Abstract
The aim of this book is to analyze how Vladimir Putin exercised a subtle divide and rule against his hardline supporters between 2004 and 2011, to prevent them from constraining his accumulation of power. It is a case study that illustrates some key elements of the inner workings of his regime, and helps us to understand how it has lasted for 18 years. The book examines one of its understudied features: the origins, unfolding, climax, and fading of an important conflict between key groups of siloviki (security figures) in his entourage.
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Notes
- 1.
In this book the term siloviki is used roughly as it is in the Russian context. This is in two slightly different senses. Broadly speaking, it refers to employees of all the agencies that use any significant degree of armed force. More narrowly, as in ‘voina silovikov’ (siloviki war), the word refers to those close associates of Putin who made their careers in the KGB and also, in some cases, were running silovik organizations during the silovik war. I have tried both to find a non-clumsy way of translating siloviki into English, and also to think of any near-equivalent of the siloviki phenomenon in either Russian or non-Russian history, but in vain.
- 2.
As discussed later, the other power-base consisted in part of members of ‘Yeltsin’s Family’, i.e., the individuals who got Putin promoted from 1996 on, and who in 1999 selected him as the next president. Their influence had faded by the late 2000s. In general terms, this power-base has represented the interests of Western-oriented oligarchs and their adherents. For fine analyses of (1) the shifting clan dispositions as of May 30, 2013, see Vladimir Pribylovsky’s long essay ‘The Clans are Marching’, http://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/vladimir-pribylovsky/clans-are-marching; and (2) important clan conflicts of 2013, see Stanislav Belkovsky, ‘Rossiiskie voiny – Krupneishie byurokraticheskie, korporativnye, informatsionnye konflikty v Rossii v 2013-om godu’, December 2013, 284 pp., http://slon.ru/russia/doklada_belkovskogo-1035081.xhtml.
- 3.
Karen Dawisha’s superb book Putin’s Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia?, Simon and Schuster, New York, 2014, devotes considerable attention to members of Cherkesov’s group, especially Tsepov, but none to the silovik war or its significance. And the book Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, The New Nobility: The Restoration of Russia’s Security State and the Enduring Legacy of the KGB, Public Affairs, New York, 2010, oddly enough, pays only a little attention to Cherkesov, almost none to Sechin, and none at all to the silovik war.
- 4.
The methodology used here emphasizes the importance in Russian politics of clans, clientelism, and shared material interests. By contrast, it plays down the idea that groups and coalitions are formed primarily on ideological lines. While clan-centered theory was particularly developed in the Soviet period by T.H. Rigby, with adaptations it remains relevant and useful today. For an analysis of Rigby’s work see Stephen Fortescue, ‘T.H. Rigby on Soviet and Post-Soviet Russian Politics’, chapter 1 in the Festschrift in Rigby’s honor, S. Fortescue, ed., Russian Politics from Lenin to Putin, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, pp. 1–20. Other authors represented in the book are Sheila Fitzpatrick, Graeme Gill, Leslie Holmes, Archie Brown, Peter Reddaway, and Eugene Huskey.
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Reddaway, P. (2018). Introduction. In: Russia’s Domestic Security Wars . Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77392-6_1
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