Putin v. The People: The Perilous Politics of a Divided Russia by Samuel A. Greene (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 793 turnout in 2016 (p. 129), and the crackdown, and de-liberalization programme, launched by the Kremlin following the 2011–12 protests when discussing the 2016 election (p. 250). Readers’ reactions will likely be conditioned by whether they are more sympathetic to the ‘“electoral authoritarian” approach or the “comparative political science approach” to the study of elections noted by Hutcheson in the final paragraph of the book. At points, Hutcheson’s attempt to blend these two approaches is tricky. For example, he writes that ‘it can be contended that the primary reason that Putin and the presidential administration spent significant energy upon obtaining a pro-presidential majority in the State Duma, and modifying the selection processes for the Federation Council, has not been that of constructing an authoritarian regime, but rather to bring stability to the process of legislation and to their security of power’ (p. 46). But many will consider efforts to ‘bring stability’ to the incumbents’ ‘security of power’ to be precisely a key feature of an authoritarian regime. This book will be of interest to scholars of Russian politics, electoral politics, legislative politics and authoritarianism. By virtue of its breadth and depth, it will be a key resource in understanding an important dimension of the construction of the modern-day Russian political system by a scholar with unmatched knowledge of the intricacies of the Russian electoral system. UCL SSEES B. H. Noble Greene, Samuel A. and Robertson, Graeme B. Putin v. The People: The Perilous Politics of a Divided Russia. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT and London, 2019. vii + 287 pp. Dramatis personae. Notes. Index. £20.00. The narrative of Vladimir Putin as puppet master, as tsar, as evil supervillain has long been prevailing in Western academic and non-academic discourses on the Russian Federation. He is the ‘dictator with an iron first’ who rules ‘despite the masses, who, given the opportunity, would gladly kick them out of office’ (p. 2). Samuel A. Greene and Graeme B. Robertson’s publication, like Mark Galeotti’s recent We Need to Talk About Putin: Why the West Gets Him Wrong, and how to Get Him Right (London, 2019), marks a new turn in the literature on the region, one that challenges the Putin-centric focus in the study of Russian politics and writes the citizens into the narrative. This book is therefore revolutionary in its analysis of the power of autocracies: it chooses not to analyse it from the conventional top-down approach, but rather as a coconstructed phenomenon, investigating ‘the role of Russian society in building SEER, 97, 4, OCTOBER 2019 794 Putin’s power’ (p. 2). It thus depicts a power structure that is much more fragile and unstable than Putin and his ‘cronies’ would like the world to believe. Incorporating polling data, surveys, interviews and social media traffic, the book tracks the driving factors behind the politics of Putin’s third and fourth terms. At the start of his third term, support for Putin was wavering, and the weaponization of key issues, religion and sexuality, was essential in order to siphon off some of the opposition’s support and widen the divide between Putin and the opposition. Russian politician Leonid Volkov described the invasion of Crimea and annexation of Eastern Ukraine as the ‘magic bean’ (p. 88) that galvanized a limp political system, the moment at which the Kremlin managed to seize back the political agenda. Putin became the symbol around which the country united, and the population became more emotionally-invested in politics and its leader, the object of Russian ‘pride, hope and trust’ (p. 107). The euphoria over the invasion sparked a peak in approval ratings and the future looked brighter, in spite of economic sanctions. The Kremlin is acutely aware of its need for popularity amongst the Russian masses, frequently conducting surveys, polls and focus groups in order to ‘identify how to win and retain that support’ (p. 200), and Greene and Robertson’s book presents the Russian citizens as the everyday enforcers of the regime. Most, including Natalya and Maxim, partake in ordinary, daily interactions that support the administration, e.g. in schools, workplaces, churches. Only a minority of Russian citizens...