Russian Regime Research Articles

Uwarunkowania i dotychczasowe skutki inwazji Rosji na Ukrainę – (nie)bezpieczeństwo ontologiczne, przetrwanie reżimu czy dewiacja ideologiczna?

The article explains the reasons for the Russian offensive against Ukraine in terms of national security and Putin’s regime’s fear of democratization. It also offers a reflection upon ideological foundations prevalent in the Russian society. Such an approach will facilitate the understanding of how, in light of the core values and characteristics of that society, Ukraine has been portrayed as both a threat for Russian identity and an existential threat for Russia itself. The Russian invasion of Ukraine was undoubtedly aimed at gaining support at home and strengthening Putin’s regime. However, war is also integral to Putin’s project of Russia. Putin’s imperial thrust is rooted in the internal dynamics of this system. The current Russian regime is not so much based on ideology as it is striving to turn its propaganda clichés into an ideological platform. On the other hand, the war is accelerating the process of change in Russia – the current situation could lead to the collapse of Putin’s regime and even the disintegration of the Russian Federation itself, which harkens back to the collapse of the USSR.

Создание особых экономических зон после моратория: причины, тенденции, закономерности

Improvement of the investment climate is one of the main priorities of the Russian tax policy, in which special economic zones (SEZ’s) play a significant role. The pace of their creation has increased significantly in recent years. The main idea, as always, is to attract investment. However, the more such zones appear, the more obvious becomes the gap in defining the strategic role of the SEZ regime, which has already been introduced in dozens of Russian regions, but still lacks a clear conceptualization. Moreover, the revival of interest in SEZ’s contrasts sharply with the recent moratorium on their creation. Such dramatic changes have underlying motives, the understanding of which is necessary to avoid a superficial view of investment attraction policies. Since they are currently of particular importance for ensuring macroeconomic stability, the purpose of the article is to identify the problems that may hinder the effective application of the SEZ regime in Russia. On this basis, the article systematizes the prerequisites for lifting the moratorium, establishes patterns and explains trends in the creation of SEZ’s, as well as gives proposals for the development of the concept of economic zoning.

Work and rest regime in modern conditions

The article examines the integral content of the concepts of "work regime" and "rest regime", the history of the development of legislation on the work regime in Russia. The analysis of the signs of the legal nature of the work and rest regime is carried out, the values of these regimes are determined. The relevance of this topic is due to the fact that the regulation of work and rest is an integral element of labor law. Having a number of problems in this area, employees and (or) employers often violate the labor legislation of Russia on the organization of work and rest regimes. Consideration of issues related to work and rest time will allow determining vectors for further legal regulation and possible ideas for eliminating problematic issues. The main part of the work is devoted to the analysis of problem areas common in the Russian legal field in the regulation of working hours, as well as time for rest.

Putinism. Post-Soviet Russian Regime Ideology

Mikhail Suslov har skrevet en bok med potensiale for å bli et standardverk om ideologisk tenkning i Putins Russland. Basert på et vesentlig tekstkorpus presenterer han en grundig og belest analyse av putinismens ideologiske byggeklosser, og argumenterer for at regimets ideologiske fundament på ingen måte bør avfeies eller undervurderes. Uten å vedgå hvor reell og farlig denne ideologien er, skriver Suslov, kan vi ikke heller bekjempe den. Mikhail Suslov has written a book with the potential of becoming a standard work on the ideological rationale in Putin's Russia. Based on a significant text corpus, he presents a thorough analysis of the ideological building blocks of Putinism and argues that the regime's ideological foundations should in no way be dismissed or underestimated. Unless we acknowledge the reality and danger of this this ideology, Suslov writes, we cannot hope to fight it.

“We don’t abandon our own people”: public rhetoric of Russia’s governors during the full-scale invasion of Ukraine

ABSTRACT The 2022 invasion of Ukraine tests the resilience of the authoritarian regime in Russia. Most of the elites showed their commitment to the autocrat by publicly supporting the “special military operation”. However, the intensity of their support has varied across the ranks. By examining Russian governors, I propose that elites vary their communicative responses to the war strategically, depending on their personal considerations and the structural characteristics of their regions. I apply text-as-data methods to analyze gubernatorial posts on the social network VKontakte in 2022–2023. I find that governors up for election, outsiders, with weaker political standing, and from poorer regions communicate more support measures for combatants and their families, and humanitarian aid to the annexed territories, when discussing the war in Ukraine. Therefore, by co-opting war-affected groups and emphasizing performance legitimacy, governors minimize the threat of anti-regime mobilization without resorting to large-scale repression and contribute to authoritarian resilience.

The regional dimension of Russia’s resilience during its war against Ukraine: an introduction

ABSTRACT This symposium challenges the common perception that authoritarian regimes are less resilient than democratic ones because they lack the sources of democratic resilience. We focus on Russia, a personalist authoritarian regime, which has demonstrated a surprisingly high level of resilience during its war against Ukraine. We argue that for a territorially large and diverse country such as Russia, the critical dimension of resilience is manifested in maintaining central control over the entire territory of the country during times of crisis. Contributions in this issue explore the sources and limits of Russia’s territorial resilience. We argue that, while the personalist regime in Russia has demonstrated coping and adaptive dimensions of resilience, its transformative dimension remains questionable.

Soviet and Russian Regimes of Spatial Inscription: A Critical Analysis of Indigenous versus Official Place Names on Maps in Siberia, 1920s–2000s

This article discusses Indigenous Evenki place names (hydronyms) on official topographic maps and handwritten sketches in a broader context of Soviet and Russian regimes of spatial inscription and toponymic policies and their legacies. The early Soviet policy of korenizatsia (indigenization) facilitated the incorporation of Indigenous place names into official nomenclature. As a result, a large number of Indigenous toponyms appeared on official maps. The aim of this article is to examine the evolving relationships between Indigenous place names and official place names of Indigenous origin across three historical periods (the 1920s, the 1950s, and the contemporary era) and in two politically distinct settings, the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) and the Amur region. The data sets for this research were extracted from official maps and Evenki archival sketch maps collected by Glafira Vasilevich in Siberia between the 1920s and the 1960s. Using Quantum GIS in conjunction with ethnographic fieldwork, statistical analysis, and qualitative linguistic assessment, this research further investigates the evolution of Indigenous names on maps, focusing on the most characteristic changes in their inscription over the past century. This article concludes by highlighting the power dynamics between different Indigenous place-naming traditions in Siberia, where various Indigenous communities have historically distinct opportunities to influence toponymic policies.

Greccy i macedońscy uchodźcy polityczni w Polskiej Rzeczypospolitej Ludowej a obecny kryzys migracyjny na granicy polsko-białoruskiej

The aim of the article is to conduct a comparative analysis of two different approaches to the migration problem. The first one refers to the government of the Polish People’s Republic, which agreed to accept several thousand Greek and Macedonian political refugees fleeing from Greece after the communist side lost the civil war. The policy of the Polish communist authorities brought success in the form of successful coexistence between Greeks and Macedonians with Poles. The second approach is presented by the current Polish government. This is a policy of not admitting any migrants brought to the Polish-Belarusian border by the Belarusian and Russian regimes that are hostile to Poland. The presented comparison is an original attempt to draw conclusions regarding the sources of these different approaches and their political and social consequences. The topic discussed in the article is important not only for Poland and the eastern countries of the European Union, but for the entire EU, because the destination of migrants is not countries such as Poland, Lithuania or Latvia, but wealthier Western countries.

A Theological Reading of the Russian Regime: Sergei Bulgakov and the Theocratic Principle in 1917 and Today

A Theological Reading of the Russian Regime: Sergei Bulgakov and the Theocratic Principle in 1917 and Today

Thanatolatry as a signifier of totalitarian ideology (on the example of russia)

The full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the russian federation has led to the actualisation of the discourse of cultural confrontation. The rule of vladimir putin has not only led to the establishment of a totalitarian regime in russia, but also led to the formation of the cult of death. The cult of death (thanatolatry) should be understood as the emergence of social and cultural practices that are directly related to death. The main idea is to recreate the USSR by creating a necrophiliac ideology. In which the life of any citizen is levelled and deformed. A decent life is replaced by a glorious death, with arms in hand, in a foreign country. Through propaganda, russian ideology promotes the idea of death as the main virtue of a citizen. The process of such ideological processing begins in childhood and is supported by various state organisations throughout a person’s life, with the activities of the Wagner PMC and the immortal regiment Association being particularly prominent. Understanding this phenomenon will help Ukrainian authorities and society to better respond to the challenges posed by russia’s policy of genocide of the Ukrainian nation.

Теория и практика «политического исихазма» в России в XXI веке

The article is devoted to the revival of the so-called “political hesychasm” in the Russian Federation in the 21st century. The key document defining the church’s attitude to politics, society and the state is the “Fundamentals of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church”, adopted at the Church Council in 2000. The purpose of this article is to clarify the conception of “political hesychasm” by analyzing the “Fundamentals of the Social Concept” and researches published on the issue, as well as to assess the implementation of this conception to modern political and social processes, through comparative and component analysis. The Concept seemed revolutionary for the Russian traditions of relations between church and state. For example, if the state causes citizens to sin, they are called upon to engage in civil disobedience against the sinful state. Participation in government and political activities is permitted only if these activities do not contradict the Christian faith. However, in practice, as the authoritarian regime in Russia strengthened, the Moscow Patriarchate, contrary to its social concept, became dependent on the authoritarian regime and began ideologically serving the political authorities, which contradicts not only hesychasm, but also the very essence of Christianity.

Metahistoricism in Vera Bogdanova’s novel “The Season of Poisoned Fruits”

The purpose of the article is to trace the narrativization of historical events in Vera Bogdanova's novel The Season of Poisoned Fruit (2022), which focuses on the story of "forbidden" love between cousins. The relevance of the article stems from the fact that the novel has already become a significant phenomenon in contemporary Russian literature, but has not yet found its researchers. The novel's themes include the sickness of Russian society, militarization, extreme xenophobia, propaganda, domestic violence, and social rejection of otherness; through these problems, anti-military and liberal pathos emerges, so the novel should be considered part of a culture that is in opposition to the modern Russian regime. The range of problems in the novel revolves around different strategies for dealing with different personal and historical traumas; however, critics suggest that the generation of "thirtysomethings" does not share the historical trauma of childhood, as, for example, the older generation, which saw the collapse of the USSR as children. The article demonstrates how the novel's text perceives the traumatic events of Russian and world history (the events in Moscow in 1993, the terrorist attacks in Moscow and London, the forest fires of 2010, etc.) through the prism of the perception of several representatives of the millennial generation ("the generation of thirty-somethings"). The article shows how state propaganda and hierarchized narrative of the story replace the protagonists' personal memories of events, which, in turn, become taboo. The intervention of a discourse that narrates the story in the spirit of Russian propaganda is made possible by the constant presence and unrelenting intensity of television intrusions into the protagonists' personal lives. It is assumed that the novel has several strategies for organizing the interaction between general and personal history, including (1) aggression and the search for those responsible for historical tragedies; (2) ignoring, (3) mystical metahistorical linking of historical and personal events.

The Russo-Ukrainian War: a Worldsystem Theoretical Approach

The article follows the perspective of the World-system and aims to reveal the factors determining Russian foreign policy. In response to the neo-realistic interpretation of Russia’s behaviour in the international system, based on the logic of maintaining the balance of powers, an alternative interpretation is formulated: Russia’s foreign policy is influenced by structural geo-economic factors – belonging to the ‘semi-peripheral’ geo-economic zone. It leads to socio-economic tensions and political instability within the state and forces the Russian regime to use various domestic and foreign policy instruments to mobilize the society. One such instrument is military aggression in foreign countries, including Ukraine.

Рец. на кн.: Lan Anh Hoang. Vietnamese Migrants in Russia: Mobility in Times of Uncertainty. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2020. 259 p.

The analytical framework of an ethnographic study of the lives of Vietnamese migrants in Russia by Professor Lan Anh Hoang (University of Melbourne) is “uncertainty”. The author understands it as the structural conditions that make the lives of migrants unpredictable and eliminate their ability to influence their choices and the results of their choices. The uncertainty is caused by the migration regime in Russia and xenophobia, pushing migrants into the informal sector of the economy and the zone of invisibility. It is also experienced by migrants as a subjective experience of vulnerability. To reveal the duality of uncertainty as a structural condition and as a subjective experience, Hoang devotes the first part of the book to the main themes of migrants’ lives in Russia: moving to the host country, infrastructure for migrants, work and leisure. The second part of the book is built around traditional anthropological themes: kinship, morality, cultural ideas and how they are determined in structural conditions of uncertainty and vulnerability. Despite the fact that Russia is one of the leading countries in the number of labor migrants, there are very few studies of migration in Russia, and there are practically no ethnographies. The book under review is a rare opportunity to have a glimpse of the life of migrants not from the outside perspective of the host society with its labeling, but from the inside. At the same time, the chosen frame of uncertainty not only sets the logic of the analysis, but also prevents the rich ethnography from disintegrating into separate small research discoveries. The book shows how uncertainty runs deep, how it undermines the foundations of human relationships, and how Vietnamese migrants try to cope with it.

Beyond denial: Justifications of mass violence as an agenda for memory studies

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 challenges memory studies to analyze transmissions of discourses which justify mass violence and challenge the focus on denial. On the one hand, the Russian regime’s claim to undertake “denazification” and prevent a “genocide” expounds the seminal role of cultural memory in politics. The weaponization of history, international law, and religion is widely accepted in Russian society and by global populisms. On the other hand, the invasion came as a surprise even to many experts because in politics, media, and research, justifications of mass violence are often dismissed as pretexts distracting from facts. Yet, the dismissal entails a major lacuna: we know too little about how justifications travel through societies and have a long-term impact. The article proposes that while acts of mass violence alter political and socio-economic realities, justifications of mass violence establish the linguistic and heuristic parameter for their subsequent juridical, moral, and scholarly evaluation. Normalizations of justifications contribute to perpetuating societal fault lines and set the frame for further conflict. The memory studies focus on transgenerational transmissions of psycho-social sequalae of violence laid the groundwork for understanding longue durée transmissions. However, memory studies have focused on denial as a key psychological and political driving force of transmissions, while, for instance, Russian and Serbian memory cultures are shaped by both denial and outright affirmations—not-even-denial—of past mass violence as model for present politics. Memory studies provide the appropriate conceptual space as a framework for addressing implicit normalizations and explicit affirmations of justifications of mass violence.

Humanitarian components of Russia’s hybrid war against Ukraine in 2014-2022

The article provides a comprehensive analysis of the humanitarian components of the latest Russian-Ukrainian war, which is qualified by its authors as a hybrid war. In principle, it is about the ideological basis, historical and religious mythology, and the information support of Russia’s revanchist policy in Ukraine, which the current Russian regime uses in its armed aggression against Ukraine. The authors convincingly and argumentatively prove that non-military instruments in Russia’s war against Ukraine are subordinated to a single goal – the restoration of the Russian empire and its international political influence. In order to achieve this goal, the Putin regime uses all the means available to it, including the spread of pseudo-historical myths and fakes that justify the expansionist policy of the Kremlin in Ukraine and in the countries of the post-Soviet space. Using a widely sourced base, the authors of the article refute the most common Russian pseudo-historical narratives.

Exploring the Role of Duma in the Power Structure of Contemporary Russia

The state of Russian politics has always attracted the attention of many scholars, especially the unique authoritarian system of Russia, which maintains a democratic framework, and the role of the Duma in this is a natural focus of scholarly research. The Duma, the legislative body of the Russian Empire since 1905, reappeared after the collapse of the Soviet Union and assumed the role of the post-Soviet transition, as well as the Putin era. This study researches the question that what the role of the Duma plays in the power structure of the contemporary Russian regime. In terms of the significance of the study, it is important to understand the dynamics of the institutions role in Russias political system, as it is vital to contribute to academic research and to improve and assist political practice. Regarding the research methodology, a systematic review of the relevant academic literature was conducted using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guideline and a review of the latest decade of academic literature was sought to refine this study. Finally, this study concludes that the role of the Duma is dual and functional, due to its role in promoting authoritarianism as well as in maintaining democratic power structures, and its constructive role in foreign policy.

Separate Issues of Implementation of Parallel Imports Regime and Related Problems of Intellectual Property Protection in Russia under Sanctions

It is already possible to conduct a comprehensive assessment of parallel imports introduction into the Russian legislation, which aims at providing Russian consumers with goods that are no longer available on the national market due to the sanctions against the Russian Federation adopted in 2022 and a number of companies suspending their activities in the Russian Federation. Exhaustion of intellectual property rights has been known in the world for quite a long time as a tool aimed at ensuring a balance of interests of copyright holders, consumers and importers, as well as a tool for ensuring international competition. In a particular state, one or another regime of exhaustion is applied taking into account the economic, political foundations of the functioning of the state economy, legal and evolutionary prerequisites. In this context, the paper presents a number of conclusions and proposals aimed at optimization of the parallel imports regime in Russia. The author considers some aspects of the customs, and substantiates the expediency of direct consolidation of international exhaustion of rights in the Russian legislation and possible development trajectories of the «list» approach to parallel imports. General approaches to the protection of intellectual property under sanctions are formulated, as well as proposals for solving problems related to the use of copyright objects belonging to copyright holders who have suspended their activities in Russia following sanctions regimes. The formulated conclusions and proposals could be summarized and taken into account in the Strategy for the Development of Intellectual Property in Russia — a strategic document that is extremely necessary in order to systematize and optimize measures for the development of approaches to the protection and promotion of the creation of intellectual property in Russia.

Конвойная служба в истории пенитенциарной системы Югорского Севера в конце XVI – начале ХХ в.

The aim of the study is to characterise the process and features of formation of the convoy penitentiary guard on the territory of the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Area – Yugra (in the late XVI – early XX century) from the historical perspective. The paper analyses the historical stages in the evolution of the convoy guard in accordance with different political regimes in Russia, the development of the institution of Siberian exile and the peculiarities of the region. The study is novel in that it is the first to identify the peculiarities of functioning of the Yugra convoy guard as an integral part of the penitentiary system based on historical sources, including archival materials. As a result of the study, it has been found that the reform of the institution of the convoy guard and its functioning in Yugra corresponded to the tasks facing the state. Up to the early XIX century, the North was considered primarily as a place of exile and imprisonment of state criminals dangerous to the supreme power, thus, the organisation of the convoy to the region proceeded from the personal orders of the Tsar and the Tobolsk governor. The 1811 reform, which had officially created the convoy guard, provided other tasks: the state was preparing for an increase in crime in the face of growing social contradictions in Russia, the expansion of the territory of the Russian Empire and other factors. The same trend was observed under the Soviet authorities, when the stages of reformation of the convoy guard preceded the repressions and the creation of the GULAG.

Utility-based predictions of military escalation: Why experts forecasted Russia would not invade Ukraine

ABSTRACT When Russia amassed troops in the winter of 2021–2022, many analysts deemed a large-scale invasion of Ukraine unlikely. Surveying the expert literature, we establish that these arguments largely relied on utility-based reasoning: Analysts thought an invasion was improbable, as it would foreseeably entail massive costs for Russia, its people, and its regime. We show that this regnant expert opinion had not sufficiently accounted for the Russian regime’s tendencies to increasingly accept risks, coupled with an inadequate processing of information on Ukrainian and Western views and policies. We argue that analysts miscalculated partially because the most prominent facts, long-term trends, and causal mechanisms available to them jointly suggested Russian cost-sensitivity, but provided only weak signs of countervailing factors. We thereby showcase that good forecasting requires explicit theory with a view on multiple interacting causal factors, area expertise and Socratic humility on the extent, context and certainty of our findings.