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The Russian Federation LEARNING OBJECTIVES After reading this chapter, you should be able to: 1. Trace the development of the Russian polity, and recount the various stages that ultimately led to the foundation of the contemporary Russian Federation. 2. Understand the broad outlines of the Soviet centrally planned economy and its extensive social safety net. 3. Analyze the impetus for reform of the Soviet system and the policies of perestroika, glasnost, and demokratizatsiia. 4. Explain the revolutionary transformation of the Soviet political system, from a single-party communist system to a formal democratic system, and understand the basic outlines of Russia’s political institutions. 5. Understand the relative powers of the Russian president and prime minister, and explain the unique mix of formal and informal actors involved in the policy-making process. 6. Discuss the mixed electoral system used in Russia, describe the country’s major political parties and their platforms, and understand the dominance of the United Russia Party. 7. Understand the major challenges facing Russia for the future. CHAPTER OUTLINE I. II. The Making of the Modern Russian State A. Until 1917, Russia was ruled as an autocratic state by the tsar, with much of the population living in conditions of serfdom dominated by nobles. B. The 1917 Revolution established a communist regime characterized by democratic centralism, under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party, which established the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.) in 1922. C. Joseph Stalin (1929–1953) established the basic characteristics that would govern the Soviet state until the collapse of the communist system in 1991. D. Under Mikhail Gorbachev (1985–1991), the Soviet Union underwent a comprehensive reform process including perestroika, glasnost, and demokratizatsiia, which ultimately led to the end of communism. E. Russia is now a formal democracy, but one with significant tensions and fault lines, including emerging domination by the United Russia Party under presidents Vladimir Putin (1999–2008) and Dmitry Medvedev (2008–present). Political Economy and Development A. During the Soviet period, land, factories, and all significant productive assets were state owned. The Soviet model was characterized by rapid industrialization, provision of mass social welfare benefits, high levels of education, and low levels of inequality. B. Inefficiency and the top-heavy nature of economic planning undermined the long-term viability of the Soviet economic model and led to perestroika and glasnost during the 1980s. C. Beginning in 1992, Boris Yeltsin initiated radical market reforms and economic shock therapy, which while relatively successful in macroeconomic terms, have increased inequality primarily as a result of the process of “insider privatization” and the elimination of the traditionally extensive social safety net. D. President Putin initiated a series of economic reforms in 2000 that significantly improved the economy, however it continues to be dominated by oligarchs and dependent on oil production and other natural resources. III. Governance and Policy-Making A. Though during the Soviet period the constitution established many provisions traditionally found in a democratic state, most of its principles were ignored, making it largely symbolic. B. Although liberal ideas underwrote early movements toward democracy in post-Soviet Russia, the expansion of presidential power under Putin and Medvedev has undermined many of these democratic principles. C. Though the Russian constitution, adopted in 1993, established a semipresidential system modeled on France, the primary locus of power and policy-making in Russia is the presidency because of its formal and decree powers. D. Russia is organized along the lines of asymmetrical federalism, in which different regions have varying privileges within the Russian Federation. E. The contemporary Russian policy-making process is much more complex than others analyzed in the text, involving extensive interaction between myriad formal and informal actors. IV. Representation and Participation A. Parliamentary power is constrained in the Russian system, primarily by the power of the president, but also because the fragmented multiparty system failed to produce parliamentary majorities until the emergence of the United Russia Party. B. The Duma (the lower house of parliament) has 450 members chosen through a proportional representation system (a reform of the previous German-style mixed system, which was employed until 2007). C. Although the immediate post-Communist Party system was very fractionalized and lacked a majority political party, United Russia has emerged as politically dominant on regional and national levels. D. Observers have increasingly questioned the fairness of elections in Russia, as various types of political control limit the ability of opposition parties to gain support, compete in elections, and exert other forms of political power. V. Russian Politics in Transition A. Increasingly, Russia is moving toward soft authoritarianism. B. Russia will have to face a series of challenges as it moves forward with its process of democratization and the deepening of a market economy. The state must act especially to limit the power of entrenched economic interests, like the oligarchs, and deal with severe disparities of wealth and income. C. The threat of terrorism has markedly increased in Russia with a series of disturbing tragedies since the fall of the Soviet Union. D. Internationally, Russia must take measures to make its economy attractive to foreign investors and to define its new international role. E. In terms of international political power, one of Russia’s main challenges is to reestablish itself as a respected regional leader in neighboring countries. Glossary 1. market reform A strategy of economic transformation that involves reducing the role of the state in managing the economy and increasing the role of market forces. 2. asymmetrical federalism A form of federalism in which some subnational units in the federal system have greater or lesser powers than others. 3. civil society A term that refers to the space occupied by voluntary associations outside the state, for example, professional associations, trade unions, and student groups. 4. clientelistic networks Informal systems of asymmetrical power in which a powerful patron (e.g., the president, prime minister, or governor) offers less powerful clients resources, benefits, or career advantages in return for support, loyalty, or services. 5. collectivization A process undertaken in the Soviet Union under Stalin from 1929 into the early 1930s and in China under Mao in the 1950s, by which agricultural land was removed from private ownership and organized into large state and collective farms. 6. democratic centralism A system of political organization developed by V. I. Lenin and practiced, with modifications, by all communist partystates. Its principles include a hierarchical party structure. 7. dominant party A political party that manages to maintain consistent control of a political system through formal and informal mechanisms of power, with or without strong support from the population. 8. federal system A political structure in which subnational units have significant independent powers; the powers of each level are usually specified in the federal constitution. 9. glasnost Gorbachev’s policy of “openness,” which involved an easing of controls on the media, arts, and public discussion. 10. insider privatization The transformation of formerly state-owned enterprises into jointstock companies or private enterprises in which majority control is in the hands of employees and/or managers. 11. joint-stock companies Business firms whose capital is divided into shares that can be held by individuals, groups of individuals, or governmental units. 12. mafia A term borrowed from Italy and widely used in Russia to describe networks of organized criminal activity. 13. nomenklatura A system of personnel selection in the Soviet period under which the Communist Party maintained control over the appointment of important officials in all spheres of social, economic, and political life. 14. oligarchs A small group of powerful and wealthy individuals who gained ownership and control of important sectors of Russia’s economy in the context of privatization of state assets in the 1990s. 15. patrimonial state A system of governance in which the ruler treats the state as personal property (patrimony). 16. power vertical A term introduced by Vladimir Putin when he was president to describe a unified and hierarchical structure of executive power ranging from the national to the local level. 17. privatization voucher A certificate worth 10,000 rubles (at various times between four and twenty U.S. dollars) issued by the government to each Russian citizen in 1992 to be used to purchase shares in state enterprises undergoing privatization. 18. proportional representation (PR) A system of electoral representation in which seats in the legislative body are allocated to parties within multi-member constituencies, roughly in proportion to the votes each party receives in a popular election. 19. pyramid debt A situation in which a government or organization takes on debt obligations at progressively higher rates of interest in order to pay off existing debt. 20. siloviki Derived from the Russian word sil, meaning “force,” Russian politicians and governmental officials drawn from the security and intelligence agencies, special forces, or the military, many of whom were recruited to important political posts under Vladimir Putin. 21. soft authoritarianism A system of political control in which a combination of formal and informal mechanisms ensure the dominance of a ruling group or dominant party, despite the existence of some forms of political competition and expressions of political opposition. 22. sovereign democracy A concept of democracy articulated by President Putin’s political advisor, Vladimir Surkov, to communicate the idea that democracy in Russia should be adapted to Russian traditions and conditions rather than based on Western models. 23. state capture The ability of firms to systematically turn state regulations to their advantage through payoffs or other benefits offered to state officials. 24. vanguard party A political party that claims to operate in the “true” interests of the group or class that it purports to represent, even if this understanding doesn’t correspond to the expressed interests of the group itself.