The new "Kremlinology" and the fate of Vladimir Putin

Anna Nemtsova, who has been reporting on Russia and eastern Europe for years, wrote an analysis of Vladimir Putin’s current political situation inside Russia for the Daily Beast, Russia Can Finally See That Putin's 'Days Are Numbered' 12/18/2022. <> (Accessed: 2022-17-12).

This article reminded me that we're back to the days where lots more people in the West were paying attention to what was known as "Kremlinology" during the Cold War. That meant speculation about the power struggles in Russia and the motives of the actors based on sometimes vague clues. A popular feature of the practice was closely examining who was standing next to whom on the reviewing stands at Moscow military parades.

Nemtsova quotes Russian opposition politician Yulia Galiamina: “Putin could have ruled longer, if he did not start this war but now his days are really numbered, he is falling apart and he is clearly aware of it."

A 2020 report from Human Rights Watch also identifies Galiamina as an opposition activist who has protested Putin's government in recent years and heads a dissident group called Soft Power. The scholarly journal New Eastern Europe published an article by her on Russia politics last year. (Women's face of the opposition 02/03/2021)

But for non-specialists reading news reports, it’s hard to know quite what to make of it the first time we see a report by a particular reporter, whose work we don’t recall encountering before, quoting a Russian dissident whose name may not be familiar to us. How seriously should we take reports like this one?

In this case, the Daily Beast is a legitimate news organization with a track record and Nemtsova is also a reputable author with expertise in foreign policy who has also published on such topics for years. But this article ia a reminder of why critical reading is always needed on such speculations. Especially when Our Side - NATO in this case - is involved in a high-stakes military conflict with the country that is the subject of the report.

Nemtsova also quotes other Russians, including: attorney Vera Aleksandrovna; journalist Olga Bychkova; chess chamption Garry Kasparov, a longtime critic of Putin’s government; anti-Putin oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a “Russian oil tycoon and, at one time, the richest man in Russia,” who is currently living in London (aka, "Londongrad", because it's so popular as a haven for such oligarchs); and, Tatiana Yashina, mother of an imprisoned dissident. Oil oligarch Khodorkovsky criticized the Western oil sanctions this past summer.

So far as the Daily Beast article tells us, its judgment of Putin’s immeddiate vulnerability seems to be based on the speculation of those sources. And on old-fashioned “Krimlinology”, e.g.:

[E]very recent attempt to make Putin look like a strong and decisive leader has failed so badly-even insicle Russia-that after nine months of devastating war in Ukraine, the Kremlin is running out of ideas. They even canceled Putin's big annual press conference for the first time in years.

And: “Every Kremlin attempt to rebuild the ünage of Putin as a superman seems to provoke another avalanche of jokes online.“

Seriously? A cancelled press conference? Anecdotal evidence of jokes online, posted by Lord-knows-who?

Nemtsova also quotes the Levada think tank, which is widely regarded as conducting polls which provide some kind of meaningful measure of Russian public opinion:

Putin is still backed by around 79 percent of Russians, according to recent polls, but that faith is weakening. Studies by Levada, an independent Russian think tank, show the number of Russians who believe their country is moving in the right direction has already fallen from 64 percent in October to 61 percent in November.

So, the poll shows four-fifths of Russians supportive of Putin. Sixty-plus percent of the public, nine months into a war that is requiring a general mobilization, thinks the country is going in the right direction. And the fact that the number is three points lower than a month before is evidence that “Putin's rock-solid system is crumbling”?

There are good reasons to wonder about how secure Putin may be in his position. It seems very clear that he underestimated the difficulty of the military goals he was pursuing in Ukraine, both the level of conventional military resistance from the Ukraine and the preparedness of his own forces, and probably also how willing the NATO countries would be to support Ukraine.

But obvious signs that Putin’s control is immediately endangered, like some large-scale military mutiny or mass protests or obvious public opposition from within his authoritarian United Russia Party, are not yet in evidence. The popular resistance to conscription is significant. But there’s no real indication that it is undercutting Putin’s centralized power within the Russian government.

It’s safe to say that a lot of wheels are in motion, not least of them China’s apparent unhappiness with Putin’s threats to start a nuclear war.

But Putin also clearly hopes that the European Union’s dysfunctional politics over refugees, of which this war has created millions, and the stress from energy shortages, will seriously weaken the EU. It’s also still not clear at this point just what the Biden-Harris Administration’s actual war aims are in this conflict. And those factors are likely to be restraints on the willingness of any potential internal opposition against Putin to make serious moves to reverse his policies or unseat him.

The question of US war aims is more significant than most of the public commentary on the war acknowledges. As historian Herfried Münkler observes:

The Americans ... seem to have a very different idea [from that of the Germans and French], namely that of a long-term war against Russia with the aim of exhausting the depth of Russian logistics and, above all, reducing the breadth of its officer corps, thus ensuring that the Russians will no longer be able to wage a war of this magnitude. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has been clear along these lines, and some statements by Secretary of State Antony Blinken suggest this assessment. [my emphasis]

One statement of Austin’s of the kind to which he refers is from April: “We want to see Russia weakened to the point where it can’t do things like invade Ukraine.“

So long as this uncertainty holds in the view of the Russian leadership, it would presumably make the risk of removing Putin look even greater in the eyes of potential Russian putchists or internal opposition figures.