This website is a collection of work by the Carnegie Endowment’s global network of scholars on topics including Russia, Ukraine, Eurasia, and the post-Soviet states. This site is a product of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace based in Washington, D.C.
The State Duma elections were a triumph for Sergei Kiriyenko’s electoral machine, though even it could not produce the figures that President Putin’s campaign should have warranted.
By turning polls into rituals of anticipatory obedience, the Kremlin has disempowered and demotivated citizens
The upcoming Duma elections could turn out to be United Russia’s farewell tour in its current lineup.
The authorities are faced with the fiendish task of convincing democratic-minded voters that there is no point in voting, while making every effort to boost turnout among the conformist, state-dependent electorate.
Navalny’s return and arrest only accelerated the Russian autocracy’s adoption of an even more repressive model of governance.
One year on, repressive measures have squelched the protest movements that arose in Khabarovsk and Belarus, but that smoldering resentment has simply gone underground.
Stalin stands in for the lack of modern heroes, and overshadows all the most important historical events of the twentieth century, symbolically compensating for the failures, defeats, and setbacks of more recent years.
Kuzminov allowed maximal academic freedom, but it was this that tore apart his power and he was forced into compromises and obedience.
The Duma electoral campaign will lock in the inertia of parliamentary party dynamics. The regime will arrive at the 2024 presidential elections with a solid parliamentary majority.
The changes of 2020–2021 have proven so sweeping and profound that the Russian regime is undergoing a renaissance. Everything is now either pro-regime or anti-regime—i.e., criminal.