The war against Ukraine and the transformation of the political regime in Russia

This paper studies how the nature of Russia's regime was affected by its self-initiated war against Ukraine. Drawing on Gerschewski's model to explain stability of autocracies, the paper finds that the Kremlin sought to stabilise the regime though intensified repression, the strong binding of elite actors and legitimising the regime on the basis of more extreme dichotomous 'patriotic' representations. This perpetuated but radicalised existing trends. On two points, however, the political transformation in the war context broke with the longer term trend: citizens were now mobilised actively and elites got entangled in an internal competition to over-prove their loyalty. In the model of Gerschewski, these different elements represent a shift from a depoliticising logic to stabilise the autocratic regime to a politicising logic characterised by hard repression, strong binding of elites and radical 'patriotic' legitimation. This new logic, however, also entails the risk of disrupting a fragile authoritarian equilibrium.