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- [00:01]
Alexandra Prokopyenko
Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [00:06]
Licha Chaneti
Welcome to the People Power Politics Podcast brought to you by cedar, the Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation at the University of Birmingham. Hi everyone and thanks for joining another episode of the People Power Politics podcast. I am Licha Chaneti, Deputy Director of cedar, and today I'm very happy to welcome two special guests, Vladislav Gorin and Alexandra Prokopyenko, to talk about Russian politics. Welcome to the podcast both so Vladislav Gorin is a journalist at the Russian independent media company Meduza, which is based in Riga, Latvia and has been designated as an undesirable organization by the Russian government. And Vladislav hosts a great podcast in Russian called what Happened? Which is pretty much my main source of information about Russian politics these days. So thanks a lot Vladislav for all your work. And Alexandra Prokopyanko is a fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia center and before the full scale invasion of Ukraine, she has worked as a journalist reporting from the Kremlin, as an advisor to the Central bank of Russia and at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. Her book From Sovereigns to How the War against Ukraine Reshaped Russia's Elite will be out in English this summer and is available to pre order. So if any listener is interested, I'll put the link in the show notes.
- [01:23]
Alexandra Prokopyenko
I just want to say that it's already available in Russian. If some of your listeners can understand Russian, you can buy it in the bookstore which sells Russian books, or you can order it from the website.
- [01:35]
Licha Chaneti
Perfect. So I'll put the link in Russian and in English. So I've invited you today to help me and help our listeners understand what is going on in Russian domestic politics today we are recording in early January 2026 and the news in these days are mostly occupied with the US operation in Venezuela and the Russian Foreign Ministry is condemning the breach of sovereignty by the US and calling all involved to avoid escalation. But at the same time, Russia's invasion of Ukraine is still going on. The peace negotiations that were announced with much fanfare by Trump don't seem to be going anywhere or anywhere fast. And Russians live under what seems an ever more repressive regime. So what I wanted to discuss with you is how we got to today, what made the invasion of Ukraine possible, but also what is keeping Putin in power and if it's even possible to imagine it, what a future without Putin in Russia is going to look like. And I like to focus on domestic politics specifically because it seems to me that the internal dynamics and the evolution of Putin's regime explain much more about the current moment than geopolitics or at least geopolitics alone. So to get us started I would like to ask you perhaps a blood question. So who governs in Russia?
- [02:49]
Vladislav Gorin
I guess Alexandra is better because that is her cup of tea and she is real expert and she is a real star. I'm just fond here and I'm for company.
- [03:03]
Alexandra Prokopyenko
So I think Vlad, you also can you also know the answers. For our listeners I can offer a very simple distinction. So in the political domain, all decisions are taken by Putin himself personally. Sometimes this decision could be influenced by special services reporting him something. Sometimes he could listen to some of his surroundings. But he cares the responsibility for the political decision and he is the one who articulates and manifests the political all decision making in the political domain. If we will go to the management domain, the so those who are facilitating political decisions or who are working on the regular, on the level of regular bureaucracy, which is important because it continues so the state is still functioning. We are not talking about failed state in Russia. Bureaucracy works, pensions are paid, budget sector is functioning. So all these are run by people who are on a daily basis taking decisions about economy and social life. But they very well know that they are not political players. So if the decision somehow looks like political one, they think that it's a fire and they scared like it's an open fire. So we have this two tier management system where political decisions are on Putin and facilitation of political decision and management of daily economic life is by government, central bank, federal and regional bureaucracy and other players. Of course, Putin can interfere whatever he wants and likes just his recent, well, I guess not really recent, but last couple of years. He's not super interested in domestic policy. He's not super interested in what's going on inside Russia. He's very focused on geopolitics and on the war where we know for sure that he's like a micromanager, could call to soldiers to the front line. And he's very into this type of management. But he's okay with raising taxes, he's okay with redistribution of wealth within the people. He's okay that lots of people in Russia are not happy with that or with what's going on. So that's I think the general description of how the system works.
- [05:43]
Vladislav Gorin
I want to add and maybe it could be not so intuitive understandable. So it could be a useful bird eye on that system. If we are looking at institutional design of Russian Federation, it is not like in America, there is specifically presidential public. And in that constitution, it was written and then changed first of all by Yeltsin, and then Putin changed it for himself. But the ground is actual and there is no just three roots of power. There are actually four roots of power. And one of them is like a monarchy presidential institution is not part of that system. So if we are talking about judiciary system and of course parliament and above them is president. Theoretically he has not very much power, but he has dictatorship power for crisis moments. Putin made that system regular. He made that possibility to rule things in Russia regular. First of all, Yeltsin was too weak for that. So it is logically ending of that constitutional construction. And the second, not understandable as I can.
- [07:14]
Alexandra Prokopyenko
Thing.
- [07:14]
Vladislav Gorin
It is some dualism of that structure. Structure of power in Russia is dualistic. There are two power vertical. One of them is formal governors, ministers, president, his clerks, and of course, I don't know, Dumas members, parliament members. It is important which is your official position. But there is the second unofficial system of relations. It is include not really unofficial or semi official relatives, for example, friends, informal contracts, some secret service activity. Sasha can tell you about that system of additional workers in any important organization in Russia. So the men from fsb.
- [08:08]
Alexandra Prokopyenko
From fsb who are assigned to different businesses or ministers and who actually which actual area of responsibility is to conduct civilians over workers on of the ministers or businesses. And it's not only in business, like state related business. So you can find this, this person in commercial, in fully 100% firms of universities. Universities, of course, yeah.
- [08:38]
Vladislav Gorin
Authorities and parties, by the way, parties are not independent in Russia. So we have the strange system when you have official low power and some unofficial. And it is something like Soviet system, but there were Soviet offices and Communist Party offices and it was more declarable. In current Russia we have some secret parallel power vertical.
- [09:10]
Licha Chaneti
Yeah, thanks. This makes sense.
- [09:11]
Vladislav Gorin
Looks like conspiracy. Yeah.
- [09:13]
Licha Chaneti
Yes, it makes a lot of sense.
- [09:14]
Vladislav Gorin
That's true.
- [09:15]
Licha Chaneti
But also I guess it would be useful to understand how this developed. Right. Because the structures, as you said, were set in place already under Yeltsin. A super presidential constitution. So the possibility to take up all of that power was already there, but then it was structured over time. So Putin's tenure is now very long. It's been like 26 years. And there have been stages and changes over time. Right. So is there any kind of turning point, you know, the war potentially being one that can explain how the system changed to get so personalized, so centralized on the person of Putin. And then with this dual structure of control, the formal and the informal.
- [10:00]
Alexandra Prokopyenko
I think that the war was enabled because the system was already designed the certain way. So it's not the war against Ukraine itself changes Russian decision making system. But because the system was designed a certain way, the war became possible. And if we will go look back. So first we see that Putin, when he took power in Kremlin back in 2000, he started to build up the power vertical. First he eliminated all regional leaders. He eliminated them from the upper chamber of Russian parliament, so the federation. So regional governors were pushed off there. He also introduced the institute of presidential representatives in federal districts. And it was very artificial upper level of executive power. So people with authority directly from the president to supervise regional governors who were elected by people. So here is some, some conflict point between two ways of, of from where power goes. Because I mean regional governors were really elected by people in their regions. And then someone comes from this federal center and said oh no, I have presidential authority to supervise you, to stop you or to tell you what what you want to do. That's diminishes power of regional leaders. Then in 2004, Putin canceled elections of region. And I think it's very, was very important factor on this construction of power vertical. In parallel he tried to to cut off capital. The very famous Khodorkovsky case started in 2003, but before that there was cases, open court cases and open persecution of oligarch Kuchinsky and Berezovsky attacks on independent television to all in terms of signaling, all these show that there is one point of view only, right point of view. And this right point of view goes only from the Kremlin. I think that this was important and early zeros, very, very important period. If we will look at how Russian decision making system was designed. Because not only business and not only regional governors were under Putin's attack. In 2007, head of drug control author Viktor Cherkessev, former Putin friend and very close ally, wrote a column in independent back then newspaper Kommersant where he described very vividly all controversies within the so called Silovix corporation, all controversies among enforcement agencies. And what happened next? Putin fired Cherkyasov, so he stepped down from his position in power. He lost his power, he lost his contact with the president. The whole corporation read this as the signal from Putin that you cannot discuss all your internal controversies publicly and you need to keep quiet. Then I think also very important was assassination of Boris Nuntsov. It was absolutely shocking for the system that you could be shot, you could be dead 100 meters from the Kremlin. And actually the murders and those who arranged the assassination can get away, can get away with that. I think then imprisonment of Federal Minister Alexei Ulukayv was also part of this, of all this, let's say grooming system of how Putin groomed the decision making vertical to make it, to design it the way we see now. So imprisonment of Alexei Lukayev. And so I think after 2015 there was no opposition to Putin anywhere. So bureaucracy and state related businesses knew their role really well that they are not interfere into anything that could be related to policy, to politics, but they can work on different policies and they can conduct different policies, economic policy, social policy, whatsoever. But what's. But any kind of political discussion, any kind of political cooperation, they are not there by political, I don't mean party parties or something with party politics, but it's like they are not solving conflicts in a political domain, but only in economical one. Like something like this. That's very visible for example, on the way of sanctions. How a Russian decision making system could fight with sanctions with one hand. And doing this sometimes, and so far quite successfully since Russia's economy is not on its knees yet. But at the same time, the major reason of this sanctions tsunami is the war against Ukraine. And it was very clear at the beginning that Western countries are sending sanctions because of the full scale invasion of Ukraine. But they cannot fight against full scale invasion of Ukraine because it is a political decision, they are not involved in it, but they can fight against sanctions. So they are choosing sanctions. That's how it works.
- [15:48]
Vladislav Gorin
I guess our conversation or motto could be dualistic because that story, what Sasha described, I. I want to notice that it was not the story of fight with the central power, with president. Many governors, many activists, actually political activists and many people in Russia wanted to be included in that system. And Putin has a good commercial proposal. Let's make money and let's live in some sort of peace with each other. No problem, just money. And many people in that system, business, big business and many government officials, people in state machine thought that it is about money and about good life and not about some mission to invade in Ukraine, to race to reconstruct Soviet Union or something like that. And I lived in one of regions of Russian Federation, the governor founder, post Soviet founder of that region. He was the person who sued with the Yeltsin about regional governor's vote. And he made that not tradition but system in Russia by his hands. And he used it for winning in that region. But then he sold all his local independence to Kremlin, to Putin because it was more safe and it was more prosperous. It was advantageous. So yes, when we are talking about that system, we can think about Putin like a trickster. He is trickster for his own system. System can resistance to his policy, his mission to make Soviet Union great again. And he broke it and break again and again. It was in 2014 with Crimea. It was by the way in Medvedev's presidency time in 2008. And it was very important point of Russian propaganda that not Medvedev, but Putin decided to invade in Georgia and demonstrate to Western that Russia is not weak and not soft. So 2022 was also his trick. And of course he thought that it would be more successful something like Venezuela in 2025 for Americans. But as we can see now, it was not so, as Putin thought should be.
- [18:52]
Alexandra Prokopyenko
If I may just jump in for a second, since a lot mentioned Venezuela, it's fascinating to me that how we can see authorities that authoritarian regimes are not standing for each other. I mean, for Putin, who is super involved in Ukraine, he already lost Syria, his ally Assad, of course he's now in Moscow. But Syria regime fall. There was US Attacks on Iran and Russia couldn't say anything and couldn't do anything. Same with Madura, Putin's friend in Venezuela. It's interesting that other authoritarian regimes, regime type of regimes, we get used to think that they're authoritarian like Chinese are also not standing for their cronies, their colleagues. And how this authoritarian axis looks like feels now. I think it would be a fruitful discussion on the behavior of different types of political regimes after Maduro's imprisonment.
- [19:57]
Licha Chaneti
Yeah, it would be very interesting to see what follows, if anything, after the words like of condemnation. But to go back to the elites, if I can summarize, and I think that's the point of your book, Alexandra, the idea that the elites, by the point of the full invasion of Ukraine, Putin reshaped the system in a way that it was both risky to not fall in line and advantageous, as Vladisa added, to fall in line to an extent that then even though it seemed that most of the elite, especially the economic elites, would not find the war advantageous, they were not informed, they were not probably didn't like the war or want the war, they still went along with it. And my understanding is right that, you know, the point that you're making to.
- [20:42]
Alexandra Prokopyenko
My opinion, there is. There was no other options for them, no other considered options really considered options for them to not to get along with the Putin's decision later on the next step of reflection. They of course rationalize their choices for them differently. So fear is very important for these people and that's also a glue how Putin keeps keeps his elite loyal to him. That's fear. They are absolutely terrified of perspective of being imprisoned or being killed or part of their team could be imprisoned, persecuted or whatever. So fear is important. Second, yeah, getting become beneficiaries of the situation, get some profit not only in terms of money, but also in terms of different types of political resources. Having for example, having direct access to Putin's ears. So be the person who was the last in the room saying something to Putin in terms of all these informal agreements, informal practices which existing in Russian decision making system. It's quite a prize for some of them. Of course, some of them, some of Russian elite members, high ranked bureaucrats were quite offended by sanctions and sanctions regime. The current design of sanctions regime alienate them a lot and just pushing, blowing up the resentment, saying that okay, there is no rule of law here in the western part of the world. We were mistaken. They are all Russophobic and Russian propaganda doing their job really good. Just fulfilling this type of expectations and cherry picking Russophobic cases from here, showing them in Russia and repeating multiple times so it become like a background for your daily basis. And this, unfortunately this works. So yeah, there I think there was summing this up, there was no options for them to act differently because of the fear and because of the potential perspective of become a beneficiary of the current situation.
- [22:59]
Licha Chaneti
So we talked about the elites quite a lot. But what about society? Right, so elite defection, as you say, it didn't seem to be an option. What about the relationship between the Putin regime and society? So the social contract, at least at the start in the first half of Putin's tenure, seemed to be one that was based on providing stability, providing a modicum of prosperity, not least on the back of the high revenues from oil and gas in exchange for political acquiescence and lack of any form of democracy, especially at the national level. So it would seem that this is changed. I'm not sure whether it's the war that changed that completely or this social contract was already fraying before then. So is there a new social contract or a broken social contract in Russia today? How would you qualify in a way the relationship between the regime and the people?
- [23:55]
Vladislav Gorin
I'm afraid I'm a little bit skeptic, but I don't believe in that logic of social contract in that practical case in Russia, that theory was. And maybe it. He is just now popular in some circles. But I'm not sure that we can think about that system of relations of power and society like some contract. Nobody asked Russian people since I guess 1999, because the first elections of Putin was not clear. And maybe it could be two stages of that elections of him. So he. He has never elected in competitional normal elections. And if before the war, in 2014 or in 2022, if he had asked people in Russia is it important for us to invade in Ukraine or rechange that regime in Kyiv, I think many people, most of them would have said no, thank you. We won't live our best life without that strange ambitions Crimea. Thank you. It was great present. We were surprised. It was something strange and we won in all wars in the world. So stop making new victories. Let's live inside our country and make something for countries inside that.
- [25:37]
Alexandra Prokopyenko
Well, since social contract is just a concept, I think we can if we will continue to stick with the concept of the contract. We are now in this sort of transition period and first and foremost when we are talking about Russian society, we need to keep in mind about the raising and the growing, constantly growing level of repression especially it's quite heavy on Russian regions and even ordinary people and lots of ordinary people, not only opposition leaders and opposition members, activists or someone now could be repressed. And it's also it signals to the society that not to say not to expose yourself, not to manifest your position, that's the only right strategy. And it's also relates to pollsters to service which we can rely. And we all know the problem of answers in such kind of service. But anyway. So anyway, people in Russia are not happy with what's going on and they express this unhappiness in. In any way that it can. But of course it's not. It's not the way how we get used to see these expressions on here in the West. So what's so something super brave on Russia's in eyes of their Russian. In eyes of Russian citizens, here comes like something nothing special. Frankly speaking, if we will talk about the economy. The war was a very interesting phenomenon here and here the initial shock of 2022, which was prompted by the war and sanctions, was followed by an illusion of positive of change that lasted until I would say 2024. So budgetary injections into the army and the work created some sort of ripple effect on military. We're now calling this Keynesian economics and entrepreneurs and Russia border areas were the first to feel the benefits. And then the stimulus reached people in small towns and under resourced regions. And this stimulus was massive. So it was literally the biggest amount of money people ever saw in their life. And by many that was seen as a change for social transformation.
- [28:04]
Licha Chaneti
It is money that you know to pay for the military. So actually the opportunities to work in the military and. Or money that goes into industry and then kind of gets more like job.
- [28:17]
Alexandra Prokopyenko
Sure, both. So we're talking about first, we're talking about those who were somehow involved into military. So it's sign up bonuses, it's wounded or killing the benefits to families. Second, it's a big chunk of workers who's who involved into who signed up to their roles in military industry complex. But then when we are talking about military complex there is also civil industries who are serving the frontline. Pharmaceuticals, textile, leather industry and others. So people employed there also become some sort of beneficiaries of this redistribution of this very weird redistribution system. When a state redistribute big chunk of the demand, what is demand from its expenditures? So the state redistributes this part of demand through industry and directly to people. So regions with the greatest number of contract soldiers saw the largest number of new loans and mortgages, for example. That's what we saw in statistics and the correlation for the number of military deaths. So those who are killed in the war, which we considered as a proxy for the number of soldiers from any particular region and loans issued was poverty. So so disadvantage. It's not funny, but it's disadvantaged. It groups traded risk of death to boost their spending power. But by mid 2024 this picture started to erode and there was and so and sociologists, both run by state and independent sociologists who still work in Russia started to record a collapse in hope as people began to feel that the war and patriotic mobilization were not bringing the expected changes. So I think that for Russian people the hope for bright future for prosperity for them for their kids was important. And by for example, by October 2025, for every one person who reported about improved circumstances, more than three said that they were getting worse. Summing up the the attitude of the population to the war is controverted and complicated. But definitely we cannot talk about full support or major support of Putin's war effort by population as long as the war drags the society into it. I think the changes in terms of history, it's very little time passed. So we need some more time, we need some more historical distance to assess changes in Society but I think they're quite deep. And I'm not even mentioning veterans who at some point will come back from the war. Now they're not. So it's not. It's a hypothetical problem. But that's the new reality Russians are going to live with for decades, I guess.
- [31:28]
Vladislav Gorin
Yeah, many problems will be. And we can say now that many effects was smashed decorated and war in Russia it is something still for people not from big cities, not from capitals. It sounds very social Darwinistic, but it's true. It is something about people from jails, from social special groups not from the middle of society not core. And Putin's regime and his administration can manipulate with that things and they can use money, violence, repressions, propaganda for making a hug of war for heads of my co citizens. So yeah, there is is a very good actually writer from Russia, Vladimir Sarokin. He said about Russia that is some sort of cocktail of vodka, blood and snow or crushed ice. So we can think about a rule class and about simple. Sorry for that word citizens that they drink that cocktail with not same proportions for someone there is more vodka or money. For some of them is more blood like violence and repressions violence outside and inside Russia and crushed ice something sedative. Something about its stabilized that system what makes an illusion of normal life. Sorry for that. Poetic, metaphoric expressions.
- [33:17]
Licha Chaneti
Yeah, good if grimy metaphor. I was thinking about the recent change in conscription rules where there would be. I don't know if it's going to result into more conscription and making more difficult to avoid conscription. Is there you know we are consequence of the fact that things are becoming more. Is it becoming more difficult to get. Get people to want to join the military? The more people you're trying to avoid at this point as the advantages are not as good as people would have hoped for.
- [33:50]
Alexandra Prokopyenko
I think we have here two side roads. First. Well, of course everyone who wants. Who who wanted to sign up a contract with the military already done it because bonuses were in 20 in 2024 bonuses was extremely high. But I still think that there is plenty of men who can. Who can go to the war for money. But also mobilization as it was announced and designed back in 2022 was turned the system into some sort of bureaucratic collapse because the system suddenly discovered that they are not ready to such kind of stress that there was no any kind of re Ester. The statistics at some points were holding manually. So there was no digitalization of lists of people who can be mobilized. And it was ugly. And it was ugly from. From People's side, and it was ugly from pure bureaucratic side. And even in the cradle of bureaucracy in the Russian government, there was problems with. With lists of those who could be mobilized. So I guess this is all this effort of the system to bring to any sort of order the conscription to bring new rules there and to digitalize any kind of re ester they can make. It's also an effort of the system not to fail if the second wave of mobilization become possible, if Putin will require, will give such order. The system cannot afford itself to have this kind of semicolapse as it was back in 2022.
- [35:40]
Licha Chaneti
Thank you. So I wanted to bring the conversation to the parliamentary elections. Now it's election year in Russia, if you can call it that way. So the elections to the Duma will be in delpho. And these are to some extent or to a lot of the extent of farce, as they're not going to be free and fair. There's no actual opposition candidates in the ballots and there is plenty of intimidation and repression of voters, activists. Anyone who kind of speaks out wants to think differently. But it's a farce that needs organization and needs state resources. So maybe it's a farce that might reveal how the machine of power works. So I want you to ask, are these elections anyway important? Is there anything that we should be paying attention to when the elections happen? Also in terms of any outlet that the opposition might have with smart voting or something like that, or outlet for people to vent their frustrations in any way?
- [36:37]
Alexandra Prokopyenko
Yeah, I guess we cannot ignore them completely because elections are important first and foremost for the system. On people's side we can see any new and interesting ways of how the population express its frustration. Russian people could be very creative here and I think that they will show us something. And not, not to us, but first to them. But it's very important for the system because lots of people involved. They have KPI on how to conduct the elections, how to bring people to the polling stations. They have already drafted results which they need to achieve for different participants in this election. So well being of people, they are a big part of bureaucratic machine on the state level, on regional level and on the corporate level, because we know that most part of voting is a corporate mobilization. When people responsible for the election, at the presidential stuff gathering, CEOs or, or their deputy is responsible for elections, the huge corporations and the big employers and saying what kind of results they need to bring after the elections. So for these people, elections are part of their career of Part of their daily duties. It's important and by. And watching on how they are working on this. It's important for observers who are watching at how state works at bureaucracy and its capacities and fails. It's an important process. It's also not worth it to mention that Russian government split raising up tariffs on services, on utilities and services of monopolies. So the first one would be already done after the 1st of January. And it's the tiny one, just the tiny amount, but which gives monopolies and utilities companies some money flow to survive. But the major hike is going after the elections. So not to disturb people. And this give us. Give me a point saying that we cannot say that elections are not non important.
- [39:04]
Vladislav Gorin
Yeah, it is definitely some crisis period or potentially crisis period for authorities. And I guess they remember the real crisis it was. They were surprised in 2010 when there were big protests in big cities of Russia because of falsifications of these elections. It was elections also in. In parliament of Russia. And I guess they, I mean people in Kremlin think about that election like a problem because of presidential acclamation. Presidential election of 2024. We can see, we could see in that moment then even if some candidate has an illusion of not independence, but protest or possibility to be not the part of Putin's system, many people wanted to support him. It was the case of Boris Nadezhdin and not only that person. So I guess it would be interesting to see how they will manage that elections. And we can see now in Russia repressions against even Communist Party or some loyalist activists. So Communist Party in Russia is very loyal to Kremlin. So it is not typical that they are also target of repressions. And there is also some evidence of their paranoia before the elections, which will be in September.
- [40:55]
Licha Chaneti
So we are getting towards the end. And I wanted to ask you about the future, if you care to try and imagine it. So I was reading earlier actually today about the set of proposals that have been prepared by the team of Julena Walnaya, the widow of Alexei Navalny. She convened this expert forum and they're preparing what they call a plan for change. I wanted to ask this question about the future anyway, but at the start of their press release, they were saying that Putin regime will end no matter what, either because he dies or because it's deposed. And so their idea is that we need to start imagining the future now to be able to seize the small window of opportunity that will come once the moment arrives. So I want to ask you too, how do you imagine the end of Putinism yourself and also how do you imagine the day after? Right. What comes after Putin? Of course you can't predict the future, but is there anything that comes to mind to you as the most likely or the most desired path that Russia will take after the end of Putin?
- [42:09]
Vladislav Gorin
I have two scenarios and there is no desirable scenarios. First of them, as I can imagine what Putin wants, I guess he could want to transfer his power to one of his sons. He has two small kids and it is a little bit a secret of Russian Federation. So maybe he wants to be like Alif in Azerbaijan or try to make but successfully dictators and leaders in Central Asia. So. So it could be, of course it is some sort of conspiracy theory or fantasy. But I think it is not absolutely unuseful to think about that scenario. More realistic it is. Again, we can think about Central Asia and examples in Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan or even Turkmenistan. So authority system, low chances for democratization. But maybe some spring like in Russian can say about not so hard authoritarian dictatorship. So yeah, some. Some more soft version of this system. Sasha, what do you think about scenario?
- [43:37]
Alexandra Prokopyenko
I don't like to picture different kind of scenarios because I don't really have the full information here. But I know for sure that it's definitely not worthy to cherry pick any kind of names, bring them here and say that this is a potential successor or this or that. That's counterproductive. But what I'm pretty sure that the transition of power is the major Putin's problem, much bigger than all others problem. And this issue should overwhelm him right now. Of course he has all health care system at his disposal, but still he knows pretty well that as long as he points someone as his successor, he become a lame duck. That's why we are not seeing anyone who even potentially could be this. But we can think about the axis of transition of power, on which axis it will go. That there was definitely a budgetary and macroeconomical dimension. That Russian economy is heavily imbalanced and it couldn't run a long time. I mean decades in a stance like this. So it should come to some equilibrium. And of course any political leader in for Putin himself he should put the events the way this equilibrium could be beneficiary to him or to his political regime. That's definitely a question, an interplay between legit and logical request to normalize relations with the West. If we are saying purely economically because there are premium markets not only for Russian hydrocarbones, but for other Russian businesses. And if you don't have an open environment, an open innovative environment. You are not developing and being limited only by domestic market not worthy for businesses. So from this side I can see some sort of request on normalization relationship with the western part of the world. But at the same time there will be people hurt by war, wounded by war veterans or those who are overwhelmed with resentment, who require more far right leader. So I mean here also there is some sort of controversies and options and options. I don't think that the democratic future of Russian system is possible. There is a very little demand on this from the inside coming back to the time of collapsing the Soviet Union and we know this from multiple studies and I can quote my favorite Nancy Rees about Russian Perestrov voices of Russian Perestrovica when people had a great hope that democracy will come hand in hand with prosperity and financial well being. Now there is no such positive and such positive example and some positive example from the outside and I think it's a problem where democratic path of Russia. So that would be my answer. I don't know what comes next but I see that there would be a mess with lots of problems.
- [47:07]
Licha Chaneti
Well, that's a wonderful note to end on. Unfortunately this is all we have time for today, but listeners were interested to know more. They can look at the show notes for links to Alexandra's work and to the independent media company Meduza where they can find also Vladislas podcast in Russian and the Meduza English language coverage for current events in Russia.
- [47:31]
Vladislav Gorin
Can I say some small postcript Aleksandrov said about her book and I highly recommend to buy it and to read and she's a real expert. And Elsa, I want to make small adverts if it is possible. My media Medusa is in trouble so if you can to support us, please do it. You can make donations. If it would be recurrent regular it would be great. And Medusa by the way has English version so you can see that we can write normally in English. My English is not perfect, it is awful. But believe me in Russian I am like a Kikaro. So my podcast is good. Just trust. You can't understand now, but trust please.
- [48:25]
Licha Chaneti
Thank you both so much for joining me in this episode of the People Power Politics Podcast. And thanks as always to our listeners. Thank you for listening to the People Power Politics podcast brought to you by cedar, the Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation at the University of Birmingham. To learn more about our Centre and the exciting work we do on these issues around the world, please follow us on Twitter Edarbham and visit our website using the link in the podcast description.
- [48:58]
Alexandra Prokopyenko
Sam.