Two Crises in Russia
Erosion of Power and Re-orientation
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
After its presidential election, Russia’s political situation only seems clear. Although Vladimir Putin will become president again, the political system is more fragile than ever: the rulers’ legitimacy is weak; the modernising impulse of the last decade has faded. The structural weaknesses of a form of state capitalism in which bureaucratic elites strive to exhaust the revenues derived from raw material exports remain unsolved. The power vertical is eroding. The democracy movement, however, has also reached a dead end. The politics of the street has exhausted itself. It too faces a reorientation.
(Osteuropa 3/2012, pp. 3–20)