Dissent And Disarray In Putin's Russia

The authoritarian President’s hold on power may be shakier than it looks.

- Cathy Young

This Year, with the start of a new presidential term that runs out in 2024, Vladimir Putin has achieved the dubious milestone of having been in power longer than Leonid Brezhnev, who led the country from 1964 to 1982. It is an apt comparison, since the age of Putin in Russia bears definite resemblances to the Brezhnev era in the Soviet Union.

Now, as then, large segments of the population enjoy mostly oil-enabled material comfort relative to previous generations (even if the 1970s version of comfort, in which a color television was the height of luxury, bananas were a rare delicacy, and a trip to Crimea was a dream vacation, looks like squalor in the 2010s). Now, as then, there is a relatively mild authoritarian regime with occasional spikes of repression (even if the level of freedom in modern-day Russia, where dissidents can sell books and virtually all content is accessible on the internet, would have been unthinkable in Brezhnev’s USSR). Now, as then, there was a stagnant stability and a cynical national mood, with no visible alternatives to the existing system.

Of course, the Brezhnev era turned out to be a prelude to reform, upheaval, and ultimately the collapse of the Soviet Union. What comes after Putinism—and when?

The fall of Soviet Communism and the turn toward liberal values in the new Russia was a major victory for freedom, notwithstanding the massive flaws of both post-Soviet economic reform and Boris Yeltsin’s leadership. Russia’s authoritarian backsliding under Putin in the 21st century, and the rise of an amorphous but aggressive anti-liberal “Russian idea” composed of a mishmash of aggrieved nationalism, populism, and cultural traditionalism, is not the only factor in the worldwide rise of illiberalism in the 2010s. But it has made the world less safe for freedom and empowered freedom’s enemies.