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Point & Counterpoint

59 posts
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Banking on Politics: How Russia’s Banking Sector Clean-Up Affects Regime Stability

Banking has increasingly become nationalized in Russia, raising concerns that all private banks may be forced from the market within 10 or 15 years. In the short run, this consolidation enables the government to continue funding its numerous and expensive commitments and thereby maintain social and political stability. David Szakonyi discusses the political consequences of this creeping nationalization of the Russian banking sector and warns that they may be less auspicious in the longer term.
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Memory of the War and Other Memories in Russia, 2019

May 9, the Victory Day over Nazi Germany, has long been the main national holiday, the principal day on which Russians turn to the past. In recent years, the Immortal Regiment, a march of people carrying portraits of their ancestors who fought in the war, has brought together millions across Russia and beyond. Critics of the Immortal Regiment see in it yet another manifestation of the official memory of the war, aimed at holding together the state’s historical narrative and consolidating the regime’s legitimacy. However, Ivan Kurilla believes that the Immortal Regiment helps people preserve their family memory and that many participants do not see it as an official event.
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What Makes Putin Putin?

The co-construction of Russian authoritarianism, say Samuel Greene and Graeme Robertson in their new book, Putin v. the People: The Perilous Politics of a Divided Russia, occurs in millions of homes, workplaces, schools, and churches as ordinary citizens act in their own interests, not just President Vladimir Putin’s. That is what makes the system durable, but it is also what makes it vulnerable.
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A New Turn of the Kremlin’s Anti-Extremist Policy

The anti-extremist legislation is a fairly broad, flexible toolkit that is well adapted to legal abuse; it is a striking example of what, early in Vladimir Putin’s tenure, was referred to as the “dictatorship of the law.” Recently, one of its elements has been softened—a rare, even unique development in a regime that has become increasingly harsh in recent years. Alexander Verkhovsky explores the probable reasons for this softening and suggests how it might play out in practice.
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100 Days of the Independent Ukrainian Church

One hundred days after the establishment of the autocephalous Ukrainian Church, it faces grave opposition from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate. Nor is there any unanimity within the Church itself; instead, it features a range of conflicting groups, factions, and centers of influence.
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Ukraine’s 2019 Election: the End of Ideology and the Last Comedian

The frontrunner in the Ukrainian presidential campaign is someone who has never held a government position and has no record of political or civic activism. Rather, Volodymyr Zelenskiy has risen to prominence by ridiculing on stage the very politicians he is now running against. Zelenskiy’s popularity ultimately rests on supra-rational faith in him as a new type of post-ideological leader without any specific ideational or programmatic appeal. But he is still not a likely winner: access to the Ukrainian political arena is highly restricted and remains off limits for those without elite connections.
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The Repressions Spiral

In recent years, the Kremlin has stepped up its repressive policies against individuals and groups. While the media and political experts have largely focused on the persecution and prosecution of those engaged in unwelcome political and civic activities, repressions against administrative elites have significantly expanded and criminal punishments of high-ranking officials have grown much harsher. Maria Lipman speaks to Nikolay Petrov, who has studied the scope and patterns of repressions against high-ranking government officials and hypothesized about the goals of the Kremlin’s campaign, which has already put dozens of high-level executives behind bars.
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Disconnecting the Russian Internet: Implications of the New “Digital Sovereignty” Bill

Earlier this month, a new bill aimed at protecting “Internet sovereignty” passed the first reading in the Duma. This legislative initiative has raised fears that the Kremlin seeks to isolate Russian Internet users from the outside world. Whether or not this is indeed what the Kremlin has in mind, the feasibility of such an ambitious project is highly dubious. What is not to be doubted, however, is that the Russian government is determined to thwart all unwelcome forms of public organization and ensure that the Russian people continue to be barred from using the Internet as an organizing tool.
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Abortion in Russia: How Has the Situation Changed Since the Soviet Era?

Soviet women commonly resorted to abortion as a way to end unwanted pregnancies. In the post-Soviet decades, the emergence of a market economy, the availability of modern contraceptive methods, and increased knowledge about contraception have all contributed to improving sexual culture. The number of abortions has decreased significantly and would have declined even more rapidly were it not for certain issues, among them the absence of a system of sex education. Victoria Sakevich, a Russian demographer, discusses the abortion dynamic in Russia in recent decades in an interview with Maria Lipman, comparing it with abortion rates in other countries.
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Reshuffling of Governors

Over half of Russian governors have been replaced by the Kremlin in the past two and a half years. A large share of these new regional leaders are “outsiders,” individuals with no roots in or experience with the territories that the Center has entrusted to them. This policy alienates regional elites and may even lead to the radicalization of local politics, says Alexander Kynev, Russia’s leading expert on the regions. In an interview with Maria Lipman, he referred to the current reshuffling as ”the most anti-regions policy ever.”
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Russian Youth: How Are They Different from Other Russians?

Thanks to the rapid development of mobile Internet, practically every young Russian is an Internet user, regardless of whether he or she lives in a large urban center or in the provinces. The “digital gap” between the youth and other generations is quite significant, but this hardly means that young Russians are a substantively different constituency in terms of their political views or civic engagement, says Denis Volkov, a Levada Center sociologist, in an interview with Maria Lipman.