From Republic.ru, April 6, 2026, https://republicmag.io/posts/117352. Condensed text:

Editors’ Note. – Yekaterina Shulman is one of the most widely cited Russian political scientists in exile. She carefully dissects the transformation of the Russian state, all the peculiarities of its authoritarian model and everything that happens to society under this regime. In this interview with Republic, she talks about the emergence of a new majority, which is not yet aware of its own existence or its capacity to change the situation in Russia.

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Question. – How would you describe the current condition of Russia’s political regime?

Answer.– The key parameters of the regime remain the same. The same Constitution, rewritten in 2020 [see Vol. 72, No. 27-28, pp. 3-7], is still in place. The same bureaucracy is running the country, following more or less the same set of rules. In other words, we don’t have a state of emergency or martial law; all the significant decisions still have to be approved by the State Duma, since they are introduced in the form of amendments to federal laws.

Even though the lawmakers have given the president additional personal powers, it would be an exaggeration to say that we now have a “rule by decree,” i.e., a situation where the president governs through executive orders. Electoral cycles are as regular as before; no election, general or local, has been suspended. The same players as before handle elections, using the same techniques as before; thus, electoral results are still being used to legitimize the existing political system.

The borders are still open; the authorities have not taken any decisive steps to limit the outflow of people, apart from attempts to set up a digital registry of those liable for military service. On the contrary, the authorities somewhat welcome it when someone leaves Russia for political reasons, as this is viewed as a way to lower tensions within the country. Somewhat surprisingly, the largest group among those unable to leave are neither political dissidents nor those liable for military service; it is people with unpaid debts, mostly men who are behind on child support payments.

As far as the economy is concerned, again, I don’t see anything out of the ordinary. I mean, we don’t see any major changes in the government’s financial or economic policies, like expropriating people’s savings or introducing severe restrictions on commercial activities. There are some restrictions that are being introduced, but these are in line with the earlier overall model. I’m not saying that the government will never resort to confiscating people’s deposits or forcing people to buy war bonds. But it is important to point out that so far, the authorities have not used these mechanisms in any shape or form; furthermore, they have made no effort to prepare public opinion for something like that. These ideas may be voiced once in a while by certain individuals, but we have yet to see a government agency or a group of lawmakers propose a specific bill to this effect.

When it comes to personnel decisions, we don’t see any revolutionary changes either. Quite a few officials have been fired from a number of federal agencies and regional governments, but it’s not like the old guard is being replaced with young blood. After four years of war, we have yet to see a single person who made a career [in the government] as a result of this war.

We don’t have a single popular general. As soon as a military commander becomes popular, something happens to them: One got killed in a suspicious plane crash [see Vol. 75, No. 34-35, pp. 3-4], another was transferred to Africa, and a third one ended up in prison. In a word, it’s just like the title of Agatha Christie’s book – “and then there were none.”

It is important to keep these things in mind, because the changes that have happened over the last four years seem so radical that both experts and ordinary people tend to overlook the remaining elements of the system; instead, they focus on the elements that change. Such a bias is not only natural but inevitable. Political science studies whatever gets transformed; we are interested in the moving parts of the system. But in order for us to understand the moving parts, we have to consider the parts that aren’t moving, as well. Otherwise, we’ll get lost in the chaotic flurry of illusory changes.

Actually, this is a curious political phenomenon. We see a system so conservative that it is willing to radicalize; a system so desperate to keep itself intact that it is willing to destroy itself; a system so keen to maintain stability that it creates chaos. It is a curious phenomenon, but it is not unprecedented. Historians have this concept of a “long rule.” A long rule often ends with a period of increased rigidity, alarmism and political radicalization associated with revanchism. What we are witnessing today looks exactly like the final stage of a long rule: a peculiar mix of conservatism and radicalism. . . .

Q. – You mentioned briefly that the president has been given additional powers. Could you please elaborate and explain what those powers are specifically?

A. – In recent years, lawmakers gave the president significant new powers, which make it easy for the president to transfer assets from one owner to another. The president can seize one person’s property and give it to someone else, and he can do that by decree. Sometimes the president does it with his executive orders; sometimes the Prosecutor General’s Office achieves the same results with arbitrary corruption probes.

In addition, there are new laws that allow blacklisting a commercial entity as an extremist organization. Let me give you an example. There is a print shop in Saint Petersburg called Pechatnya. It is the largest print shop in Russia. Recently, the authorities expropriated it because, they said, the former owners resided in the UK and had Kazakh citizenship, and they planned to move their capital abroad and use it to boost the military capabilities of hostile countries. The former owners weren’t even accused of donating money to the Ukrainian military. The authorities think that their argument makes perfect sense: If you move your money to a hostile country, you obviously help boost its military capabilities. In other words, the Kremlin comes up with new ways to seize property. Property rights have never been Russia’s forte, but the situation has gotten much worse over the last four years.

Q. – Right, but it is not just disloyal business owners who face pressure; even ordinary people, who have been careful to stay away from politics, are being targeted now. The authorities want to control what people think and what they post online. Don’t you think that we are on the verge of totalitarianism?

A. – I agree that the regime has gone to a whole new level when it comes to meddling in people’s lives. It is a two-pronged attack. First, the authorities want to have more control over messaging services, and eventually they want to get rid of them. Second, they pursue the policy of upholding traditional values, and LGBT people can now face persecution just because they are LGBT people. This is where we’ve gotten closest to totalitarianism. In authoritarian regimes, people are punished for what they did – even allegedly. In totalitarian regimes, people are punished for who they are. . . .

At the same time, I have to say that despite all those terrible things that the state does, it does not necessarily mean that the regime is undergoing a transformation. Every time something bad happens, people start asking experts, “Surely this is it? Surely this is fascism?” And every time, I sound heartless, because I have to tell them, “Actually, it’s not.”

If a person gets beaten up, or thrown behind bars, or killed, it is not necessarily fascism. These things can happen anywhere. The transformation that produces a totalitarian state requires a different set of tools and has a different set of attributes. So far, we have yet to see those attributes. . . .

Q. – Where has the regime gotten stronger in the last four years? And where has it gotten weaker?

A. – First of all, I should point out that if you describe a certain political regime as “strong” or “weak,” it could sound like you approve or disapprove of it; so, you must be cautious using those words. We prefer to use words like “stable” or “fragile” instead. Let me tell you right away that when we see cracks appear in the regime’s foundations, that’s not as great as some people think. I understand that many people think right now, “I don’t care if things get worse, as long as they change.” But you have to be careful with this type of Ragnarök optimism.

What makes modern information autocracies so resilient is how flexible and adaptive they are. Unlike totalitarian models, they are not bound by ideological restraints. They don’t have electoral liabilities, and, unlike democracies, they don’t depend on electoral cycles. They get the best of both worlds: On the one hand, it is easy for them to mobilize administrative, economic and human resources, and at the same time, akin to democracies, they get to enjoy the benefits of a more or less market economy. Among other things, this helps them to bypass sanctions. If you have bureaucrats imposing sanctions on one side and creative entrepreneurs looking for loopholes on the other, the latter will outsmart the former any day of the week.

Having a market sector helps maintain the illusion of normalcy, which is so near and dear to the heart of every autocrat. In other words, people are not living in poverty – or at least they are not poor enough to pose a threat to the regime’s stability. The late Gleb Pavlovsky used the word “nimble” to describe this attribute; we use the term “adaptive” instead. It is this attribute that makes modern autocracies more resilient. But resilience does not mean they will last forever.

The regime’s weaknesses, as usual, stem from its strengths. In the words of La Rochefoucauld, our virtues are often merely vices in disguise, and vice versa. Autocracies concentrate resources and power, avoid electoral rotation and suppress political competition. As a result, they reward loyalty over efficiency. In an effort to conserve themselves, they clam up and hide from the future, which prompts them to make wrong decisions. Once they make a wrong decision, they insist on it, because they have amassed plenty of resources and they can afford to keep on investing in a project that is doomed to fail.

This is a common observation that applies to all the autocracies. Actually, there is nothing special about Russia’s political model. . . .

Some of my colleagues, other political scientists, describe autocracy as a “natural” political model. Democracy and totalitarianism require effort. But autocracies spring up on their own, spontaneously, as long as people don’t oppose them. A situation where power is concentrated in the hands of a leader and his associates is like a default setting in politics; any other arrangement would require constant effort.

That’s the general principle. Now, if we talk specifically about the current authoritarian regime in Russia, the biggest threat to the stability of the system comes from the system itself and the decisions it makes based on the limited and distorted information available to it.

The first point I should make here is that the war, on the one hand, has bought the regime some additional political time. But at the same time, it has depleted its resources. Let me remind you of the context in which the decision was made to launch the invasion [see Vol. 74, No. 8, pp. 9-13]. Approval ratings had been flagging at least since 2017. By 2021, people’s confidence in the country’s leadership was declining. When the war started, there was a hysterical rally-around-the-flag effect, and approval ratings surged again. The opposition was wiped out; any attempt to speak out against the regime was outlawed. But these are all drugs that only have a temporary effect. The same goes for military Keynesianism: It can provide an economic boost but only for a short time, as we saw in 2023-2024. Otherwise, if this policy were capable of yielding a long-term economic effect, all the countries in the world would do nothing but fight each other all the time.

The war was started on false premises and with false expectations. The system was not ready. Even today, it has not transformed itself into a war machine (which drives the prowar faction mad). The way it wages the war is slow, ineffective and costly.

Next, the authorities declared partial mobilization [see Vol. 74, No. 38, pp. 3-6], and this nearly destabilized the entire system. That is why mass mobilization was rolled back so quickly, after only four weeks, and for three years since then, the regime has been developing, adopting and implementing new alternative tools that would supply the military with manpower without an open mass mobilization campaign, which terrified everyone so much in the fall of 2022.

Let me point out something important here. When I say that the decisions the system makes pose a threat to itself, I don’t mean that certain decisions may spark a popular revolt. No, there will be no revolt. In a well-established solidary authoritarian system with a powerful repressive apparatus, protests don’t result in the political change that protesters are after. No, decisions are dangerous not because they spark protests; they are dangerous because they result in administrative dysfunction, in the system becoming unable to implement its own decisions. Protests come later, when the regime is weakened.

Q. – Still, could you please explain what you mean when you say that a regime is weak (or fragile)?

A. – It is a situation where an order is given but never carried out. Either the system gives an order that can’t be implemented, or it is implemented, but the outcome is different from what the system expected. Mobilization was very close to becoming such a fatal decision. We know this because we saw how the system reacted. First, we saw how quickly the mobilization campaign was rolled back. Second, there have been many difficult situations in the years that followed where a new mobilization round may have seemed like a good solution, but the authorities never brought it up again, and every time rumors started to circulate, they denied them vehemently, bashing them as dirty insinuations.

Besides, the fact that the authorities are working on alternative recruitment techniques indicates that they have no intention of launching a new mobilization campaign. Let me add one more detail. In 2023, a new article, Art. 19.38, was added to the Code of Administrative Offenses: “Failure to provide required assistance to military commissariats in their mobilization efforts at the time of a mobilization campaign.” Government officials, organizations and individuals may all be found guilty of this new offense. It means that the practice of sabotaging mobilization efforts was so widespread during those few weeks in the fall of 2022 that the authorities even had to come up with a special new punishment for it.

Since then, there have been a few other decisions that made people angry. No autocracy is fully isolated from its people. That’s why decisions that make the system chaotic because they can’t be implemented in full or because they result in unintended consequences, doing something else instead of making the system more stable – these decisions are dangerous – or costly – to the system.

We should always remember that an authoritarian regime has only one goal, which is keeping itself intact. Everything else is just a means to achieve this goal. At times, the system may slip up and make a decision that weakens itself. But the ultimate goal is always the same – self-preservation.

Q. – Can you give us some specific examples?

A. – First, when you launch a massive repression campaign against your own administrative apparatus, this tends to destabilize the system. Furthermore, the people who get sacked are not replaced with new faces. These reprisals paralyze the bureaucracy, and bureaucracy is in fact the pillar of stability.

Who has been the primary target of the reprisals that kicked off in March 2024? It is true that purges in the Defense Ministry have been making the headlines regularly, but if we take a look at the statistics, we will see that it is actually civilian bureaucrats in regional governments who have been targeted the most. To a smaller degree, the security apparatus bureaucracy was targeted as well. More recently (since 2025), the system has started targeting the judiciary [see Vol. 77, No. 40, pp. 14-15]. The people whose assets are now being seized by the state are often local barons – those who were quick enough in the 1990s to privatize some enterprises. Later, such a person may have become a member – or even the speaker – of the local legislative assembly, or perhaps even governor. These people are the backbone of the system. And yet the system is now attacking its own backbone – and it is not even bothering to replace the damaged parts with new ones.

We all remember how before the 2024 election, there was a lot of talk about the coming big reshuffle. What was that about? As rumor had it, the idea behind this reshuffle was as follows. When the war started, everybody was shocked. But the people in the government, especially those in charge of financial and economic matters, i.e., the civilian bureaucrats, proved reliable. They accepted this new situation, they kept things under control, they helped the country adapt. One might say, they rescued the country from all sorts of trouble. The president saw all this, and he was grateful to them. Hence, these people would be rewarded and promoted, because they proved to be both loyal and effective.

When I first heard all these conversations, I immediately dismissed them as the most pitiful kind of wishful thinking, because it was obvious to me that nothing of the sort would ever happen. But even I could not foresee that there would indeed be a reshuffle, only a very different one from what people expected. Once the election was over, the system started putting officials behind bars instead of promoting them. One official even shot himself [reference to former transportation minister Roman Starovoit; see Vol. 77, No. 28, p. 10 – Trans.]. Incidentally, he was a typical representative of the category of public servants who had every reason to expect that their loyalty and their good performance would be rewarded.

The reason I paint such a gloomy picture is not because I want you to feel sorry for the Russian bureaucrats. We should remember that the Russian elites are like insects trapped in a glass jar with nowhere to run – only they have all contributed to sealing the lid on the jar. In the past, they used to keep their assets abroad; they thought their assets would be safe there. Today, even their assets abroad are no longer safe. It is still possible to move money abroad, but it is costly and risky. Yes, you can move your money and your family to Dubai. But even in Dubai, you will always be within reach for Russian security agencies. And besides, due to certain regional issues, living in Dubai is not such a great idea today as it seemed only a year ago.

In a word, the Russian elites have more money now (as you can easily see by checking out the Forbes list, not to mention less obvious statistics) but their quality of life is worse. It happens. I’m not saying these people are about to stage a coup: They are too cowardly for that. But if you make the lives of the people you rely on worse instead of rewarding them, you contribute to instability.

Next, the government has taken a number of measures that make life difficult for other social groups outside the ruling elite. When the economic boom of 2023-2024 overheated the economy, incomes stopped growing. The tax burden, on the other hand, is only getting heavier: the VAT rate was increased, small and medium-sized businesses are no longer exempt from paying VAT, new restrictions were introduced on patents, and in addition the government raised the excise tax, the vehicle recycling fee and the so-called “technology fee” ([a new tariff on imported electronics] which will go into effect on Sept. 1, 2026). In addition, this is all compounded with prices growing across all categories and utility tariffs being raised regularly (twice a year).

Next, the authorities have been infringing on people’s rights to receive and disseminate information. Simply speaking, the authorities are destroying the services that for many people have become an integral part of their daily lives. People living in cities (and elsewhere) cannot imagine their lives without a stable and fast Internet; without messaging services they use to send text, audio or video messages quickly. For small and medium-sized businesses working in the services sector, messaging apps are a tool for communicating with their customers, [and] a channel for advertising and feedback.

Shutting down Telegram and WhatsApp was a dangerous move. People will still find ways to work around these restrictions. But they will never forgive the authorities for making their lives harder. . . .

People have dubbed the current efforts to restrict Internet access “the antialcohol campaign of our time.” In fact, the antialcohol campaign [of 1985-1988] was launched for much more sound social reasons. Alcoholism was becoming so prevalent in the Soviet Union that the industrial sector was collapsing. Why the government wants to fight the Internet in general and messaging services in particular is less clear, and the authorities are doing a poor job of explaining it. Even more important for political purposes, this campaign is as futile as it is fierce. At the end of the Soviet era, we often had a situation where the bosses would demand something, and people would listen to them and nod, but nobody would do anything. We are not there yet but, we are making progress in this direction. . . .

Actually, the Internet shutdowns in Moscow and its suburbs, as well as in St. Petersburg, are a weirder phenomenon than one might think. Many people think they have a perfectly plausible version of why the authorities would do something like that, but I still remain unconvinced. On the other hand, when somebody says something like, “Oh, they are scared because they saw how Israel used [Iranian] CCTV footage to track down [former supreme leader Ali] Khamenei,” so now they realize that the digital gulag they built may be used against them, such a theory sounds a bit more reasonable to me. All the others sound a lot more outlandish.

Q. – [Russian Security Council secretary] Shoigu said recently that “the Urals used to be out of reach for Ukrainian drones and missiles, but today there is a direct threat of Ukrainian attacks in the area.” In addition, he said, the number of terrorist attacks and acts of sabotage perpetrated by Ukrainian agents in Russia has been steadily growing. The recent events [i.e., attacks on key Baltic oil ports – Trans.] in Ust-Luga and Primorsk seem to confirm this claim. In other words, the regime is openly admitting that it’s vulnerable – and basically there is nothing it can do about it?

A. – Based on my understanding of the context, the remarks you quoted were given at a meeting where Shoigu’s primary goal was to urge people to stay vigilant and, as usual, explain why he thinks the government should spend more on security. By the way, the presidential administration regularly circulates media guidelines for editors, and one of the recent installments contained a recommendation that media outlets should stop making fun of NATO countries, portraying them as impotent. On the contrary, the media should talk about them as getting armed to the teeth, because this explains why Russia has to raise taxes in order to invest more in defense. So I don’t think that the Security Council secretary said this in order to sow panic among people. Rather, I think he wanted to say that people have to stay vigilant and be ready to make sacrifices.

Q. – Recent polls indicate that nearly three quarters of people (73%) say they are “tired of war.” The fact that people are tired is not new. The big question is: Will these gradual quantitative changes ever lead to qualitative ones? Will the fact that people are increasingly tired of war ever create problems for the regime? You’re saying you don’t believe street protests are in the cards. Is there anything else that might happen?

A. – Yes. Since the middle of 2025, we have been observing a stable and growing majority that wants the war to end as soon as possible. And the longer this war goes on, the less this majority cares on what terms the war ends. I would refer you to the latest poll by Khroniki [Chronicles]. When asking people what they think about the end of the war, they use perhaps the most radical wording compared to other pollsters. They ask, “If [Russian President] Vladimir Putin decides to withdraw troops from Ukraine without achieving the stated goals of the special operation, would you support his decision?” In October 2025, 42% of the respondents said yes, and 35% said no. Prior to that, Khroniki used a somewhat different formula for their question. They asked people how they would react “if hostilities are ended before Russia achieves the initial goals of the special military operation.” In September 2024, 50% of the people said they would support the cessation of hostilities even without achieving the objectives (whatever those might be), and 31% said they would disapprove of it.

“Being tired of war” is not the best description of how people are feeling. It’s not like people are only tired of war, but other than that they are doing fine. No, people realize that their lives are getting worse, and there is no prospect of improvement. Some people understand that this overall deterioration is happening because of the war; to others, it is not so obvious. But the point is, a lot of people suffer from a combination of anxiety and dejection.

My theory, which I like to test from time to time against various data sets, is that perhaps we are witnessing the emergence of a new majority that will replace the Putinist majority, [a term that] Gleb Pavlovsky coined at some point. . . .

This new majority may be made up of people who don’t like the current situation, or who are scared of it. And it is not that important whether the situation is unbearable. I mean, most people are better off today than they were 20 years ago. But people don’t compare their current situation to where they were in the early 2000s; they compare it to the day before yesterday. They are looking at relative numbers, not absolute ones. They care about their trajectory, not about where they are right now. And today, people are losing the things they are accustomed to: various services, opportunities, conveniences, etc. And they are not getting anything in return.

It is a well-documented fact that it is harder for people to lose something they have than to miss out on something they never had. Actually, this is precisely the reason the 2018 pension system reform was so unpopular [see Vol. 70, No. 24-25, pp. 6-8]. People felt like the government had taken away something they used to have without offering anything in return. . . .

Q. – This new majority – what does it stand for? Or what does it stand against?

A. – Perhaps it stands for stability. Perhaps it wants stability to return. Or it wants instability to go away. Let’s use Ilya Remeslo as an example – that poor [pro-Kremlin blogger] who for some obscure reason started saying out loud what everyone else was thinking. Please note that the list of grievances he brought up in his rant against Putin consists of things that, until recently, only urban liberals complained about. But now this feeling of “We can’t go on like this any longer, and things will only get worse the longer we wait” is shared by the masses much more widely.

Q. – All right, let’s see if we can somehow summarize everything you’ve said. What will happen to the regime in the longer term?

A. – One theory says that in a situation where popular discontent cannot be converted into political action, this discontent will sooner or later dissipate without any political consequences. And I have to say that this theory looks pretty reasonable to me. Our regime has a lot of resources and is very adaptive, so it can weather a lot of storms. This is perhaps the most important lesson that Vladimir Putin has taught us after all these years: If you have enough resources and there is no direct physical threat to you, you can weather any storm. Unless you have an angry mob around you grabbing you by the ankles and trying to pull you off your throne, you can stay put, play possum, and who knows, maybe things will take a turn for the better at some point. . . .

Q. – Also, let’s take a look into the not-so-distant future. Russia will have a lot of elections this fall: the Duma elections, 39 regional parliaments, one gubernatorial election, etc. This will be the first time that the “newly acquired” territories [i.e., occupied parts of Ukraine – Trans.] take part in Russian elections. Should we consider these elections a major event in Russian politics? Or are they just a boring old ritual?

A. – On the one hand, we can say that elections have indeed long become a ritual in our authoritarian system. The Kremlin decides in advance how many votes each party should get in every province, after which the election becomes a charade where the only goal is to reach the target numbers provided by Moscow. The authorities have been aggressively promoting digital voting, which provides ample opportunities for electoral fraud. In fact, if you can make the elections fully digital, you don’t even need voters anymore. However, we are not there yet, and physical voters still matter. Besides, the campaign season is the rare time in Russia when people are allowed to gather in groups of more than three without being beaten up by riot police – at least, not right away. Although, come to think of it, I remember police beating up people for gathering in the streets in the run-up to the 2019 elections. Be that as it may, the campaign season offers more opportunities [for political action] than any other time.

I would also like to mention one more thing about the upcoming elections. Polls indicate that the Noviye Lyudi [New People] party is dangerously close to coming in second. When the Kremlin strategists first came up with the idea of this new party, their plan was to use it as a spoiler against the Communists. The Kremlin wanted to punish the Communists for taking part in street protests and for flirting with Aleksei Navalny’s movement. Throughout the post-Soviet period under Putin, the Communists have always had the second largest faction in the Duma. So the plan was to drop them to third place, helping the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) become second. Why were they so sure that the LDPR would become second? Because [the Kremlin] knew that A Just Russia was hopeless and it would never come in second no matter how you helped them. It’s falling apart as a party.

However, it seems that due both to the particularities of the LDPR’s new leadership following [Vladimir] Zhirinovsky’s death, as well as the decisions that have irritated the public – which we already covered – Noviye Lyudi is starting to capitalize on the Communists’ losses. This is because they support a free Internet, which is the most vocal demand of Russia’s long-suffering urban population (people also want the war to end, but they can’t talk about that; however, they can complain about the lack of Internet access – for now).

Does this pose a major threat to the stability of the political system? No. But it is a curious circumstance that I wanted to draw your attention to, because it illustrates the overall situation in Russia. It will be interesting to see how the presidential administration’s PR spin doctors handle this situation. It may be that instead of fighting it, they will let Noviye Lyudi take second place, seeing this as an electoral tool for reducing social tension.

Elections are perhaps the only remaining opportunity for people in Russia to express their disapproval without being punished. After all, if you don’t vote for United Russia, it is not as scary as when you don’t vote for Putin. United Russia is not sacred the same way Putin is.

I have mentioned that modern autocracies have the advantage of benefiting from their partly market economies. But they can also benefit from their mechanisms of simulating democracy. Even a simulated election provides the system with an opportunity to fine-tune some of its settings. Let’s wait and see what comes of it.