The Kremlin Emboldened: Paradoxes of Decline

Issue Date October 2017
Volume 28
Issue 4
Page Numbers 101-109
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The Russian system of personalized power is growing ever more dependent on the same strategies that proved useless in sustaining the USSR. While the system still has the potential to limp along, its survival tactics render the it progressively more dysfunctional. Among the circumstances weighing against the system’s survival are the unintended yet logical consequences of the regime’s own strategies for monopolizing power and resources. While there are grounds for cautious optimism regarding Russian society’s future beyond the system, the system itself is moving toward its self-destruction.

About the Author

Lilia Shevtsova is the author of Interregnum: Russia Between Past and Future (2014) and Putin’s Russia (2010). 

View all work by Lilia Shevtsova