline of any country in the
world” in 2022, tumbling 22 places to the rank of 146th (just ahead of
Venezuela) out of 167 countries on the EIU’s Global Democracy Index.1
What led to the deepening of authoritarianism in Russia, and why has
the war in Ukraine dramatically accelerated this trajectory?
Until recently, modern autocracies such as Putin’s Russia, Viktor Or-
bán’s Hungary, or Xi Jinping’s China were thought to exercise control
over their people at least in part by manipulating their beliefs and per-
ceptions about the world: “In place of harsh repressions, the new dicta-
tors manipulate information. Like spin doctors in a democracy, they spin
the news to engineer support.”2 For a long period in Russia, this practice
relieved Putin’s regime from over-reliance on state-sponsored repres-
sion (which can be messy, expensive, and less effective) to instill fear
and promote passivity in the population.
The assumption here is that the actual quality of autocratic gover-
nance is less important in maintaining the regime than is the manipula-
tion of society’s perceptions of its quality. If the regime can use its con-
trol over information to maintain the myth of authoritarian competence
(and until about 2008, Putin’s government could back it up with actual
increases in Gross Domestic Product [GDP], real incomes, and living
standards) and manufacture popular support or at least passivity, then
there should be no need to beat its citizens into submission. But the Rus-
sian case under Putin shows that persuasion and censorship only go so
far when the myth of authoritarian competence runs into the reality of
declining competence. Ultimately, an autocrat resorts to re-mixing the
balance of spin and fear, in favor of fear, to survive.
Since 2012, as the quality of governance in Russia has declined, the
regime has gradually (but steadily) been relying less on persuasion and
more on generating fear in its population—a trend that has accelerated
in the face of Russian military failures in the last year in Ukraine. Be-
cause it is imperative that the Russian people not discover how badly
the campaign is going, the Kremlin now requires full censorship of the
news. Should word of Russian losses in Ukraine spread and stir popular
anger, however, the regime has introduced draconian penalties to deter
people from doing anything about it. Activities that were legal a year
ago are today punishable with steep fines, jail time, or worse.
2012 against Putin’s return to the presidency. And it has been the middle
class that has returned to the streets time and again to speak out against
corruption, the removal of elected public officials without due process,
and policy changes such as a proposed increase in the pension age and
reductions in social benefits.
Indeed, it was still possible to protest in fairly high numbers as re-
cently as January 2021, when tens of thousands of Russians demon-
strated against Navalny’s imprisonment, and even later in late February
and early March 2022 when people poured into the streets to denounce
the invasion of Ukraine. In response, Putin ramped up repression against
both elite and social opposition rather than retreating or softening his
policies—contrary to the expectations of some analysts that he would be
constrained from attempting radical policy changes (such as a full-scale
invasion of Ukraine), perhaps indicating that Putin is not such a “weak”
strongman after all.6
Another common explanation offered by political scientists is Rus-
sia’s reliance on its oil-fueled economy. Indeed Russia’s abundant natu-
ral resources increased in value dramatically in the early-to-mid 2000s,
and the country’s economy grew rapidly. Yet we cannot blame deepen-
ing autocratization under Putin on the resource curse.7 While Russia’s
economic bottom line clearly benefited from oil and gas booms, the eco-
nomic windfall from the sale of these natural-resource endowments did
not (on its own at least) curse its political trajectory. Avoiding some of
the traditional pathologies of the resource curse (high debt relative to
GDP, for example), Russia’s oil and gas revenues were directed into a
national wealth fund to smooth the inevitable boom-and-bust cycle of
oil and gas prices on international markets. Similarly, because Russia
inherited a real manufacturing base from the Soviet period—one that
was privatized, largely reformed, and even profitable in many sectors—
the country avoided a bad case of “Dutch disease” (when growth in
natural resources causes decline in other sectors).
Although Russia did not produce high-quality consumer goods, it did
make things such as high-tech weapons, heavy industrial machinery,
and aluminum, for example. The country also did not suffer from mas-
sive unemployment and had a reformed and productive agricultural sec-
tor (in contrast to Soviet-era agriculture). By 2017, Russia had become
the world’s leading wheat exporter and a leading producer of fertiliz-
er—crucial to global agricultural output. Even under harsh sanctions in
2014, high levels of grand corruption, and robust crony capitalism, the
Russian economy continued to limp forward, although never matching
the high growth rates of 2003 to 2008, despite rising oil prices. But even
if Russia escaped the resource curse, political development requires
more than just economic growth and an educated and mobilized society.
Although those variables can certainly help, they are unfortunately no
guarantee of political liberalization or a transition to democracy.
Kathryn Stoner 9
gue that Russia’s descent into autocracy was inevitable under a leader
with a professional pedigree in Cold War espionage.9 This perspective
overlooks Putin’s early years as president, however. He did not always
identify the liberal West as the enemy or use it to justify repression at
home. Indeed, Putin was among the first international leaders to call
then–U.S. president George W. Bush on 9/11 and express his condo-
lences.10 Putin also pledged to work with the United States on global
terrorism. And there were periods of close cooperation between Russia,
the United States, and the European Union throughout the 2000s. Later,
under Dmitri Medvedev’s presidency, while Putin was serving as prime
minister and therefore aware and presumably approving of the policy,
Russia allowed the United States to get troops and supplies into Af-
ghanistan through Russian territory via the Northern Distribution Net-
work. In addition, Russia and the United States signed the New START
nuclear-arms–control agreement in 2010 (and extended it in 2021), and
Germany, Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom signed the
Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on Iran’s nuclear program in 2015.
This is far from an exhaustive list of areas in which the United States
and Russia had been collaborating up through the early years of Pu-
tin’s third presidential term. It is, however, sufficient to demonstrate
that Putin’s approach to the West was not always adversarial and that he
evidently did not always believe—despite his KGB background—that
liberal democracy and cooperation with the West was bad for Russia.
Again, the descent into highly repressive, illiberal, and anti-Western
autocracy was not immediate or linear—it happened in stages and then
rapidly accelerated in 2021, plunging off a precipice in 2022 after the
invasion of Ukraine.
nism and were never prohibited from traveling anywhere at any time—is
now essentially imprisoned behind a glass wall, looking out at a world
where they no longer are welcome. A lucky few (perhaps as many as
one million) have fled to Georgia, Kazakhstan, Turkey, and elsewhere
to avoid being sent to prison for dissent or avoiding forced conscription
into a corrupt Russian military, where poor training and insufficient sup-
plies await.
With his former myth of competence so seriously undermined, Putin
has now had to resort to an increased use of fear and force to ensure
the compliance of Russian society. The country’s new ideology, now
enshrined into Russian law, is “traditional values.” This seems to mean
illiberalism and repression of anyone who might disagree.24 Should that
fail to keep the Russian masses in line, then rough justice awaits. In the
last twelve months, the Russian government has imposed severe penal-
ties for protests as benign as holding up a blank poster on a street in
Moscow or Smolensk. Those who dare to articulate any sort of opposi-
tion to the “special military operation” in Ukraine (it is still forbidden
to call it a war) risk losing their jobs, getting expelled from school or
university, and steep fines. Leading members of Russia’s already mar-
ginalized liberal opposition, including Vladimir Kara-Murza and Ilya
Yashin, have already been sentenced to almost a decade in prison camps
for openly opposing the war on social media. In July 2022, Moscow
city councilor Alexei Gronov was sentenced to seven years in prison
for merely criticizing the invasion. In January 2023, the Duma passed
more, even harsher laws limiting dissent and opposition.25 These are not
signs of a strong and capable autocracy confident that it can convince its
people with “spin” alone that everything is fine.
only 54 percent shared that opinion, while 32 percent (the highest pro-
portion published) believed that Russia’s military was rather or very
unsuccessful in Ukraine, and 16 percent were unsure (“can’t say”).27
Moreover, the share of survey respondents who favor negotiations with
Ukraine dwarfs that of those who favor continued military action (53
percent versus 31 percent in November 2022). Other indicators of popu-
lar sentiment, such as people’s general mood, have shifted dramatically
in the last twelve months. In September 2022, the Levada Center re-
ported that the share of people professing positive feelings was only
slightly higher than those claiming negative feelings (52 percent versus
47 percent)—the lowest since 2000.28 Together, these are all signs of
general discontent with how things are going. These changes in attitudes
may provide a better sense of the reliability or depth of regime support
should things in Ukraine get worse for Russia, and the likely regime
response will be to tighten the screws on dissent even further.
The Russian example demonstrates the importance of identifying
and analyzing changes in the quality of autocracies. It calls for a better
understanding of why autocracies become more reliant on violent re-
pression than on spinning an informational narrative of legitimacy and
competence. During Putin’s long tenure, poor governance has become
pervasive, and the Russian autocracy has deepened. Now, Russia’s flail-
ing effort to take over Ukraine, which Putin has described as an “imagi-
nary country,” is laying bare the myth of autocratic competence. In its
absence, the regime has grown more desperate and repressive.
NOTES
1. “The World’s Most, and Least, Democratic Countries in 2022,” 1 February 2023,
www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2023/02/01/the-worlds-most-and-least-democratic-
countries-in-2022.
2. Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman, Spin Dictators: The Changing Face of Tyranny
in the 21st Century (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2022), 4.
4. Gorbachev himself publicly appealed to the Office of the Russian Prosecutor Gener-
al to withdraw the lawsuit that would liquidate Memorial on 18 November 2021, see www.
gorby.ru/presscenter/news/show_30300. Memorial shared the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize for
its work on documenting human-rights abuses in the Soviet and post-Soviet periods. Gor-
bachev himself was awarded the prize in 1990.
Kathryn Stoner 17
5. Barbara Geddes, Joseph Wright, and Erica Frantz, “Autocratic Breakdown and Re-
gime Transitions: A New Data Set,” Perspectives on Politics 12 (June 2014): 313–31.
6. Timothy Frye, Weak Strongman: The Limits of Power in Putin’s Russia (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2021).
7. See Thane Gustafson, Wheel of Fortune: The Battle for Oil and Power in Russia
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012).
9. See, for example, Catherine Belton, Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Rus-
sia and Then Took On the West (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux 2020).
10. Angela Stent, Putin’s World: Russia Against the West and with the Rest (New
York: Twelve, 2019).
11. Adam Przeworski, Democracy and the Market: Political and Economic Reforms in
Eastern Europe and Latin America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 86.
12. Aleksandar Matovski, Popular Dictatorships: Crises, Mass Opinion and the Rise
of Electoral Authoritarianism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2021).
13. See David Lipton and Jeffrey D. Sachs, “Russia’s Prospects for Economic Re-
forms,” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, No. 2 (1992), 220; and Anders Åslund,
Russia’s Capitalist Revolution: Why Market Reform Succeeded and Democracy Failed
(Washington, D.C.: Peterson Institute for International Economics, 2007), 91.
18. Gulnaz Sharafutdinova, “The Pussy Riot Affair and Putin’s Démarche from Sov-
ereign Democracy to Sovereign Morality,” Nationalities Papers 42 (July 2014): 615–21.
19. Greene and Robertson, Putin v. The People, 35. See also Regina Smyth and Irina
Soboleva, “Looking Beyond the Economy: Pussy Riot and the Kremlin’s Voting Coali-
tion,” Post-Soviet Affairs 30, no. 4 (2014): 257–75.
20. Greene and Robertson, Putin v. The People, 37. See also Katie Riley, “Russia’s
Anti-Gay Law in Line with Public’s Views of Homosexuality,” Pew Research Center, 5
August 2013, www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/08/05/russias-anti-gay-laws-in-line-
with-publics-views-on-homosexuality; and Valerie Sperling, Sex, Politics and Putin: Po-
litical Legitimacy in Russia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).
21. “How Many Russians Have Been Killed in Ukraine?” Economist, 8 March 2023,
www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2023/03/08/how-many-russians-have-been-killed-in-
18 Journal of Democracy
ukraine. Note that the numbers cited by the Economist are from a report by Seth Jones,
Rile McCabe, and Alexander Palmer at the Center for Strategic and International Studies,
dated 27 February 2023: www.csis.org/analysis/ukrainian-innovation-war-attrition.
22. See “Russia’s January Budget Deficit Estimated at 1.76 Trillion Rubles, 60 Percent
of Plan—Finance Ministry,” Interfax, 6 February 2023, https://interfax.com/newsroom/
top-stories/87697/.
23. The Russian State Statistical Agency stopped publishing much of its trade data in
2022, but the Institute of International Finance, among others, have provided estimates
based on Russian Central Bank reports. This import statistic comes from “Macro Notes—
China Steps in to Supply Russia,” 1 February 2023. On the Russian car industry collapse,
see Association of European Businesses, press release, 6 February 2023, https://aebrus.ru/
upload/iblock/eec/ENG-Car-Sales-in-January-2023.pdf. For Russia’s monthly and histori-
cal inflation rates, see International Monetary Fund, www.imf.org/en/Countries/RUS.
25. “Russia: War’s Supersized Repression,” Human Rights Watch, 12 January 2023,
available at www.hrw.org/news/2023/01/12/russia-wars-supersized-repression.
26. See Levada Center data for December 2022, which indicate Putin’s approval rat-
ing was 81 percent: www.levada.ru/en/ratings; and on the conflict with Ukraine, see No-
vember 2022 data (most recent published at the time of this writing): www.levada.ru/
en/2022/12/12/conflict-with-ukraine-november-2022.
27. www.levada.ru/en/2022/12/12/conflict-with-ukraine-november-2022/.
28. www.levada.ru/en/2022/10/28/society-under-stress/.