TY  - JOUR
TI  - “Stability’s” End: The Political Economy of Russia’s Intersecting Crises since 2009
T2  - The Russian Sociological Review
IS  - The Russian Sociological Review
KW  - involution
KW  - peripheralization
KW  - neopatrimonialism
KW  - Bonapartism
KW  - crisis
KW  - state
AB  - The article explores the mutual determination of crises that replaced the "stability" of the 2000s in Russia. The period since 2009 witnessed a rapid accumulation and condensation of contradictions in different spheres, from the economic crisis of 2009 to the political crisis of 2011-2012, to the "geopolitical" crisis of 2014, and finally, to the new cycle of the economic crisis that started in 2014. The author establishes the connection between these crises and the political-economic order that emerged in Russia in the 2000s. This order is characterized by the reproduction of peripheral capitalism under the aegis of the regime that combines neo-patrimonial practices with the dominance of bureaucratic elites characteristic of Bonapartism. The 2009 economic crisis revealed the vulnerability of this political-economic order. In turn, the mass protests of 2011-2012 changed the terms of the relationship between society and the state, and triggered the transformation of the regime that increasingly relied on ideology and repression. The ideological mobilization characteristic of Putin’s third term was reinforced by Russia’s actions in Ukraine in 2014. This "patriotic" mobilization has taken place against the background of economic stagnation and decline that have testified to the exhaustion of Russia’s model of peripheral capitalism. The article ends with an analysis of the contradictions and potential points of tension in Russian society generated by continuing economic problems.
AU  - Ilya Matveev
UR  - https://sociologica.hse.ru/en/2017-16-2/207149686.html
PY  - 2017
SP  - 29-53
VL  - 16