Putin’s Fragile Compact With the Russian People

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

There’s a growing sense that Vladimir Putin is in a pretty good position as he heads into 2024. Certainly that’s what Putin wants the rest of the world to think—that he can outlast Ukraine and its supporters in the West.

Yet the situation looks more complicated on the ground in Russia—and there are a few people better positioned to make sense of the reality on the ground than Andrei Kolesnikov. Kolesnikov, a journalist and senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, has been in Moscow since the war began. Over the last two years, he’s written a series of deeply illuminating pieces for Foreign Affairs. In December 2022, the Kremlin listed him as a foreign agent.

Kolesnikov spoke with my colleague Hugh Eakin earlier this week about Putin’s hold on power—and how Russians really view their leader and his disastrous war.

HUGH EAKIN

Hello, I’m Hugh Eakin, senior editor at Foreign Affairs, stepping in for Dan this week. As we enter 2024, the war in Ukraine is reaching its third anniversary. Vladimir Putin is preparing for a presidential election in March. And I think it’s fair to say that for much of the West, Russia remains a conundrum. But what about Russians themselves? What do they think? How do they see this unbelievably deadly war? And what about the future of Russia?

It’s with huge pleasure that I’m speaking today with Andrei Kolesnikov, who has watched the war unfold from Russia itself. In a series of pieces for Foreign Affairs, Andrei has, I think, done more than perhaps anyone else to explain this conundrum of Russia—and I should say it’s a special privilege for me, having been Andrei’s editor these past couple years. Andrei, thanks so much for joining me today.

ANDREI KOLESNIKOV

Thank you for this invitation.

HUGH EAKIN

One of the recurring themes in your pieces for Foreign Affairs has been the extent to which Putin has been able to create and sustain a kind of normalcy—or warped normalcy, we might say. And this comes through in some of the sociological data you have tracked since the war began. Can you give us a picture of that?

ANDREI KOLESNIKOV

You’re right. The word normalcy may be the main word of the year 2023, because everyone is trying to continue business as usual in private life, in everyday life. And for this regime, indifference is the main tool to maintain a high level of support for Putin and his war. 

We’re witnessing the appearance of people who we can call “swamp people” or “quagmire people.” They simply follow the rules; they simply follow the official discourse; they simply are trying to adapt to the current situation. They’re trying to find words or self-justifications for their behavior. They’re trying to find words which can describe the external world for themselves. So because of that, they use official discourse, they use official narratives, they use Putin’s words, they use the words of the state television. And that’s enough for them, because they have to survive this period. 

And now, more and more people—it was especially visible before the New Year—want peace, or at least a ceasefire or peace talks, because this is an expression of war fatigue. They want to return to normalcy in a proper sense of the word.

HUGH EAKIN

So this is a really interesting point; you have this memorable phrase you use, “learned indifference,” and it’s fascinating how you described the way the regime has inculcated this sensibility. But it has all these different facets. 

There is, of course, the repression, the growing tightening of the screws, but also a kind of economic normalcy that has been sustained. And it was surprising to me to read in your most recent report with your colleague Denis Volkov that actually, for many households, incomes have gone up slightly because of these vast social payouts. So is the regime kind of enforcing this normalcy through a kind of economic unreality?

ANDREI KOLESNIKOV

Yes, the regime is trying to spend money primarily on security issues, on war, on the military-industrial complex. But it means higher salaries for people who are working in this military-industrial complex and those who are moving from civil economic sectors to war economic sectors. This economy is not healthy, this is more about state investments, more about producing something not so productive—I mean, this is an economy for death, not for life. 

But in the short term, it works. In the short term, it provokes good attitudes toward the government. People are dying, but their families are getting more social payments because of that. And Putin pays for soldiers, he pays for the security services of people from the army, et cetera. And all those people, they are like a new middle class—instead of the old middle class, which consisted of businessmen or others who tried to make it themselves, just like in other market economies.

At the same time, we have a lot of marketized sectors which are literally saving Putin’s economy, so they are saving Putin’s stability. This is the picture from a short-term perspective. But when we’re talking about the middle- or long-term perspective, the situation is much worse, because we’re losing the very essence of the economy: we’re losing people. 

So in this sense, demography is the main challenge for this regime. When we’re talking about demography, we’re talking about the future. And in the future, this country will lose a lot of people—a lot of people who can work, who could be productive for a normal economy which works for life and not for death.

HUGH EAKIN

I want to get to this culture of death, because this seems so important in creating this new normalcy. It’s also creating, as you’ve described, a kind of cult of death. How does this really work in Russian discourse? You have a kind of heroization of sacrifice, but also a sense that, according to this social contract as you describe it, that ordinary Russians are not themselves being asked to really make sacrifices.

ANDREI KOLESNIKOV

Yes. People want to live their normal, everyday lives just like before the war. But at the same time, we’re witnessing the appearance of, let’s say, new moral norms. And one of the norms is a very archaic one: this account of heroic death, heroization of participation in the Holy War—just like it was in very archaic societies, not in modernized societies. This is one of the pillars of the new morality. 

At the same time, we see a new, unwritten social contract between the population and Putin. “Some of you can serve, can go to war physically, we will pay for it, and we will admit that you’re great patriots at the same time. But not all of you [must] choose this option. You can stay at home, you could be simply people who are working for our victory, not war; this is your choice. We do not involve all of you in the trenches. But in exchange for that, you must support me. You must support my regime. You must go to the polling stations in March 2024. You are paying with this ballot for your quiet and normal future.” 

How long this social contract can work properly, nobody knows. But for sure Putin will use it during his presidential campaign.

HUGH EAKIN

One of your other fascinating revelations to me was that there has actually been an increase in support for repressive and restrictive laws. We, from the outside, would think, “How long will Russia sustain this ever-tightening of the screws?” And yet what you described, sociologically, is that, at least for this indifferent middle section of Russian society, they are supporting, they’re going along with these trackdowns, the silencing of civil society and the all-encompassing control of the state. Is that accurate?

ANDREI KOLESNIKOV

So, people do not actively support this regime. At the same time, they do not actively support any ideological inventions of this regime. Let’s take, for instance, the special term “foreign agent.” So several years ago, maybe even two years ago, not many people knew of these foreign agents—maybe it was Biden, or somebody else. Now they know that this is the fifth column, and that all these people undermine our consolidation and our steps toward victory. And because of that, more and more people are accusing foreign agents of undermining our consolidation. But this is also simply a passive following of the rules and words of this regime’s, let’s say, ideological environment. 

At the same time, this is a process of spoiling the brains and souls of the whole nation. And because of that, we are witnessing a quite small but visible wave of denunciations. And sometimes, this language which is used by the authorities could be compared with the language of Stalinism, the situation of the late 1940s and early 1950s, in terms of rhetoric, the absurdity of this rhetoric, and the absurdity of repressions. It’s not the scale of Stalinism in the sense of mass repressions; but the quality, if we can say so, of persecution, the quality of punishment and sentences, as well as this above-mentioned wave of denunciations—it’s almost comparable with this period of Russian history. But again, this is all because of this anticipatory obedience to the new rules which Putin has established in this society.

HUGH EAKIN

Looking back over the past two years, since February 2022, there have been moments when you have discerned cracks in this system; when the social contract appeared to be challenged, if not completely breaking down. And some of them—in the Prigozhin uprising, I think maybe the West saw this as more of a big event than Russians themselves. Although I believe you noted that it was passive; no one stood up to defend the regime, they just watched, which is what you might expect from this passive indifference. On the other hand, the partial mobilization was quite a shock to this contract. Can you talk about that, and what would be the implications if, in fact, there were another mobilization?

ANDREI KOLESNIKOV

For the Kremlin, it’s better to avoid further mobilization, partial or general, because there is a lack of working force in the economy, there’s a deficit of labor shortages. This is one of the main problems of Putin’s current economic model. And partial mobilization can spoil not only the public mood, which could be much gloomier than now—it can spoil the economy. And I hope that the Kremlin understands it. And because of that, some very important people like Putin himself say that “We’re not going to do a new wave of partial mobilization. It’s enough for us to use your volunteer efforts to join the army.” And really, they rely on volunteer steps, rely on contracts with people who want to get money for their military service.

For the moment, it works. And for the continuation of this kind of war of attrition, I guess it’s enough to have volunteers in the trenches, because there is a lack of well-qualified officers, there is a lack of necessity for more and more people who could be a new portion of cannon fodder. But at the same time, society is in a permanent tension because of this—because they don’t want their children, their boys, to go to war, to be killed and to become killers. 

One of the problems of the end of the previous year was the problem of small but very vocal protests from the families of mobilized people—not professional soldiers or officers. We’re not talking about, for instance, volunteers or people who are signing contracts. These people were simply mobilized in October or November of 2022. Now they’re still in the fields, some of them without any kind of vacation. So the families, the wives, the mothers—they say, “Let them return home. Let somebody else serve, not our brothers, sons, and fathers.”

HUGH EAKIN

These are, presumably, patriotic families. Their sons are fighting, and now they’re standing up. Could this become more of a problem for the regime?

ANDREI KOLESNIKOV

Yeah, this is the right notion. Are they against the war? They are against the service of their boys and husbands. But right now we hear more voices from this community: “Let’s stop the war.” They begin to understand that the source of the problem for their families is not in mobilization as such. The problem is the war as such. 

And this is a bit dangerous for the Kremlin, because the source of this discontent is not somewhere inside liberal communities or from immigrant communities. This is the core nation, the core people, the electoral basis of Putin at the end of the day. And they express, in quite a rude manner sometimes, much discontent with the situation. This is something new. And for the moment, I think the Kremlin doesn’t know how to behave in that situation.

HUGH EAKIN

And already, in December, when Putin gave his discussion with Russian journalists—which itself was, I guess, a demonstration of normalcy, he was continuing this tradition after suspending it a year ago—didn’t he also say then that there would be no new mobilization? This has become a kind of campaign theme.

ANDREI KOLESNIKOV

Yes, he said it. And again, it was one more message from his side: “Here is this unwritten social contract. It works, and it will continue to work in the future. So, be quiet, be good citizens, be patriotic citizens. But at the same time, you can return to work. You can return to your everyday life.” 

The same story with this so-called election—we can name it “electoral procedures,” not elections as such. “You must go to the polling stations, you must vote for me [Putin]. But at the same time, after that, you can go to the cinema, you can go home, you can concentrate on your private problems.” Because that’s enough, at the moment.

HUGH EAKIN

The other theme that seemed to come through in this December talk was the traditional values. And this gets into this sort of archaism of the regime that you have written about. How far do you think the Kremlin wants to go with these attacks against the private lives of people, now with attacks on individual morality, the LGBTQ movement, and what are portrayed as decadent Western practices? How is this serving the regime?

ANDREI KOLESNIKOV

People in power, they’re trying to invent new restrictions for people. The question of abortions appeared again, and there was a discussion in society—and paradoxically, there was kind of a resistance to new abortion laws. 

And Putin, I must admit, was very cautious in that sense. He said that we must be more rational with these questions, and we must research the question. Because the problem of abortion is not so important in this society; Russia is just like the United States or France or something like that if we’re talking about the level of abortion in this country. But this topic was exploited by traditionalists, by quasi-patriots, as one of the main symbolic topics. So sometimes society can resist these interventions into their private life.

There was a very symptomatic case at the end of the year, a so-called almost-naked party, when some stellar people from the milieu of stars, singers, famous fashion bloggers, appeared almost naked during a party in one of the nightclubs in Moscow. It demonstrated how far away war is for average representatives of this community. But they were punished strongly by the authorities—one guy was arrested, even, for some time. The organizers of this party were punished in a different way; it wasn’t about criminal persecution, but they nearly lost their businesses. Because it’s not moral to demonstrate your naked body during the period of patriotic war. And it was a great, great scandal—just like the mutiny against Putin’s regime, against the consolidation of everyone around the commander [Prigozhin]. So it’s also a very symptomatic case.

HUGH EAKIN

One issue we haven’t talked about is, in fact, the civil society; the liberal Russia, and what has happened to it. And I think you can speak to this from a privileged position as sometimes, we think, one of the last liberals in Moscow. How is your own situation as a foreign agent? And has this aspect of Putin’s Russia, in a sense, been marginalized to the point that it is not his main concern at this point—that, as you say, he’s more concerned about the mothers of soldiers? Or is there still a continual, constant paranoia about opposition?

ANDREI KOLESNIKOV

Well, Putin will not leave his second front; his struggle, his fight with a civil society and liberal opposition. You may know that Navalny totally disappeared in the days of the beginning of the presidential campaign. They’re afraid of his words because his words have weight, and they will continue to suppress our civil society despite the fact that it looks like they control everything around them.

At the same time, in different communities of this society, the self-censoring is more important than the suppression or censoring as such. If we take, for instance, book markets, this is your personal decision as an editor, your personal decision as a bookseller, whether to edit or publish or sell or not to sell the books of foreign agents, for instance. There are a lot of scandals around it. And this is a personal decision of every member of society: whether you are ready to be smart enough and brave enough to publish these people and to sell their books. There are no restrictions on it. But at the same time, I mean, a lot of people prefer a quiet life and self-censoring instead of continuing business as usual, just like it was before the war.

Nevertheless, there are a lot of brave people here who are still continuing their work in theaters as theater directors, as editors in publishing houses, sometimes even in media, sometimes being blocked as a newspaper without a license. You can continue your activity if you are brave enough—just like, for instance, the group of people who were working in Novaya Gazeta, which was totally blocked and prohibited. They continued to work, simply, consolidating around their editor, Dmitry Muratov; for instance, producing a new magazine, producing a website. Which is not media, but it’s visible for people who want to see, want to watch, want to know additional information, want to get alternative opinions. There are even NGOs who are continuing to work here despite very high levels of suppression.

So the question is: Was it possible to behave like this? You can try, or you can refuse to behave like this. So, in my personal situation, I’m trying to continue to live according to the constitution, like a free person in an unfree world. And so for the moment, I’m trying to write, I’m trying to broadcast, I’m trying to express my personal vision—and I’m still in Russia. And it is possible to be here—with some risks of being persecuted strongly, but why not try? Why not test the reality in that sense?

HUGH EAKIN

One of the really interesting things that you point to in the Levada surveys is that, correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t it about 20 percent of the population that is in opposition to the war? It’s about the same who are strong supporters; the opposition are about the same, about a fifth; and there’s this large, indifferent middle. But 20 percent has held pretty steady. Is that correct?

ANDREI KOLESNIKOV

Yes, absolutely. This is kind of a balance inside the society. Around 20 percent plus from the conservative wing. This is a figure which describes the strong supporters, aggressive supporters, of the regime. The same—around 20 percent—do not support this regime, who prefer democracy and the westernization of Russia. And in the middle we see this swamp, these people who are ready to follow the official narrative, who are ready to refuse to think independently, because they simply want a quiet life.

This construction of the society was typical for this country, even before the war. Now it’s more visible. But what is evident is that during the military or patriotic campaigns, the different ratings of Putin experience visible growth, experience a visible boost in support from this very, let’s say, man-in-the-middle, indifferent group of people. In more quiet times, Putin is not so actively supported. But now we’re witnessing the stabilization of this bad equilibrium. The circumstances of strong suppression, the internal front, and the continuation of war as the external front—we can’t predict that something could be changed in a short-term or middle-term perspective.

HUGH EAKIN

I’m glad you brought in this longer-term perspective, because I did want to turn, in the time we have left, to the longer history of Putinism, which you have written about powerfully—particularly in a longer essay you did for the magazine this fall called “The End of the Russian Idea.” And I think one of the really interesting ways of looking at this, which you have put forward, is that in fact what is happening now is yet another cycle of a pattern that goes back really quite far in Russian history. And this is a cycle toward and away from the West—or, you could say, toward and away from a kind of Stalinization, if that is a model. Can you just talk about that pattern, which in fact you traced to before Stalin, to the imperial era?

ANDREI KOLESNIKOV

Yeah. It was once fashionable to say that Putin and his team had no ideology at all, that their personal ideology was money and corruption. It turned out that this was not entirely true. Money and kleptocratic activities are very important, they do matter, but even more important is the imperial and at the same time nationalistic worldview of the people who came to power at the beginning of the 2000s. People from the secret services, people who were adept at using the official Russian Orthodox church as a tool for returning to very archaic times. And I think this very war was a consequence of this kind of thinking. It was a consequence of their ideology. 

We will not witness any kind of war without this ideology. We will not witness this regime, which becomes more and more authoritarian and even, say, hybrid-totalitarian, without this ideology. So we will not see this mobilization of society without this ideology. It is very archaic. But we found out in the circumstances of the twenty-first century that it still works, it is appealing to previous historical greatness.

The main pillar in this ideology is the memory about the so-called great patriotic war—the Second World War—and the whole victory. Putin demonstrates that he is, in a personal sense, kind of an inheritor of this great victory. This is not so. It is hypocrisy to compare this victory in 1945 with the current unprovoked war. But for the population, which is trying to find justifications and words for the justification of a current state of affairs, it works. 

And during the last year, Putin found new words and a new framework for this ideology: traditional values, great history, imperial thinking; all the stuff that is part of the so-called Russian idea, which was very marginal for a long time. But now this is a tool for Putin to manage this country, to rule this country. And the model of his political system needs this ideology—this national, imperial, messianic ideology. So there are all the elements on the table: this hybrid totalitarian regime; semi-mobilized society; rent-seeking state capitalism; and, around all these points, we have a national, imperial, messianic ideology.

HUGH EAKIN

And another element to this, which seems so striking is—and you phrased this in your piece for us—that unlike even his imperial predecessors, and even Stalin to some extent, Putin is seeking an empire without modernization, a kind of anti-modern empire. And this seems like such a striking idea when we think of Russia; even thinking of the earlier Putin years, when it seemed that there was this kind of managed democracy and Russians were allowed to get rich to enjoy the western economy just as long as Putin was in power. Now we seem to have gone to a very different point, where the West is actually the enemy. And the war now is now very much framed as a war against the West; this is not a war in Ukraine. Is that the case?

ANDREI KOLESNIKOV

Yes. This is a war with the West, with the Western idea, with Westernism, with anchors and organizations of the west, just like NATO or European structures. And this fight is an existential one, this fight has a historiosophic sense, let’s say. 

And this model has its technological side. Let’s take the model of “us” and “them.” Who were “them” before the war? The authorities, oligarchs, Putin’s circles. Who were “us”? Simple, average Russian people. Right now, who are “them”? Westerners, the West as such. And who are “us”? We are consolidated around Putin.

This is absolutely another situation. And even people who were against Putin before this war for some reasons—I do not mean liberal-minded people, but simply people who were expressing discontent with the social situation primarily—they understand now that they have to consolidate around Putin during the period of war. But I think this model is quite fragile in the middle-term and then the long-term perspective. 

But Putin and his elite behave according to the slogan of Madame de Pompadour: après nous, le déluge, “after us, we do not care about the future,” after the physical life of Putin. This is the main problem of this country and this irresponsible elite.

HUGH EAKIN 

We’ve talked about all of the things that have stabilized the current status quo, the regime. What are the possible events that could change that? I mean, you’ve described these cycles so well, of history so. What has been required to initiate a swing in the other direction, and would a significant change in the war itself constitute such a shift?

ANDREI KOLESNIKOV

I think that the bleeding excursion of resources could be one of the incentives. I mean not only financial resources, budget resources, economic resources. I mean the emotional, psychological resources of the nation. Look at this very small movement of families of the mobilized people. This is a new clue of possibly understanding what is happening, what is the source of problems of these families, problems in their private, everyday lives. 

We can’t rely on elites. They’re absolutely impotent in the sense of changing anything from inside. But at the same time, as we know from Russian history, all the changes are coming from the top. In that sense, we must achieve such a combination of social and political discontent from the bottom with discontent from above. It would be a possible environment for future changes. But I can’t say that it could be the last incentive, the last step, toward these changes.

It is evident that Putin couldn’t be the initiator of these kinds of changes toward the modernization of Russia. He must disappear, this or that way. And only after that will we witness a new Russia.

I do not believe in chaos after Putin. I believe in the sense and sensibility and rationality of the people who will fight for power in this country. And this lack of resources could lead them to the idea that they must reopen their country to the West. They must begin this process of remodernization of Russia. So I’m not a supporter of the view of catastrophic scenarios after Putin. Right now, we are inside the catastrophe, which is the most serious after Stalinism for this country.

So there are short-term problems for this regime, but long-term problems—which have sources in demography, the lack of resources, and upcoming understanding of the historical period in which we’re now—the combination of these factors could lead to possible changes in this country; but not tomorrow or next year. But I can say that Putin is in a stable position even right now.

HUGH EAKIN

Thank you, Andrei. It was excellent to end on a somewhat—if distant—hopeful note. Again, I urge readers to go to the website and read Andrei’s continued analysis from Moscow—absolutely indispensable. We are so grateful for your courageous writing and we wish you well.

ANDREI KOLESNIKOV

Thanks so much and thanks for this opportunity to express my views.