It was in 2014 that the first rounds of international political and economic sanctions against Russia were imposed in response to the country’s annexation of Crimea and support for secessionist forces in Ukraine’s Donbas region. Then in late February of this year, after months of denying aggressive intentions and rebuffing calls for talks, Russia launched what President Vladimir Putin termed a “special military operation”—in fact, a full-scale military invasion of Ukraine—displacing millions of refugees and fueling outrage over the deliberate targeting of civilians and emerging evidence of atrocities.
The 2022 invasion was met with punitive policy actions by dozens of countries, international organizations, and multinational companies. The new sanctions have been comprehensive and clearly intended to isolate Russia and weaken its military and political capabilities: travel bans and closed skies; exclusion from international financial services and a range of international fora; asset freezes and seizures; corporate withdrawals and suspensions of joint projects; transaction and trade blockages that prohibit transfers of industrial and military means—but, significantly, exempt the oil and gas flows that keep Russia flush with cash and capable of cutting off its European customers at any time.
It is far too early to assess the impact of these and other measures, but what is already becoming apparent is the extent to which Russia had used the eight years since 2014 to sanction-proof its economy—a process that has now, perforce, been greatly accelerated. Russia has been realigning its economic relationships away from Europe; detaching from Western-dominated institutions of all kinds and supporting the development of alternative systems; expanding and maintaining outlets to the seas; weaponizing control of oil and gas resources and grain supplies, including Ukrainian production; tightening central control of the domestic economy; and developing import substitution capacities and workarounds for blocked access to advanced technologies.
When read in light of current events, the articles selected for inclusion in this issue of the Russian Social Science Review tell the larger story. Together they highlight various aspects of what hardliner Nikolai Patrushev has reportedly called a “structural perestroika” and what British scholar Richard Connolly has identified as the reshaping of the Russian political economy.