I was one of few observers who thought the fallout over Prigozhin’s ‘mutiny’ in June 2023 might take a while to occur. I guess I was half right.
Many seem surprised it took so long for the consequences of Prigozhin’s march on Moscow to catch up with him. Others immediately focused on the implications for the war against Ukraine: that Prigozhin’s demise proved that it had been worth Ukraine fighting for every inch of Bakhmut, or that his violent death showed that agreements with Putin are futile.
I think these takes largely miss the point. And like some other colleagues I think ‘unresolvable whodunits’ – like the mystery of Prigozhin’s death – are fruitless. Instead, we should focus on how such a visibly violent demise pushes development within Russia itself. The interpretation, and subsequent actions based on those interpretations – regardless of the truth – are worth tracking.
Here, the main takeaways are the increasingly fractious state of Russia’s internal politics and how ambiguity over the sources and reasons for violence are useful to the Putin regime. Indeed, that is the meaning of Prigozhin’s death, just as that was the meaning of his “march on Moscow” earlier this year: these actions are inter-elite ‘political communication’ by violent means.
Before we go any further, it is worth remembering that the killing of prominent Russian political figures who are a potential threat to the stability of the regime should not lead to simplistic arguments about ensuing anarchy in Russia, or a breakdown in the rule of law. And it doesn’t mean ordinary Russians are just passive bystanders. They also will act based on their different interpretations of Prigozhin’s death.
Scholars of Russia’s security services, courts and police have long noted that the state does not have a monopoly on the use of violence, and that this messiness serves political and material ends. The shocking death of Prigozhin broadcasts broadly the message that the regime does not like the “communication” it received in June during the Wagner march. But searching for which part of the ‘regime’ eventually responded is much harder to say. Prigozhin said the quiet bit out loud: that the war has been waged incompetently and unjustly for Russians themselves (let alone Ukrainians), and that the reasons for it were entirely bogus. This, it appears, was the message from Prigozhin that couldn’t be stomached – but by whom?
The absence of a monopoly on violence is because these conditions serve insiders and the Russian state at the same time
Second, the chains of decision-making are never linear or clear. An unfortunate effect of viewing Russia as a ‘mafia state’, as proposed by some journalists and researchers, is that it suggests there’s a ‘boss’ handing out the tasks of enforcement to his capos. That the Russian military and other security agencies had it in for Prigozhin is neither here nor there. That Putin may have felt personally threatened like never before is also no reason to trace immediate and direct causes back to the Kremlin.
There is plenty of ‘agency’ outside the Kremlin’s gates to carry out sophisticated and targeted actions. And while the stereotype is to think of the Russian deep state as hierarchical and focused on continuity and loyalty, insiders are well known to pursue their own interests, even if they justify their actions via the greater good. Once again, the absence of a monopoly on violence – the loose rule of law – is because these conditions serve insiders and the Russian state at the same time.
This is true at all levels. The lowly district prosecutor sends the boys round to the local factory to press-gang workers into the army because she wants to hit a quota, but also extract bribes. The FSB lieutenant in the provinces angles for a promotion to Moscow and that is why he’s on the lookout for an anti-war activist to arrest. The military intelligence colonel ensconced in a disturbingly quiet Moscow office ponders how to get one over on a competing agency by staging a false flag operation of some kind by pro-Ukraine actors who do not know they are in the pay of the Russian state.
Just as Putin could not rely on a coherent response from Russia’s security agencies during the June ‘mutiny’, the Russian state now is in a mode of chasing its own tail. We overestimate the internal cohesion and consistency of Russian government agencies; in reality, its institutions are wracked with forces that pull them at cross-purposes.
Here it’s worth recalling the real lack of predictive power displayed by almost all experts and observers. Since the war began, outside observers have imputed feelings and desires to Russians without much evidence: whether it was the view that Russians’ bloodlust was easily stoked by promises of a lightning victory, or that Western sanctions would quickly break the spell. Or that, faced with a united Western front, Russians would rally round the flag and stick with the devil they know.
Making sense of the senseless
Early on, I tried to tread a path to a more sociologically balanced perspective. My research has found that, after initial shock and nausea at Russian elites’ mad and rash decision to invade, most Russians – while expressing immense disquiet – have neither actively supported nor opposed the war. I use the term ‘defensive consolidation’ to express Russians’ sensitivity to the looming catastrophe and their search for ways to make sense of the senseless.
The killing of Prigozhin merely accentuates once more the conflicting social forces at work in Russia. On the one hand, my research has found, people are further alienated and indeed disgusted by the country’s elite and what they believe it is capable of, despairing of any material improvement to their precarious economic existence, with scant attention paid to the actual war itself beyond growing fear of the security state and knowledge of the fragile situation at the front.
At the same time, Russians look for sources of genuine political and social authority, outside of elections, that speak to their immediate and longer-term material interests. These could be, say, factory bosses or even municipal clerks who might be willing to tell them the truth about the war or their prospects. Liberal Russian commentator Ekaterina Schulman – for some the most prominent moral voice of Russians abroad – is even more forthright than usual in her prognoses. She notes that preparations for Russia’s 2024 presidential elections show widespread dislike for militaristic and jingoistic messaging by candidates.
Schulman believes Western journalists, including Russian émigrés, should wake up to evidence that the war is unpopular in Russia, despite what polling appears to show. There is already widespread criticism of the state benefits promised to the families of Russian service personnel. For example, in higher education, far from increasing spending to accommodate the right of veterans’ children to study in universities, rectors are looking to ordinary students and their families to subsidise these ‘Special Military Operation’ students.
Many Russian elites welcome the way the war seems to help a project of neo-feudalism – with juicy state contracts for weapons on offer to them. And entitlements for ordinary people increasingly linked to loyalty to the state make it look like the state can divide and rule. But this is no substitute for genuine public backing for the war, especially when Russians are long used to the state making it as hard as possible to claim entitlements.
Researcher Volodymyr Artiukh, in a recent post, argues that those who see domestic events in Russia as having implications for how we interpret the situation around the war in Ukraine have it the wrong way round: Putin’s international strategy is turning – or caving – inward.
A kind of boomerang effect is occurring. Martial law and a cowed society in fear, terror, elite decapitations – these were things Russia intended to happen in Ukraine, not domestically. I wrote a while back that the main logic of this war was revenge of the colonial periphery on the metropole. The occupation of Donbas and then the whole of Ukraine was meant to keep ‘disturbing’ aspects of Russia’s authoritarian militarism at arm’s length from the cosseted Russian middle class and even the rest of the country. Instead, every step of the way, Russia’s ‘special military operation’ has become a term of ridicule for many because it has brought these things closer to home.
