Timothy Frye - Weak Strongman

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ON THE NIGHT of February 21, 2014, Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych fled to Russia. His flight followed months of protest against his government for backing out of an agreement with the European Unionprotests Yanukovych had tried to repress with ever-greater force. Fearing a loss of influence and the rise of a less friendly government in Ukraine, the Kremlin ordered Russian troops to seize the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea and moved swiftly to annex the territory. Moscow then sent troops and matriel to local militia groups in eastern Ukraine hostile to the Kyiv government, fueling a six-year war that continues today.

As the fighting began, three scholars asked more than two thousand Americans to locate Ukraine on a map. Just one in six were able to do so. This might just be an example of Americans comically weak grasp of geography were it not for the second part of the study, which asked respondents whether Russia posed a threat to the United States, and whether the United States should intervene militarily in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. The scholars found that the less people knew about Ukraines location, the more they believed that Russia posed a threat to US interests and the more they favored military intervention. Whatever the pros or cons of US military involvement, these figures are disturbing. In democracies, we expect an informed public to guide policy makers and hold them accountable. This is not possible if the public holds opinions untethered from reality.

This book aims to improve our public conversation by drawing on a host of new research to reassess common narratives about Russian politics. Most observers view contemporary Russian politics as a reflection either of Vladimir Putins worldview or Russias unique history and culture. Yet these two narratives overlook a crucial body of scholarly research that understands Russia not as sui generis but instead as part of a group of modern nondemocracies. Tapping into this work allows a far richerand more accurateunderstanding of Russian politics today.

Recognizing Putin as an autocrat, and Russia as an autocracy like many others, may seem obviousand yet doing so brings into sharp focus the inherent limits on his power that are common to autocratic rule, but are often overlooked in discussions about Russia. Throughout the chapters that follow, I look at three major types of constraints: the bluntness of Putins tools for managing the country, difficult policy trade-offs that confront the Kremlin at home and abroad, and vast uncertainty generated by weak state institutions. For the last twenty years, Putin has been unrivaled at home, but achieving this primacy has come at the costs of a distorted economy, dysfunctional bureaucracy, and unsound policiesthree keys to building state power. Rather than the omnipotent ruler depicted in popular narratives, Putin is like many autocrats. He is a strongman, but a weak one.

To make the case for this view of Russian politics, I draw on thirty years of scholarship and experience as a Russia watcher, including stints working as an information warrior for the US government in the Soviet Union, consulting for the Russian Securities and Exchange Commission in the 1990s, and coheading a research institute at the Higher School of Economics (HSE) in Moscow since 2011. These experiencesfrom being an accidental target of a honey trap by the KGB in the Soviet era to witnessing the fall of the Twin Towers from Moscow in 2001helped me understand how Russia does and does not work.

More important, I rely on research by a new generation of scholars that is frequently at odds with conventional wisdom and has received little attention outside academia. In the coming pages, you will learn how my colleagues and I conduct surveys that detect whether Russians are lying about Putins popularity; scrape the internet to find political and economic ties among Russian elites; identify bots on Twitter to track propaganda campaigns; use Russian electoral data to reveal fraud; follow the Kremlins efforts to manipulate public opinion and interfere in foreign elections; gather archival data to trace how Stalin-era purges shape voting in contemporary Russia; track political graffiti in Moscow to study protest; and interview top Russian elites to explore how decisions are made in the Kremlin. This research, much of it unknown even to diligent readers, offers some of the best evidence we have of how Russia works. The goal is not just to deepen our understanding of Russian politics but also to add scholarly voices to our national debate on the topic.

If you want to understand Russia better (and who doesnt), the chapters that follow are a good place to start.

WEAK STRONGMAN