From Boom to Bust: Hardship, - Ricerca sull'intelligenza artificiale specializzata al MIT

From Boom to Bust: Hardship,
Mobilization & Russia’s Social Contract

Samuel A. Greene

Astratto: This essay revisits the debate about Russia’s “social contract,” arguing that the ability of the Rus-
sian system to maintain macro-political stability in the face of significant and prolonged micro-level eco-
nomic hardship hinges on a peculiarly disengaged relationship between Russian citizens and their state.
Russian citizens are seen clearly to understand the failings of the political system and leadership, reinforc-
ing habits of “involution” learned over decades of institutional dysfunction. A review of recent protest
movements, Infatti, demonstrates that general quiescence coexists with a deep-seated antipathy toward
the country’s ruling elite, which lends particular animus to grassroots contention in a variety of settings.
The question for Russia’s sociopolitical future, Tuttavia, remains an old one: can reactive civic mobiliza-
tion lead to a proactive process of bottom-up agenda setting?

How and why loyal Russian citizens–and loyal

Russian citizens, by most counts, make up more than
80 percent of the adult population–come to find
themselves on the barricades is something of a puz-
zle. Since surviving a major protest wave in 2011–
2012, Putin has reconsolidated power and legitima-
cy, supported by a more adversarial approach to pol-
itics at home and abroad. His approval ratings have
remained high, even as the economy has collapsed
beneath his feet. To many observers, the question is
not why there are pockets of opposition and protest,
but why there aren’t more. In truth, these questions
share an answer: the same shifts in politics that con-
solidated a super-majority of voters behind Putin
has laid the groundwork for a much more conten-
tious–and much more pervasive–kind of politics.
The boom years of Vladimir Putin’s first three
terms in office provided a sense of a set of social con-
tracts: one with the elite (centered around rents),
one with the broad mass of the population (cen-
tered around paternalistic “noninterference”), E

SAMUEL A. GREENE is Director
of the Russia Institute at King’s
College London and Senior Lec-
turer in Russian Politics. He has
worked as Deputy Director of the
Carnegie Moscow Center, as Di-
rector of the Center for the Study
of New Media & Società, and as
a freelance journalist in Moscow,
Hungary, and the Balkans. Lui
is the author of Moscow in Move-
ment: Power and Opposition in Putin’s
Russia (2014). His blog, Moscow-
on-Thames, may be accessed at
https://moscowonthames.word
press.com/.

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113

one with the urban upper class (centered
around the provision of space for “individ-
ual modernization”).1 As living standards
improved steadily over the course of near-
ly a decade and a half–providing, for the
first time in post-Soviet history, a certain
stability of expectations–a series of mo-
bilizational interactions between the state
and various challengers served as border
skirmishes, outlining the contours of these
settlements, illustrating how far each side
could push (and be pushed) before some-
thing would break. Così, a series of bene-
fits protests and labor strikes in the mid-
2000s seemed to set the terms of engage-
ment between the state and most of its
citizens, while more subtle standoffs with
the economic elite and the most mobile ur-
banites led to similar understandings of the
balance of power in society.2

The end of the boom provides an impor-
tant opportunity to revisit received wisdom.
Whereas the dislocation of the 1990s fol-
lowed what had been many years of steady
institutional decline, the current downturn
–which is in its third year of economic con-
traction, bringing steep declines in gdp,
income, and consumption–is the first in
most Russians’ living memory to follow a
prolonged period of hardening positive ex-
pectations. To economic hardship is added
a range of other shocks, including ideology,
elite hierarchy, political coercion, and inter-
national isolation.

In the post-boom and post-Crimea pe-
riod, the primary public reaction to the
apparent failure of the social contract is
through a renewal of what in the 1990s
was described as “involution”: a retreat
from the public space and from universal
institutions into relatively more robust
networks of localized interpersonal rela-
tionships.3 But even as expectations of the
state, which were already low, fell still fur-
ther, the regime itself reengineered its own
legitimacy through an appeal based large-
ly on emotion. For most of the population

in most circumstances, this has been suf-
ficient to produce consent. In other cas-
es, Tuttavia, recourse to the public sphere
persists: citizens faced with severe or po-
tentially irreversible threats to their wel-
fare and quality of life engage, as they al-
ways have, in protest. Unlike prior mobi-
lization cycles, Tuttavia, post-boom and
post-Crimea mobilization more quickly
becomes ideological, driven first and fore-
most by the increasingly rigid and predict-
able tropes of the state’s own responses.
Looking to the future (a thankless but
necessary task) is one of the goals here. IL
underlying trends–a state that increasingly
seeks to engage its citizens emotionally and
ideologically, and a population that feels in-
creasingly alienated from the state mate-
rially–seem both unlikely to change and
bound, over time, to produce ever more and
ever sharper conflict. The ability of the cur-
rent regime to withstand these challenges,
while beyond the scope of this discussion,
does not appear to be seriously in doubt.
The intuition of this essay, Tuttavia, is that
real change in Russia will come not be-
cause power changes hands at the top, Ma
because citizens at the bottom begin to re-
gain their faith in the political community’s
ability to deliver public goods.

Russia’s economy contracted by 3.1 per-

cent in 2015 E, at the time this issue went
to press, was estimated to have fallen by a
ulteriore 0.6 percent in 2016.4 Hit by the com-
bination of sanctions, falling oil prices, and a
collapsing ruble, the economy has seen con-
sumption decline by as much as 10 per cento
year-on-year–2 to 3 percentage points faster
than incomes have declined–as the govern-
ment, pure, has cut back on social spending.5
There has been a dramatic shift in the
government’s approach to this crisis, com-
pared with previous shocks. Whereas the
Kremlin dug deep into its reserves–and
put significant pressure on enterprise own-
ers–to minimize the impact of the short-

114

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Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & SciencesFrom Boom to Bust: Hardship, Mobilization & Russia’s Social Contract

lived 2008–2009 recession, much more of
the burden of this deeper and more pro-
longed downturn has been placed squarely
on the shoulders of citizens, in the form not
only of falling incomes and rising prices,
but also austerity, which has hit education,
health care, pensions, and state salaries.6
Nel frattempo, as noted above, consump-
tion has fallen faster than income, as Rus-
sians themselves have tried to get ahead
of the crisis.7 Spending has shifted from
aspirational purchases–homes and cars,
purchases that reflect plans and hopes for
the future–to daily needs; mortgages and
automobile loans have fallen by as much
as half.8 All the same, many Russians have
compensated through increased consumer
borrowing, even as banks have made bor-
rowing more expensive.9 The result has
been an increasingly difficult–and often
violent–relationship between borrowers
and lenders, into which the government
has been loath to insert itself.10 Similar
friction has emerged between workers and
employers, to a degree not seen since the
rampant salary nonpayment problems of
the 1990s.11 One result is that more than
half of working Russians are, in one way
or another, not able to enjoy the rights and
protections afforded to them by Russian
labor, tax, and pension law.12 Simultane-
ously, while 61 percent of Russians believe
that now is a time to save rather than to
spend, only 38 percent are prepared to trust
their savings to banks.13 Not only does this
leave savers without the protection of Rus-
sia’s deposit insurance system, it has also
left the Russian Central Bank fretting that,
as households withdraw from the formal
financial sector, monetary policy itself
risks becoming irrelevant.14

Russians, Ovviamente, are aware of all of this.
The Levada Center, a Russian nongovern-
mental research organization that conducts
regular opinion polls, recorded precipitous
drops in several key indicators beginning in
2014, represented here as composite indices

calculated from a range of questions asked
by Levada in recurring polls: the “family
index,” which measures sentiment about
household economic prospects; the “Rus-
sia index,” which measures sentiment about
economic prospects for society at large; E
the “expectation index,” which measures
sentiment about the future. At the same
time, the “power index,” which measures
sentiment about the country’s political lead-
ership, remained high (Guarda la figura 1).

These data reflect a structure of public
sentiment about power and the econo-
my that cuts somewhat against the grain
of conventional wisdom about authori-
tarian social contracts. When authoritar-
ian leaders are popular–as Putin genuine-
ly appears to be, or as Hugo Chavez was in
Venezuela–it is often attributed to a broad
public sense that the leader governs in the
public interest, either through macro social
redistribution or through more targeted but
nonetheless pervasive clientelism. Russian
citizens, Tuttavia, see Putin as pursuing nei-
ther. Since the Levada Center began asking
the question in 2006, the overwhelming
majority of respondents have consistently
believed that inequality in the country has
gotten worse under Putin, not better (Vedere
Tavolo 1). With similar consistency, fewer
than one-quarter of Russians believe that
Putin governs in the interests of the middle
class, and many fewer still believe he gov-
erns on behalf of the citizenry as a whole;
instead, Russians are much more likely to
believe that Putin represents the interests
of the siloviki in the coercive apparatus, IL
oligarchs, the bureaucrats, and big business
(Vedi la tabella 2).

And yet Russians are not particularly
inclined to blame Putin for these or other
failings. The number of respondents to a
Levada poll in March 2015–three months
after the ruble lost more than half of its
value–who had favorable opinions of Pu-
tin’s handling of the economy was only
2 percentage points lower than in October

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146 (2) Spring 2017Samuel A. Greene

Figura 1
Levada Indices

)
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100

Family Index

Russia Index

Expectation Index

Power Index

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Fonte: Data compiled by author from questions and recurrent polls published at Levada Center, http://www
.levada.ru/en/.

Tavolo 1
During Vladimir Putin’s Rule, Has the Gap between Rich and Poor in Our Country Increased,
Reduced, or Remained the Same as It was under Boris Yeltsin? (by % of Responses)

Marzo
2006

Marzo
2007

Marzo
2008

Luglio
2009

Luglio
2010

May
2011

May
2013

Sept.
2014

Sept.
2015

Increased

Reduced

Remained
the Same

Hard to Say

Fonte: Levada Center, “Sbornik obshchestvennogo mneniya 2015,” http://www.levada.ru/sbornik-obshhestvennoe
-mnenie/obshhestvennoe-mnenie-2015/ (accessed February 10, 2017).

116

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Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & SciencesFrom Boom to Bust: Hardship, Mobilization & Russia’s Social Contract

Tavolo 2
In Your View, Whose Interests does Vladimir Putin Represent? (by % of Responses)

Oct.
2000

Luglio
2001

Luglio
2003

Luglio
2005

Sept.
2006

Aug.
2007

Oct.
2010

Luglio
2011

Luglio
2012

Luglio
2013

Aug.
2014

Aug.
2015

Siloviki

Oligarchs

Bureaucrats

Big Business

Middle Class

Everyone

Simple People

Cultural &
Scientific Elite

Yeltsin
“Family”

Intelligentsia

Hard to Say

Fonte: Levada Center, “Sbornik obshchestvennogo mneniya 2015,” http://www.levada.ru/sbornik-obshhestvennoe
-mnenie/obshhestvennoe-mnenie-2015/ (accessed February 10, 2017).

2009 (41 percent versus 43 per cento); ap-
proval of Putin’s economic management
was higher in both periods than in Novem-
ber 2006, when the economy was actual-
ly doing better. Nor does Putin get much
credit for his foreign-policy successes.
Again in March 2015, a year after Putin
engineered the highly popular annexation
of Crimea, approval of his foreign policy
stood at 69 per cento, only barely above the
66 percent rating he received in October
2009 (Vedi la tabella 3).

Infatti, a closer analysis of the Levada in-
dices suggests that, evidence of pocketbook
voting notwithstanding, the relationship
between economic sentiment and political
approval is anything but straightforward.
As shown in Model 1 of Table 4, the “family
index” (Ancora, measuring pocketbook eco-
nomic sentiment) does not correlate with
the “power index” (measuring approv-

al of Putin and the government broadly).
The “Russia index” (measuring sociotro-
pic economic sentiment) correlates very
strongly with political approval, as does
the forward-looking “expectation index”
(Modelli 2 E 3). And when the indices
are combined, the family index becomes
significantly correlated with the power in-
dex–but negatively (Modelli 4 E 5). In
other words, sociotropic sentiment trans-
lates into regime approval most strong-
ly when Russians are particularly unhap-
py about their personal situation, and vice
versa: when Russians are feeling personal-
ly positive, they seem to have less need of
their leadership.

Questo, in turn, comports with the observa-
tions of Russian sociologists, who have noted
across a range of studies both an increasing
reliance on interpersonal ties–often high-
ly localized, but increasingly augmented

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146 (2) Spring 2017Samuel A. Greene

Tavolo 3
In Your View, How Well is Vladimir Putin Handling . . . ? (by % of Responses)

. . . the economy

. . . foreign policy

Nov.
2006

Oct.
2009

Marzo
2015

Nov.
2006

Oct.
2009

Marzo
2015

1 (worst)

5 (best)

Hard to Say

Fonte: Levada Center, “Sbornik obshchestvennogo mneniya 2015,” http://www.levada.ru/sbornik-obshhestvennoe
-mnenie/obshhestvennoe-mnenie-2015/ (accessed February 10, 2017).

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Tavolo 4
Levada Indices

Model

Family Index

Expectation Index

Russia Index

.119
(.177)

-.252*
(.193)
.617+
(.179)

.781+
(.074)

R-square

.014

.257

.610

4
-.513+
(.103)

1.082+
(.068)

.784

5
-.589+
(.106)
.204+
(.101)
1.000+
(.071)

.806

* significant at 0.05 level
+ significant at 0.005 level

Dependent variable: power index. Standardized beta coefficients are reported, standard errors are in parentheses.
Fonte: Levada Center, “Sbornik obshchestvennogo mneniya 2015,” http://www.levada.ru/sbornik-obshhestvennoe
-mnenie/obshhestvennoe-mnenie-2015/ (accessed February 10, 2017).

118

Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & SciencesFrom Boom to Bust: Hardship, Mobilization & Russia’s Social Contract

with the help of online social networking
platforms–and an increased sense of wel-
fare among those who report having the
most interpersonal ties. Così, as Russian
political scientist Ekaterina Shul’man has
written, “People who feel part of a social
network believe that they can do without
the state–they have an increased subjec-
tive sense of wellbeing not because they
are well led, but because they become more
self-confident.”15 So, pure, have individuals
consolidated their own lives. According to
Russian economic sociologists, what Lev
Gudkov has called the “inertia of passive
adaptation”16 seems to be giving way to a
more proactive self-reliance:

Self-reliant Russians today are not a periph-
eral social group, not a marginal class, but a
significant and growing group, reflecting the
dominant trend towards independence and
activism in society. The portion of Russians
who claim responsibility for what happens
in their lives and are confident in their abil-
ity to provide for themselves and their fam-
ily without needing support from the state
era 44% of the population in 2015, up from
24% In 2011.17

This is not, Tuttavia, an entirely positive
phenomenon, in the sense of increased au-
tonomy, individualism, and self-reliance
(traits that, in truth, were all central to
Russians’ robust coping mechanisms in
the late Soviet period and throughout the
1990S). Disengagement from the formal
state has a darker side: to wit, while some 75
percent of Russians report that their rights
have been infringed in one way or anoth-
er in recent years, only 39 percent reported
that they appealed to state institutions, In-
cluding law enforcement and elected offi-
cials, for help; fewer than 1 percent turned
to the media or civic organizations; E
40 percent sought no help at all.18 Perhaps
for that reason, anche, Russians by and
large chose to ignore the September 2016
parliamentary elections, allowing the rul-

ing United Russia Party to achieve its larg-
est ever majority on the back of the lowest
turnout in Russia’s post-Soviet history.19
By 2012, as Putin’s personal appeal seemed

to be waning (even as the economy was do-
ing relatively well), support for Putin was
boosted by his close association with big-
ger things–love of country and culture, for
example–that most Russians hold dear.20
In the wake of the 2011–2012 antiregime
protest wave, and in the face of an econo-
my that was failing to provide the kind of
generalized growth in welfare that had ac-
companied Putin’s first decade in office, IL
Kremlin opted for a new approach to public
politica, one that was overtly confrontation-
al, dividing society into more rigid catego-
ries of “us” and “them” with the help of val-
ues-oriented wedge issues, such as religion,
sexuality, E, to a lesser extent, ethnicity.21
To this was added fear, generated by an ag-
gressive public sphere–to which the Krem-
lin’s acolytes are eager contributors–and
an increasing threat (and sometimes fact)
of violence.22 Later, pride entered the mix,
as the return of Crimea and Putin’s stead-
fast position in the face of Western pressure
(and sanctions) produced a “rally around
the flag” effect that has lasted until the pres-
ent.23 The resulting concoction of identity
politica, fear, and patriotic mobilization–
what Russian analyst Kirill Rogov has called
“the Crimea syndrome”–had, by the sum-
mer of 2016, become an inalienable part of
Russia’s politics.24

The result looked to many Russian ob-
servers like a rewriting of the implicit so-
cial contracts of the 2000s. “By the spring
of 2014,” journalist Boris Grozovskii wrote,
“in return for loyalty the state offered not
growing welfare, but the feeling of inclu-
sion in a power that was rising from its
knees. This is a very powerful emotion,
and in return the state now demands from
the population not only loyalty, but also a
preparedness to sacrifice.”25 Having given

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119

146 (2) Spring 2017Samuel A. Greene

up the right to a real political franchise–
Maksim Trudolyubov, editor-at-large of
the independent Russian daily Vedomosti,
has argued–society acquired not perma-
nent prosperity, but only a loan of well-
being from the state: “Now, the state is
calling in the debt.” 26

That this shifting bargain would be out-
wardly welcomed by many citizens, mean-
while, is in keeping with previous patterns
of pro-state mobilization, wrote the so-
ciologist Lev Gudkov:

The events of 2014–15 are not the first time
we have seen mass demonstrations of soli-
darity with the authorities. . . . A state of col-
lective enthusiasm and unfettered national
self-aggrandizement is generally preceded
by a phase of mass disorientation, frustra-
zione, irritation and, sometimes, intense fear.
The waves we observe in public sentiment
are society’s reactions to rapid change in the
institutional structure of the state.27

But the regime was not the only part of
the Russian political landscape that was
consolidating. For one thing, the chal-
lenge of the Bolotnaya Square protests was
overcome, but not eliminated. Even as the
Kremlin has provided a new, charismatic,
and traditionalist basis for its legitimacy–
successfully rallying the majority of Rus-
sian citizens to its cause–studies of online
and offline activity suggest that the 2011–
2012 “Bolotnaya movement” has contin-
ued to grow both in numerical and ideo-
logical terms, incorporating the antiwar
movement that emerged in 2014, those ag-
grieved by the murder of Boris Nemtsov
In 2015, and a growing number of others
drawn in by the activism of their friends.28
Infatti, Russia has seen rapid growth in
labor unrest, with a record number of work
disruptions in 2015, according to the Center
for Social and Labor Rights (Guarda la figura 2).
There are “clear signs of workers reacting
to worsening economic conditions,” par-
ticularly wage arrears, which make up the

plurality–if not majority–of strikes and
other labor disruptions, according to la-
bor sociologists Stephen Crowley and Iri-
na Olimpieva.29 Labor mobilization is con-
centrated in regional centers and major
cities and is focused on industry and trans-
portation.30 Rising, pure, is the proportion
of labor mobilizations that involve strikes
or other stop-actions, from 39 percent pri-
or to 2014 A 42 percent in 2016.31 Stop-ac-
tions are predominantly provoked either by
nonpayment of salaries or by other chang-
es to remuneration; other grievances–such
as generally low salaries, rising costs of liv-
ing, and poor working conditions–did not
typically provoke work stoppages in 2016.32
These trends mirror the findings of lon-
ger-term, more broad-based research into
labor mobilization and economic protest
in Russia.33 Similar results are provided by
an analysis of events cataloged by the ac-
tivism website Activatica.org, demonstrat-
ing both an increase in overall levels of ac-
tivity and an increase in the proportion of
activity involving political and econom-
ic grievances (though environmental con-
cerns predominate) (Guarda la figura 3).

Insofar as our ability to observe is suf-
ficient, the general mechanism by which
grievance is transformed into mobiliza-
tion in Russia has not changed: as they were
throughout the first twelve years of Putin’s
rule, Russian citizens remain capable of
mounting meaningful resistance when the
state presents a coherent challenge to their
welfare. As before, Russians are more like-
ly to mobilize collectively when the threats
they face are immediate and potentially ir-
reversible, and when the consequences of
inaction are faced by an identifiable group
of people at the same time and in the same
way.34 To see how things may have changed,
Tuttavia, let us briefly examine some indic-
ative cases more closely.

Muscovites are protective of their green

spazi. In a city clogged with traffic and

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Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & SciencesFrom Boom to Bust: Hardship, Mobilization & Russia’s Social Contract

Figura 2
Labor Disruptions per Year

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450

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2008

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2011

2012

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2014

2015

Fonte: Center for Social and Labor Rights, Trudovye protesty v Rossii v pervoi polovine 2016 goda (Moscow: Center for
Social and Labor Rights, 2016), http://trudprava.ru/expert/analytics/protestanalyt/1712.

Figura 3
Composition of Mobilization over Time

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Economy
Citizen & State
Società
Environment

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Fonte: Events counted by author at the Activatica database. See http://activatica.org/.

121

146 (2) Spring 2017Samuel A. Greene

seemingly growing more crowded by the
day, residents can usually be counted on to
protest when developers set their sights on
their courtyards, playgrounds, and parks.
Most of these protests are local and small,
and the majority don’t last very long.35 But
some do.

On June 18, 2015, workers cordoned off
a section of the Torfyanka Park in north-
east Moscow; within a week, locals had
begun protesting what turned out to be
plans by the city administration and the
Russian Orthodox Church (roc) to build
a church in a corner of the park, part of a
major effort by the roc to build dozens
of new churches across the capital. IL
pro-Kremlin camp wasted no time in re-
acting. On June 25–the day of the first
organized protest against the church–
the website Ridus.ru, closely associated
with the anti-Maidan movement and the
pro-Kremlin National Liberation Move-
ment, posted a long and detailed report,
concluding as follows:

Against the construction of the church are
arrayed a not disinterested group (village id-
iots and sincere neighbors attend, Ovviamente,
for free) consisting of several social groups:
leftists, [members of the Yabloko opposition
party], Satanists-anarchists, people who hate
the roc on principle, and free citizens who
have been brainwashed. . . . It’s a courtyard
Maidan in action, and none of the partici-
pants have anything in common with sin-
cerity.36

Quello, Ovviamente, set the terms of the de-
bate to come. By July 9, rallies were draw-
ing hundreds and then thousands of par-
ticipants. Protest leader Natal’ya Kutluni-
na led off the proceedings, calling the park
something of a second home for locals, UN
place where they could “go in their slippers
and dressing gowns”; a city councilwom-
an from the ruling United Russia Party was
booed off the stage.37 As the summer wore
SU, protests grew in number and frequen-

cy, centered on a permanent camp block-
ing the entrance to the construction site,
where the original locals were joined by
left-wing groups and members of the lib-
eral opposition, as well as residents from
other neighborhoods facing similar en-
croachment. The left-wing blogger Mak-
sim Serov put the fight in terms familiar
to veterans of the Bolotnaya movement
and the opposition’s confrontation with
the “patriotic” anti-Maidan and the Na-
tional Liberation Movement: “It’s them
or us! The residents of our city, or the fas-
cist obscurantists!”38

And so the frame was set. As both sides
dug in, many protesters evidently came
to see their cause as bigger than the park,
somehow bound up in the broader effort to
block what some in the opposition called
a creeping clericalization of Russian life
and politics. In this, they were aided by
the language that the Church’s support-
ers used and the associations they formed:
a page was launched on the Russian social
networking site VKontakte in support of
the construction of the Torfyanka church,
combining religious symbolism with pic-
tures of soldiers and references to patrio-
tism, while the National Liberation Move-
ment called the protests a threat to Rus-
sian sovereignty.39 As the conflict dragged
on into 2016, it was picked up by the “Rus-
sian Spring” movement that had support-
ed the Russian mobilization in and around
eastern Ukraine, calling for their own ral-
ly at Torfyanka and making the message
even starker:

For us one thing in the situation with Torfyan-
ka is obvious: “our” Moscow church-fighters
and the Kiev Euromaidaners are one and the
same. The same faces, the same methods, IL
same approaches, the same grantmakers. . . .
They are preparing and training with an eye
on a “Moscow Maidan” in 2016.40

A remarkably similar dynamic took hold
in a very different protest movement, O-

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Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & SciencesFrom Boom to Bust: Hardship, Mobilization & Russia’s Social Contract

ganized by a network of independent truck
drivers from around the country.

broadcast an address to the truckers, Quale
began as follows:

Trucks carry about 5.4 billion tons of
goods per year in Russia, far outstrip-
ping any other mode of transportation
for shipments of things other than nat-
ural resources. They do so, Tuttavia, SU
roads that are both notoriously poor and
notoriously expensive to build and main-
tain, the precise reasons for which do not
need to be explored here. To help cover the
cost, the Russian government decided to
charge the owners of all trucks in excess of
twelve tons a tax of 3.73 rubles per kilome-
ter hauled.41 That was bad enough, partic-
ularly for the private truckers who account
for roughly half of the sector. The big logis-
tics companies had the bargaining power
to pass the cost on to their clients (most-
ly retailers and distributors), who would
then pass it on to consumers. But the pri-
vateers were under pressure to swallow the
costs in order to compete.

Hearing the rumblings of protest, IL
government made an initial concession,
reducing the rate to 1.53 rubles per kilome-
ter for a few months–and then indefinitely
–and putting a moratorium on fines. Ma
for the protesters, the problem was not just
the amount, it was the principle–and the
fact that the principal beneficiary looked
to be a company called rtits, which won
the concession to collect the tax and pocket
half of the proceeds and was owned by Igor
Rotenberg, the son of Arkadii Rotenberg,
a close friend and associate of Putin. One
popular protest placard featured the num-
ber 3.73 with a line through it; another said
“the Rotenbergs are worse than isis.”42

But the government was not budging.
The strike began on November 21, 2015,
initially in Dagestan; from there and else-
Dove, columns of truckers began mov-
ing toward St. Petersburg and Moscow.43
The same day, Yevgenii Fyodorov, a mem-
ber of the Duma and leader of the Krem-
lin-backed National Liberation Movement,

We can see, you and I, that the United States
of America is not sleeping. And now, through
their “fifth column,” through national trai-
tori, they have landed yet another blow
against the Russian Federation. Specifically I
am talking about the actions of the long-dis-
tance truckers, who are trying, on the orders
of the United States of America, to liquidate
Russian statehood.44

Four days later, opposition leader Aleksei
Navalny posted his own video message to
the truckers on YouTube and on the web-
site of his Anti-Corruption Foundation.
With somewhat less emotion and hyper-
bole than Fyodorov had mustered, Naval-
ny argued that the heart of the matter was
corruption, and that the truckers and his
activists–whatever other political differ-
ences they might have–should thus be able
to find some common cause.45

As the columns of truckers drew closer
to Moscow, one of them–a twenty-seven-
year-old trucker named Vladimir Georgi-
yevich from Leningrad oblast’–told his
story to Colta, a highbrow news and opin-
ion website popular with the oppositional
intelligentsia. It wasn’t politics that brought
us out, he seemed to say, it was community:

The truckers–we’re not about politics.
What’s that worth to an average worker? IL
average worker needs to work, to get his sala-
ry and feed his family. And that’s all he needs.
But if they really start to go after us, are we just
supposed to look on? I mean, here, we’ll give
you some money for something that doesn’t
exist and never will. There won’t be any roads.
How many times have they lied to us: Essi
promised to end the transport tax, and they
didn’t. It’s the same with this system–they
lied once, lied twice. They probably thought
it would all go down quietly.46

But if the Kremlin failed to predict the
truckers’ reaction, so, pure, did the truck-

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146 (2) Spring 2017Samuel A. Greene

ers fail to foresee the turn the government
would take. As columns of trucks converged
on Moscow, more and more messages flood-
ed television and the Internet accusing the
truckers of ties to Navalny, Washington, E
the Euromaidan. Infatti, there was a kernel
of truth: one of the protest coordinators
was Sergei Gulyayev, a St. Petersburg activ-
ist who had been prominent in that city’s
contribution to the 2011–2012 election pro-
tests.47 On December 3, when the truckers
closed ranks outside Moscow and held their
“snail day” protest, driving ever-so-slowly
around the beltway, Putin gave his annual
Presidential Address to the Federal Assem-
bly; the truckers did not rate a mention. In
an interview on the independent television
station Dozhd’, one of the truckers’ repre-
sentatives, Nadezhda Kurazhkovskaya, ex-
plained:

The president didn’t meet our expectations.
We expected more from him. We thought,
after all, that he would stand with his peo-
ple, but it didn’t happen. We will fight to the
last man, as they say.48

The reaction from ordinary Muscovites,
Tuttavia, was warmer. Perhaps already ac-
customed to snail’s-pace traffic, drivers
took to social media–and, in particular, A
the traffic monitoring and navigation apps
that allow drivers to post messages about
road conditions–to express their support
and solidarity; “Nationalize the palaces of
the Rotenbergs” was a common refrain.49
When Putin departs the scene, the pal-

aces of the Rotenbergs–at least those that
are in Russia–could well be nationalized;
at the very least, it would not be historical-
ly unprecedented in the universe of author-
itarian transitions for a successor regime,
whether democratically elected or other-
wise, to target the cronies of its predeces-
sor. But would either of those factors–Pu-
tin’s departure and the disenfranchisement
of his elite–change anything?

From the standpoint of sociopolitical
mobilization, Putin’s departure, when it
happens, will be important. Mobilization-
al frames consist, first and foremost, of an
injustice to be righted and a target who can
be blamed for its persistence. The depar-
ture of a dictator will open up new polit-
ical opportunities for movement organi-
zations to seek direct political leverage,
relieving the pressure for street-level activ-
ism. Putin’s departure will also send activ-
ists out in search of new targets to blame:
once problems begin to persist into the
reign of his successor, blaming Putin will
cease to be a viable mobilizational strategy.
The hardening of politics in Putin’s third
term–the deepening of dichotomies, IL
sharpening of political and ideational divid-
ing lines, the increasing role of fear and co-
ercion–has contributed to the consolida-
tion both of the regime and its opponents.
Questo era, Ovviamente, an inevitable result:
civil society, as citizens’ mobilized response
to the state’s intrusions into their private
and public lives, reflects the contours of
the state and thus consolidates to the ex-
tent that its primarily interlocutor makes it-
self tangible. Putin’s state-led mobilization
has brought new constituents from what
had been the soft center of Russian politics
more firmly into his camp, effectively pre-
venting them from falling into opposition;
but others have been pushed in the oppo-
site direction. This is not an entirely new
phenomenon, but it has gathered such force
and velocity as to allow us to claim that Rus-
sian politics today are fundamentally differ-
ent from what they were before.

When Putin goes, the regime, for a time,
will become less tangible. The expectations
that have crystallized over the last few years
will shatter, as actors on all sides begin to
form new sets of roles and understandings.
The dividing lines will blur again, and Rus-
sians on both sides of today’s politics will
move back toward the middle. Così, it is
hard to overestimate the impact that Pu-

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Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & SciencesFrom Boom to Bust: Hardship, Mobilization & Russia’s Social Contract

tin’s departure will have on Russian civil so-
ciety: it will radically reshape the landscape.
But in other ways, Putin’s departure will
change very little. The underlying tectonics
of Russians’ relationship with their state–
their preparedness to see it as simultane-
ously dysfunctional and yet legitimate,
unjust and yet worthy–does not change
just because Putin leaves. It is noteworthy
that none of the mobilizational efforts de-
scribed above–nor, Infatti, any of the mo-
bilizational efforts described in any of the
other studies of Russia cited here–could
reasonably be called proactive. In fairness,

most mobilization is reactive, not least be-
cause most people live most of their lives in
the private realm, venturing into the pub-
lic only when provoked. But the absence of
proactive public mobilization is not every-
where as nearly absolute as it is in Russia.
Civil-social mobilization in Russia can, In
fatto, be powerful: it resists the state, push-
es back against it, delays or stops its advanc-
es, and sometimes wins a reversal, all the
while galvanizing communities of interest
and ideology. The question is, can civil so-
ciety become convinced that the state itself
can change?

endnotes
1 See Daniel Treisman, “Presidential Popularity in a Hybrid Regime: Russia under Yeltsin and
Putin,” American Journal of Political Science 55 (3) (2011): 590–609; Lev Gudkov, “Inertsiya pas-
sivnoi adaptatsii,” Pro et Contra 15 (1–2) (2011): 20–42; and Samuel A. Greene, “Citizenship
and the Social Contract in Post-Soviet Russia,” Demokratizatsiya 20 (2) (2012): 133–140.

2 Samuel A. Greene, Moscow in Movement: Power and Opposition in Putin’s Russia (Palo Alto, Calif.:

Stanford University Press, 2014).

3 Michael Burawoy, Pavel Krotov, and Tatyana Lytkina, “Involution and Destitution in Capi-

talist Russia,” Ethnography 1 (1) (2000): 43–65.

4 Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation, “Ob itogakh sotsial’no-ekono-
micheskogo razvitiya Rossiiskoi Federatsii v 2016 godu,” http://economy.gov.ru/wps/wcm/
connect/9056bb04-390c-47f9-b47f-8e3b061bc7b8/monitor1-12.pdf?MOD=AJPERES&CACHEID�
=9056bb04-390c-47f9-b47f-8e3b061bc7b8 (accessed February 10, 2017).

5 World Bank, “The Long Road to Recovery,” Russia Economic Report No. 35 (Washington,

D.C.: World Bank, 2016).

6 Ol’ga Kuvshinova and Yekaterina Kravchenko, “Rossiya vkhodit v novoye sotsial’no-ekono-
micheskyoe sostoyaniye,” Vedomosti, May 18, 2016, http://www.vedomosti.ru/economics/
articles/2016/05/18/641504-rossiya-vhodit.

7 Nina Zabelina, “Naseleniye bedneyet bystreye, chem ozhidalos’,” Nezavisimaya gazeta, Septem-

ber 8, 2015, http://www.ng.ru/economics/2015-09-08/1_poverty.html.

8 “Mortgage Loans to be More than Halved in 2015–Official,” The Moscow Times, agosto 24,
2015, http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/mortgage-loans-to-be-more-than
-halved-in-2015–official/528575.html; and “41% Drop in Russian Car Loans in 2015,” The Moscow
Times, Gennaio 27, 2016, http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/41-drop-in-russian
-car-loans-in-2015/557104.html.

9 “Personal Debt in Russia Up 30% in 2015,” The Moscow Times, Febbraio 8, 2016, http://www
.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/personal-debt-in-russia-up-30-in-2015/559024.html.
10 Nadezhda Petrova, “Bomba s dolgovym mekhanizmom,” Kommersant, Febbraio 15, 2016, http://
www.kommersant.ru/doc/2906672; and Yevgenii Kalyukov and Siranush Sharoroyan, “Valyu-
tnye ipotechniki zapisali videoobrashcheniye k Putinu,” RBK, April 8, 2016, http://www.rbc
.ru/finances/08/04/2016/5707b9089a79472505c4eec2.

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146 (2) Spring 2017Samuel A. Greene

11 Natal’ya E. Tikhonova, “Yavnye i neyavnye posledstviya ekonomicheskikh krizisov dlya ros-

siyan,” Sotsiologicheskiye issledovaniya 12 (2015): 16–27.

12 Ibid.
13 “Pokupki i sberezheniya,” press-vypusk no. 3224 (Moscow: wciom, ottobre 2016), http://wciom

.ru/index.php?id=236&uid=115913.

14 Osnovnye napravleniya yedinoi gosudarstvennoi denezhno-kreditnoi politiki na 2017 god i period 2018 io 2019 godov
(Moscow: Central Bank of Russia, 2016), http://cbr.ru/publ/ondkp/on_2017(2018-2019).pdf.
15 Ekaterina Shul’man, “Lyudi stanovyatsia blizhe,” Vedomosti, Giugno 16, 2015, http://www.vedomosti

.ru/opinion/articles/2015/06/16/596463-lyudi-stanovyatsya-blizhe.

16 Gudkov, “Inertsiya passivnoi adaptatsii.”
17 Mikhail K. Gorshkov and Natal’ya N. Sedova, “Samodostatochnye rossiyane i ikh zhiznen-

nye prioritety,” Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya 12 (2015): 4–16.

18 Denis Volkov and Stepan Goncharov, “Potentsial grazhdanskogo uchastiya v reshenii sotsi-
al’nykh problem” (Moscow: Levada Center, 2014), http://www.levada.ru/old/sites/default/
files/potencial_grazhdanskogo_uchastiya_0.pdf.

19 Ora John Reuter, “2016 State Duma Elections: United Russia after 15 Years,” Russian Analytical
Digest No. 189, settembre 29, 2016, http://www.css.ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/special-interest
/gess/cis/center-for-securities-studies/pdfs/RAD189.pdf.

20 Regina Smyth, “The Putin Factor: Personalism, Protest, and Regime Stability in Russia,” Politics

and Policy 42 (4) (2014): 567–592.

21 Samuel A. Greene, “The End of Ambiguity in Russia,” Current History 114 (774) (ottobre 2015):
251–258; and Regina Smyth and Irina Soboleva, “Looking Beyond the Economy: Pussy Riot
and the Kremlin’s Voting Coalition,” Post-Soviet Affairs 30 (4) (2014): 257–275.

22 Vladimir Gel’man, “Politika strakha: kak rossiiskii rezhim protivostoit svoim protivnikam,"
Kontrapunkt 1 (2015), http://www.counter-point.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/gelman_
counterpoint1.pdf.

23 Sam Greene and Graeme Robertson, “Explaining Putin’s Popularity: Rallying Round the Rus-
sian Flag,” The Washington Post, settembre 9, 2014, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/
monkey-cage/wp/2014/09/09/explaining-putins-popularity-rallying-round-the-russian-flag/.
24 Kirill Rogov, “Krymskii sindrom: mekhanizmy avtoritarnoi mobilizatsii,” Kontrapunkt 1 (2015),
http://www.counter-point.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/rogov_countepoint1.pdf.
25 Boris Grozovskii, “Dryakhleyushchii obshchestvennyi dogovor,” Vedomosti, Gennaio 17, 2016, http://
www.vedomosti.ru/opinion/articles/2016/01/18/624311-dryahleyuschii-obschestvennii-dogovor.
26 Maksim Trudolyubov, “Nulevaya summa,” Vedomosti, May 27, 2016, http://www.vedomosti

.ru/opinion/columns/2016/05/27/642639-nulevaya-summa.

27 Lev Gudkov, “Mekhanizmy krizisnoi konsolidatsii,” Kontrapunkt 5 (2016), http://www.counter

-point.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/gudkov_counterpoint5.pdf.

28 Samuel A. Greene and Graeme B. Robertson, “Sposobnost’ k protestu sokhranyayetsya,” Kontra-
punkt 3 (2016), http://www.counter-point.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/greene_robertson
_counterpoint3.pdf.

29 Stephen Crowley and Irina Olimpieva, “Russian Labor Protest in Challenging Economic

Times,” Russian Analytical Digest No. 182, April 20, 2016.

30 Center for Social and Labor Rights, Trudovye protesty v Rossii v 2008-2015 gg. Analiticheskii otchet po
rezul’tatam monitoring trudovykh protestov TsSTP (Moscow: Center for Social and Labor Rights,
2016), http://trudprava.ru/expert/analytics/protestanalyt/1588.

31 Center for Social and Labor Rights, Trudovye protesty v Rossii v pervoi polovine 2016 goda (Moscow: Cen-
ter for Social and Labor Rights, 2016), http://trudprava.ru/expert/analytics/protestanalyt/1712.

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Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & SciencesFrom Boom to Bust: Hardship, Mobilization & Russia’s Social Contract

32 Ibid.
33 Tomila Lankina and Alisa Voznaya, “New Data on Protest Trends in Russia’s Regions,” Europe-

Asia Studies 67 (2) (2015): 327–342.

34 For an elaboration of this argument, see Greene, Moscow in Movement.
35 For a rundown of active green-space protests, see the Activatica database at http://activatica
.org/?category%5B %5D =79&category%5B %5D =61&category%5B %5D =65&categoria
%5B%5D=80&category%5B%5D=81.

36 Andrei Malosolov, “Stolichnyi park Torfyanka: maidan v vashem dvore,” Ridus, Giugno 25, 2015,

https://www.ridus.ru/news/189337.html.

37 Kirill Rubtsov, “V moskovskom parke ‘Torfyanka’ nachalas’ aktsiya protiv stroitel’stva kh-

rama,” Novaya gazeta, Luglio 9, 2015, http://www.novayagazeta.ru/news/1695088.html.

38 Maksim Serov, “My za park!–protivostoyaniye v ‘Torfyanke’ prodolzhayetsya,” ROT Front,
Luglio 11, 2015. In the original Russian text, Serov used the word mrakobesy, translated here as
obscurantists. It is a term commonly used by Russia’s liberals to refer to those in the Church
and the conservative establishment who are seen as opposed to science and progress. To the
English-language reader it will sound more obscure (with apologies) than it is in its proper
context.

39 “Za park Torfyanka s khramom,” VKontakte, http://vk.com/za_park_s_hramom (avuto accesso
May 16, 2016); and Yurii Nikitin, “Protivostoyaniye v Torfyanke. Andrei Kovalenko na vstreche
koordinatsionnogo soveta bloggerov ‘Suverenitet Rossii’ 14.07.15,” National’no osvoboditel’noye
dvizhenie, Luglio 17, 2015, http://rusnod.ru/video/konferentsii-nod/2015/07/17/konferentsii
-nod_4962.html (accessed May 16, 2016).

40 Malosolov, “Stolichnyi park Torfyanka: maidan v vashem dvore.”
41 Maksim Stulov, “Kak rabotayet sistema ‘Platon,’” Vedomosti, novembre 24, 2015, http://www

.vedomosti.ru/business/galleries/2015/11/23/617977-kak-rabotaet-platon.

42 Bariyat Idrisova, “Dagestanskiye dal’noboishchiki: ‘Rotenbergi khuzhe, chem igil!’” Chernovik, No-
vember 21, 2015, http://chernovik.net/content/lenta-novostey/dagestanskie-dalnoboyshchiki
-rotenbergi-huzhe-chem-igil.

43 Faina Kachabekova, “Etot ‘Platon’–natural’nyi ‘lokhotron,’” Kavpolit, novembre 21, 2015,

http://kavpolit.com/articles/etot_platon_naturalnyj_lohotron-21522/.

44 Yevgenii Fyodorov, “Obrashchenie deputata Gosdumy Yevgeniya Fyodorova k dal’noboish-
chikam,” Ekho Moskvy, novembre 21, 2015, http://echo.msk.ru/blog/day_video/1662608-echo/.
45 Aleksei Naval’nyi, “Videoobrashcheniye k dal’noboishchikam,” Fond bor’by s korruptsiyei, No-

vember 25, 2015, https://fbk.info/blog/post/124/.

46 Nikolai Ovchinnikov, “Zhivu v etoi malen’koye butke, kak sobaka,” Colta, novembre 27, 2015,

http://www.colta.ru/articles/society/9391.

47 “Koordinator dal’noboishchikov, on zhe provokator-maidaun, drug Naval’nogo i kandidat
ot parnasa,” Politikus, novembre 28, 2015, http://politikus.ru/v-rossii/64193-koordinator
-dalnoboyschikov-on-zhe-provokator-maydaun-drug-navalnogo-i-kandidat-ot-parnasa.html.
48 “Dal’noboishchiki: ‘My khokhotali nad obrashcheniyem prezidenta,’” Dozhd’, Dicembre 4, 2014,
https://tvrain.ru/teleshow/vechernee_shou/dalnobojschiki_my_hohotali_nad_obrascheniem
_prezidenta-399492/.

49 “Maidan dal’noboishchikov v Moskve: reaktsiya moskvichei,” Russkii Monitor, Dicembre 4, 2015,
http://rusmonitor.com/majjdan-dalnobojjshhikov-v-moskve-reakciya-moskvichejj.html.

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146 (2) Spring 2017Samuel A. Greene
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