The Militarization of the Russian Elite under Putin

Abstract

This article reviews the vast literature on Russia’s transformation into a “militocracy”—a state in which individuals with career experience in Russia’s various force structures occupy important positions throughout the polity and economy—during the reign of former KGB lieutenant colonel Vladimir Putin. We show that (1) elite militarization has been extensively utilized both to describe and explain core features of Russian foreign and domestic policy; and (2) notwithstanding its widespread usage, the militocracy framework rests on a rather thin, and in some cases flawed, body of empirical research. We close by discussing the remaining research agenda on this subject and listing several alternative theoretical frameworks to which journalists and policymakers arguably should pay equal or greater attention.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We would like to thank Brian Taylor and several anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback.

Notes

1. For a quantitative analysis of Russia’s democratic backsliding in both longitudinal and cross-national perspective, see Rivera and Rivera (2009).

2. It should be noted that, unlike in the United States, where FBI and CIA agents are considered to be civilians, their counterparts in Russia hold military ranks and wear uniforms. As a result, like officers in the conventional armed forces, all such employees are regarded as “military men.”

3. See, for instance, Richard Sakwa (2010, 186).

4. See also Luke Harding (2012).

5. In this vein, see also Charles Clover (2012).

6. Moreover, Olga Kryshtanovskaya and Stephen White (2003, 300) estimate the percentage of siloviki among deputies to the seven original plenipotentiary representatives to be 70 percent. In contrast, Paul Goode (2011, Table 4.2) estimates this percentage to be 28.4 percent.

7. Petrov (2005, 23) puts this figure at 75 percent; Goode (2011, 68–69) estimates it to be 24 percent. Goode also includes a description of the functions of these inspectors.

8. See also Zoltan Barany (2007, 100).

9. For more details and ample discussion, see Daria Litvinova (2016). It should be noted, however, that at least one analyst disputes this interpretation. “Whereas once Putin looked to his former comrades in the KGB and the St. Petersburg administration for his go-to guys,” writes Mark Galeotti (2016b), “now he is recruiting disproportionately from the people he knows. Given his cloistered lifestyle, that often means bodyguards, personal assistants, and the like.”

10. See also Aaron Bateman (2014, 390). Bateman’s article contains all of the core components of the militocracy paradigm that are discussed above and below.

11. See also Yuri Felshtinsky and Vladimir Pribylovsky (2008, 193).

12. Similar judgments are expressed by Yevgenia Albats (2004), Ian Bremmer and Samuel Charap (2006–7, 89), and Brian D. Taylor (2011, 62-64). Additional aspects of the worldview held by former KGB agents are discussed in Kryshtanovskaya (2008, 592–95).

13. That the annexation of Crimea was essentially a silovik-driven project is also advanced by Barry (2014) and Maxim Trudolyubov (2014).

14. See also Paul Krugman (2014).

15. Putin headed the KGB’s main successor organization, the FSB, not the KGB.

16. On this point, see also Galeotti (2016a, 10) and Andrei Soldatov and Michael Rochlitz (n.d.).

17. For similar arguments made in reference to the governors’ corps, see Gaman-Golutvina (2008, 1047).

18. For instance, the 42 percent figure is cited in Felshtinsky and Pribylovsky (2008, 199) and Harding (2011, 11).

19. In addition, in an appendix to our 2014 article (Rivera and Rivera 2014b), we review three other studies of the extent of elite militarization and observe that that all three of them “find the percentage of siloviki in the political elite to be considerably lower than do Kryshtanovskaya and White.” Similarly, Helge Blakkisrud’s (2015, 214–20) original analysis of Russia’s gubernatorial corps finds that only 14.5 percent of them had backgrounds in the force structures in 2009, whereas Kryshtanovskaya and White report a figure of 21 percent in 2008.

20. For an initial effort in this direction, see Kimberly Marten (2017).

21. See also Gulnaz Sharafutdinova (2010) and Ben Judah (2013, chap. 5).

22. See also Alena V. Ledeneva (2006).

23. See also Dmitri Trenin (2014, 7 and 20), who states: “Russia’s political system is clearly czarist, and Putin is the leader closest to a present-day absolute monarch.” For confirming evidence of such judgments, see Steven Lee Myers (2015, 358–59, 451, and 457). Moreover, in a survey of Russian elites conducted in February and March 2016, 95 percent of respondents expressed the view that the president exerted “the greatest possible influence” on Russian foreign policy; only 40 percent attributed comparable influence to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which ranked second among all answers. These percentages are drawn from the 2016 Hamilton College Levitt Poll, a description of which can be found in Sharon Werning Rivera et al. (2016).