Understanding the Enigma of Putin's Russia

Abstract

S everal months into the latest phase of the Russia-Ukraine War, it may seem like a strange time to refer to Russian president Vladimir Putin or his system of governance as “weak.” It certainly does not feel that way on the frontlines of Donbas as Russia brings to bear all its conventional might in a war of conquest, the type of conflict many analysts thought had gone out of fashion in Europe after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. If you had asked Russia watchers in the summer of 2021 about the likelihood of over 100,000 Russian soldiers marching into Ukraine, most would have seen the scenario as far-fetched. The entire field of Russian studies deserves tough questions about the adequacy of its methods for understanding Russian politics. If anyone has a credible claim to understand and explain Russian politics, though, it is Timothy Frye, who is arguably the leading figure in a new school of political science research that seeks to elucidate the inner logics of the Russian political system. Alongside numerous coauthors and former students, Frye’s research has examined topics such as the significance of Russian elections, public opinion, lobbying and corruption, and property rights and the rule of law. Weak Strongman: The Limits of Power in Putin’s Russia is Frye’s brilliant distillation of nearly 30 years of research on these themes. Despite this new wave of research about how Russia’s political system works, as Frye notes, there is a long history of relying on tropes rather than analysis in the field of Russian studies. It isn’t only Westerners like Churchill who have seen Russia as a land of riddles and enigmas; Russians’ analyses of their own country’s politics frequently rely on references to the country’s supposedly unique history, culture, or spirituality. Frye asks his readers to situate contemporary Russia not in the context of Ivan the Terrible or Leo Tolstoy but in that of other contemporary authoritarian states, ranging from Recep Erdogan’s Turkey to Viktor Orban’s Hungary to Nicolás Maduro’s Venezuela. As Weak Strongman shows, not everything about Russia is enigmatic. And despite his strongman image, Putin has an ability to control the Russian political system and state apparatus that is more circumscribed than it often appears.