Reading Russia: The Rules of Survival

Abstract

In an attempt to explain the Russian Revolution to Lady Ottoline Morrell, British philosopher Bertrand Russell once remarked that Bolshevik despotism, appalling though it was, seemed the right sort of government for Russia. “If you ask yourself how Fyodor Dostoevsky’s characters should be governed, you will understand,” was his not-sosubtle point. In explaining the recent resurgence of authoritarianism in Russia, most political theorists have abstained from referring to Dostoevsky’s novels or Russia’s authoritarian political culture. They have a better explanation. It was not “soul,” it was “oil.” The “oil curse” has replaced the “soul curse” as the most popular explanation for Russia’s current state of affairs. High oil prices have been blamed for democracy’s failure and Vladimir Putin’s consolidation of authoritarian rule. The facts fit. During Putin’s time as president from 2000 to 2008, Russian oil and gas companies earned in excess of US$650 billion more from their exports than they had in the previous eight years under Yeltsin. The breakneck pace of economic growth gave Putin a free hand politically, and he used it without compunction to entrench the power of himself and his circle, unhindered by weak and shallowrooted democratic institutions. Thus Putin’s Russia was conceptualized as a classic “petrostate”— strong and weak at the same time, brutally confident yet potentially vulnerable, and hostile to democracy. This picture of Putin’s Russia as an authoritarian oil state attracts many Western analysts because it seems to carry a promise that falling oil prices will bring regime change. What Russian liberals prayed for was economic crisis and cheap oil. Putin’s regime, they reasoned, may remain unchallenged as long as it can hand out petrodollars and improve the material well-being of the people, but