Commentary on Jade McGlynn’s book Putin’s War (2023), Part 2 of 5: How can we understand public discontent with the war among Russians

McGlynn makes an important point that is often ignored by Western commentators that even autocrats have to pay attention to public opinion. Rule by arbitrary terror is simply not possible on a perpetual basis. And while democracy-vs.-autocracy may be useful for framing a spectrum on which to understand types of government, the differences in governments are not purely binary.

The widely-cited V-Dem Institute of the University of Gothenburg groups countries into four broad types of regime: liberal democracy, electoral democracy, electoral autocracies, and closed autocracies based on a range of democratic and rule-of-law criteria. (1) For 2023, they classified Russia as an “electoral autocracy.” As Glynn observes:

[S]ince 2014, various academics have tried to gauge the reliability of Putin's popularity, with the most methodologically robust study using list experiments to conclude that, yes, he really is very popular. This shouldn't be surprising: it is easier to be an autocrat if you are popular, since you will still need to rely on millions of bureaucrats and citizens to get anything done. Tue alternative is to rule through the barrel of a gun but this is expensive and empowers your security forces, who could then overthrow you. (p. 20) [my emphasis]

Glynn’s book gives a good look at what a challenge it is to measure popular opinion in Russia, particularly on an ongoing war. In general, the psychological/anthropological response to a war getting underway is to “rally around the flag” on the default emotional response that Our Side is good and righteous and the Other Side is evil and vicious. And there are structural factors that make the Our Side Is Good position the popular one, from official government propaganda (or information operations, if we want to be polite) aimed at generating exactly that response. The “safe” default position until the war goes completely south tends to be the Hooray For Our Side stance.

Also, governments and political can and do impose sanctions against people who may be tempted to step outside the patriotic consensus. Ask the former university presidents of Columbia, Harvard, and the University of Pennsylvania how such pressure can work when brought to bear on a current foreign policy priority, in their cases the Gaza War of 2023-24 (and continuing), which drew broad bipartisan support from elected officials.

In Russia’s case, there were more explicit sanctions against dissenting in the current Ukraine War. Glynn reminds us:

[A]s has been well-documented, in Russia it is illegal to refer to the war in Ukraine as a war, instead you must call it a special military operation. It might sound unwieldy but there is a long tradition of such terminology. Both recent wars in Chechnya were classed as military operations, as was the Soviet war in Afghanistan - although admittedly after ten years this distinction was hard to sustain. The great benefit of a military operation is that it can be started and ended, whereas a war tends to be won or lost. Deploying the term 'special military operation' is also about managing the population's emotions and trying to not make the war appear too serious. lt is demobilising language, that helps to occlude the reality of war. Of course, Russia isn't the only country to use euphemistic language. The Troubles is a twee term for what was a civil war in a constituent nation of the UK. [my emphasis] (pp. 44-45)

This description gives a good glimpse at the multiple dilemmas involved in measuring Russian public opinion on the war. On the one hand, governments and politicians need to have some measure of what people actually think. On the other, people have understandable reservations about expressing opinions that could send them to jail:

The phone rings, it's a woman's voice, polite, official but with a disarming sweetness. After confirming your name and address and date of birth - all correct - she asks: 'Da you support the special military operation, or would you like to go to prison for fifteen years?'

This is what many Russians would hear when pollsters ask them about support for the war. lt is difficult to countenance the idea that anyone would feel comfortable expressing their dissent to an official sounding voice who knows their name and address, fully in the knowledge that spreading disinformation about the war risks fifteen years' incarceration. Most people simply refuse to answer, leading some sociologists to argue that the number of Russians who agree to respond to opinion polls has collapsed to an entirely unrepresentative level. According to Boris Kagarlitsky, before the war the Russian survey response rate was below 30 per cent, already low, but since the war it has wavered between 10 and 25 per cent. Can sociological polling with this level of responsiveness, and in an atmosphere where telling the truth carries a criminal sentence, be taken as reliable or representative?

One obvious answer would be, at least it can’t be simply taken at face value!

Even in countries that are functioning as liberal democracies, the rally-round-the-flag caution means that many people feel that it’s safer or at least socially more respectable to criticize the hardships associated with war. In the US, for instance, many people might consider it too edgy to say, I’m against War X. But they will say, “I’m not against the war, because the North Koreans/Chinese/Vietnamese/Afghan Commies/Sandinistas/Grenadians/Iraqis/Iranians/Serbians/Afghan Islamists are evil. But I don’t like the way it’s being fought, it’s taking too long, military conscription is a pain in the ass, the war is causing shortages, it’s causing inflation, it’s distracting from more important priorities, etc., etc.

During the Vietnam War, it became common for people to take a mixed hawk/dove position: “We never should have been there (Vietnam) in the first place. But now that we are there, we ought to win it!” If pressed further, “winning it” would typically turn out to be some magic fantasy of doing more of the same, or we-should-use-nukes-and-they-will-surrender-just-like-with-Horoshima.

In cases like today’s Russia where straightforward polling responses can’t give a good measure of actual opinion on the war, Glynn points to other types of measures that can at least be taken into account, such as low response rates on polls, some actual protests against the 2022 invasion immediately after it began. Emigration of draft-aged men would also be another possible indication of lack of enthusiasm for the war. But, as she notes, “leaving does not equate to opposition, not least because many of those who oppose the war may not have the money to leave Russia. Moreover, even of those who do oppose the war, the invasion of Ukraine was not always the direct cause of their emigration.”

Glynn’s book was published before Yevgeny Prigozhin’s strange military uprising in 2023. (2) The revolt was certainly an indication of some kind of serious discontent. But it would be hard to see that as a symptom of antiwar sentiment against Russia’s conflict in Ukraine. But it was definitely a complication for Putin’s government.

Next: Apathy, multiple narratives

Notes:

(1) Democracy Report 2024: Democracy Winning and Losing at the Ballot, 17. V-Dem Institute (University of Gothenburg) March 2024. >.

(2) Stanovaya, Tatiana (2023): Beneath the Surface, Prigozhin’s Mutiny has Changed Everything in Russia. Carnegie Politika 07/27/2023. (Accessed: 2024-19-08).