An Unfortunate Alignment of Heterodoxy, Nationalism, and Authoritarianism in Putin’s Russia

Abstract:

I address the urgent need to deal with the deliberate misuse of heterodox criticism of neoliberal policies in modern Russia. State-funded propaganda has been using distorted institutionalism to rationalize both authoritarianism and nationalism as a left-wing response to global neoliberalism and as a welcome manifestation of civilizational plurality. To help western heterodox-institutionalists offer an informed critique of what Vladimir Putin’s apologists have made of some heterodox ideas, I discuss the particularities of the history of Russian post-Soviet economic thought, and explain who these apologists are and what their training is. I also clarify how, in post-socialist Russia, it has become possible to successfully misappropriate the institutionalist emphases on the significance of culture and history in socio-economic development, and on the active role of the state in a market economy for narrow ideological purposes. In my conclusion, I emphasize strongly that traditional institutionalism is not compatible with oppression and authoritarianism.

Keywords::

• authoritarianism
• nationalist economics
• post-Soviet economic thought
• Russia
• traditional institutionalism

JEL Classification Codes::

• B25
• B52
• P16
• P26
• P52

Notes

¹ Unfortunately, “under Putin, the state has focused on accumulating authority, not on fulfilling urgent tasks.” Moreover, the state uses its increased power not “to ensure that citizens receive the social benefits guaranteed by the Constitution” (Inozemtsev 2009, 45), but primarily to “concentrate key assets in an ever smaller circle of state-owned companies, most of them controlled by individuals close to the Kremlin and indeed to Putin himself “(Gustafson 2012, 435).

² According to Marshall Goldman (2004, 434), “by the middle of Putin’s first term in office, the percentage of representatives of KGB and other security forces in the top echelons of power increased from 4-8 percent during the time of Mikhail Gorbachev to 58.3 percent.”

³ As a group of leading Russian economists admitted in 2002, “the domestic academic community” lacks “a clear understanding of major shifts in the structure and nature of economic knowledge that have occurred in the twentieth century.” In fact, “the bulk of those working at the Russian Academy of Sciences,” who normally do not teach, have an inadequate grasp of “contemporary economic theory,” while “the leading instructors at higher educational institutions [who were forced to master the rudiments of Western theory because of demands of teaching] know Western economics” slightly better “but do not know how to make an active use of it” (SUHSE 2002, 6, 7).

⁴ According to some analysts, the Russian Academy of Sciences now “is even less independent [from the state] as it was in Soviet time” (Stricha 2014, 1), and this control has only tightened after the 2013 Reform of the Russian Academy (Dzarasov 2014, 70, 71).

⁵ The most recent (December 2017) revocation of educational license from the European University in St. Petersburg, which is widely known for its liberal western-leaning outlook, serves as another case in point (Kholyavchuk 2017).

⁶ The danger of Russian propaganda has been recognized at the level of the U.S. Senate in the Portman-Murphy Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act of November 2016, which emphasized particularly the “sophisticated” and “comprehensive” efforts by Russia and China to “manipulate and control information,” “often at “the expense of U.S. allies, our interests, our values” (Portman 2016).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anna Klimina

Anna Klimina is an associate professor in the Department of Economics at St. Thomas More College, University of Saskatchewan (Canada).