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Ideology or Kleptocracy?
Some kleptocrats still need an ideology. Here’s what it’s for and how it works
Before 2014 and the annexation of Crimea, many analysts considered Putin’s system to be an authoritarian post-Soviet cleptocracy. In such regimes, leaders are primarily interested in money. The Russian leader and his inner circle established control over the rent money flows from energy exports, distributed the budget, and subordinated profitable sectors of the economy. Usually such regimes are not ruled by repression, but by buying the loyalty of elites and the population.
Many observers went even further and called Vladimir Putin a “liberal imperialist” (possibly because he enriched his circle of friends and allowed others to enrich themselves). But since Putin’s “” (2007), the ideological component in his policy has become more and more prominent. Does Putin’s regime have an ideology? And if so, what does it consist of and why did the regime make an ideological turn?
Politicians and analysts in the West have underestimated the ideological component of Russia’s ruling elites, who are a mixture of power brokers and former Soviet nomenklatura. Their views, largely shaped by the Soviet period, their feelings about the collapse of the USSR and the Cold War, which they believe was lost, have an ideological…
