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Hardship, Mobilization & Russia's Social Contract

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Hardship, Mobilization & Russia's Social Contract From Boom to Bust: Hardship, Mobilization & Russia’s Social Contract Samuel A. Greene Abstract: This essay revisits the debate about Russia’s “social contract,” arguing that the ability of the Rus- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/146/2/113/1830965/daed_a_00439.pdf by guest on 27 September 2021 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, indeed, 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, however, 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- SAMUEL A. GREENE is Director itics at home and abroad. His approval ratings have of the Russia Institute at King’s remained high, even as the economy has collapsed College London and Senior Lec- beneath his feet. To many observers, the question is turer in Russian Politics. He has worked as Deputy Director of the not why there are pockets of opposition and protest, Carnegie Moscow Center, as Di- but why there aren’t more. In truth, these questions rector of the Center for the Study share an answer: the same shifts in politics that con- of New Media & Society, and as solidated a super-majority of voters behind Putin a freelance journalist in Moscow, has laid the groundwork for a much more conten- Hungary, and the Balkans. He tious–and much more pervasive–kind of politics. is the author of Moscow in Move- The boom years of Vladimir Putin’s first three ment: Power and Opposition in Putin’s Russia (2014). His blog, Moscow- terms in office provided a sense of a set of social con- on-Thames, may be accessed at tracts: one with the elite (centered around rents), https://moscowonthames.word one with the broad mass of the population (cen- press.com/. tered around paternalistic “noninterference”), and © 2017 by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences doi:10.1162/DAED_ a_00439 113 From Boom one with the urban upper class (centered in most circumstances, this has been suf- to Bust: around the provision of space for “individ- ficient to produce consent. In other cas- Hardship, 1 Mobilization ual modernization”). As living standards es, however, recourse to the public sphere & Russia’s improved steadily over the course of near- persists: citizens faced with severe or po- Social Contract ly a decade and a half–providing, for the tentially irreversible threats to their wel- first time in post-Soviet history, a certain fare and quality of life engage, as they al- stability of expectations–a series of mo- ways have, in protest. Unlike prior mobi- bilizational interactions between the state lization cycles, however, post-boom and and various challengers served as border post-Crimea mobilization more quickly skirmishes, outlining the contours of these becomes ideological, driven first and fore- settlements, illustrating how far each side most by the increasingly rigid and predict- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/146/2/113/1830965/daed_a_00439.pdf by guest on 27 September 2021 could push (and be pushed) before some- able tropes of the state’s own responses. thing would break. Thus, a series of bene- Looking to the future (a thankless but fits protests and labor strikes in the mid- necessary task) is one of the goals here. The 2000s seemed to set the terms of engage- underlying trends–a state that increasingly ment between the state and most of its seeks to engage its citizens emotionally and citizens, while more subtle standoffs with ideologically, and a population that feels in- the economic elite and the most mobile ur- creasingly alienated from the state mate- banites led to similar understandings of the rially–seem both unlikely to change and balance of power in society.2 bound, over time, to produce ever more and The end of the boom provides an impor- ever sharper conflict. The ability of the cur- tant opportunity to revisit received wisdom. rent regime to withstand these challenges, Whereas the dislocation of the 1990s fol- while beyond the scope of this discussion, lowed what had been many years of steady does not appear to be seriously in doubt. institutional decline, the current downturn The intuition of this essay, however, is that –which is in its third year of economic con- real change in Russia will come not be- traction, bringing steep declines in gdp, cause power changes hands at the top, but income, and consumption–is the first in because citizens at the bottom begin to re- most Russians’ living memory to follow a gain their faith in the political community’s prolonged period of hardening positive ex- ability to deliver public goods. pectations. To economic hardship is added a range of other shocks, including ideology, Russia’s economy contracted by 3.1 per- elite hierarchy, political coercion, and inter- cent in 2015 and, at the time this issue went national isolation. to press, was estimated to have fallen by a In the post-boom and post-Crimea pe- further 0.6 percent in 2016.4 Hit by the com- riod, the primary public reaction to the bination of sanctions, falling oil prices, and a apparent failure of the social contract is collapsing ruble, the economy has seen con- through a renewal of what in the 1990s sumption decline by as much as 10 percent was described as “involution”: a retreat year-on-year–2 to 3 percentage points faster from the public space and from universal than incomes have declined–as the govern- institutions into relatively more robust ment, too, has cut back on social spending.5 networks of localized interpersonal rela- There has been a dramatic shift in the tionships.3 But even as expectations of the government’s approach to this crisis, com- state, which were already low, fell still fur- pared with previous shocks. Whereas the ther, the regime itself reengineered its own Kremlin dug deep into its reserves–and legitimacy through an appeal based large- put significant pressure on enterprise own- ly on emotion. For most of the population ers–to minimize the impact of the short- 114 Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences lived 2008–2009 recession, much more of calculated from a range of questions asked Samuel A. the burden of this deeper and more pro- by Levada in recurring polls: the “family Greene longed downturn has been placed squarely index,” which measures sentiment about on the shoulders of citizens, in the form not household economic prospects; the “Rus- only of falling incomes and rising prices, sia index,” which measures sentiment about but also austerity, which has hit education, economic prospects for society at large; and health care, pensions, and state salaries.6 the “expectation index,” which measures Meanwhile, as noted above, consump- sentiment about the future. At the same tion has fallen faster than income, as Rus- time, the “power index,” which measures sians themselves have tried to get ahead sentiment about the country’s political lead- of the crisis.7 Spending has shifted from ership, remained high (see Figure 1). Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/daed/article-pdf/146/2/113/1830965/daed_a_00439.pdf by guest on 27 September 2021 aspirational purchases–homes and cars, These data reflect a structure of public purchases that reflect plans and hopes for sentiment about power and the econo- the future–to daily needs; mortgages and my that cuts somewhat against the grain automobile loans have fallen by as much of conventional wisdom about authori- as half.8 All the same, many Russians have tarian social contracts. When authoritar- compensated through increased consumer ian leaders are popular–as Putin genuine- borrowing, even as banks have made bor- ly appears to be, or as Hugo Chavez was in rowing more expensive.9 The result has Venezuela–it is often attributed to a broad been an increasingly difficult–and often public sense that the leader governs in the violent–relationship between borrowers public interest, either through macro social and lenders, into which the government redistribution or through more targeted but has been loath to insert itself.10 Similar nonetheless pervasive clientelism. Russian friction has emerged between workers and citizens, however, see Putin as pursuing nei- employers, to a degree not seen since the ther. Since the Levada Center began asking rampant salary nonpayment problems of the question in 2006, the overwhelming the 1990s.11 One result is that more than majority of respondents have consistently half of working Russians are, in one way believed that inequality in the country has or another, not able to enjoy the rights and gotten worse under Putin, not better (see protections afforded to them by Russian Table 1). With similar consistency, fewer labor, tax,
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