Susan B. Glasser
12 μ¢¤³£ ¬μμ¬
“Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality” is
a closer philosophical ¿t with today’s
Putinism than the Soviet paeans to
international workers’ solidarity and the
heroism o the laborer that Putin had to
memorize as a child. Brezhnev was not
the model for Putin but the cautionary
tale, and i that was true when Putin was
a young ¶³ operative in the days o
détente and decline in the 1970s and
early 1980s, it is even more the case now,
when Putin faces the paradox o his
own extended rule, de¿ned by great
length but also by perpetual insecurity.
SURVIVOR: RUSSIA
Insecurity might seem the wrong word
for it: Putin is well into his 20th year as
Russia’s leader and in some ways
appears to be at his most powerful, the
global template for a new era o modern
authoritarians. In the early years o this
century, when the post-Soviet wave o
democratization still seemed inexorable,
Putin reversed Russia’s course, restoring
centralized authority in the Kremlin and
reviving the country’s standing in the
world. Today, in Washington and certain
capitals o Europe, he is an all-purpose
villain, sanctioned and castigated for
having invaded two neighbors—Georgia
and Ukraine—and for having provoked
Western countries, including by interfer-
ing in the 2016 U.S. presidential election
in favor o Donald Trump and using
deadly nerve agents to poison targets on
British soil. His military intervention
in Syria’s civil war helped save the regime
o Bashar al-Assad, making Putin the
most signi¿cant Russian player in the
Middle East since Brezhnev. His increas-
ingly close alliance with China has
helped usher in a new era o great-power
competition with the United States.
Finally, it appears, Putin has brought
about the multipolar world that he has
dreamed o since he took oce deter-
mined to revisit the Americans’ Cold War
victory. All that, and he is only 66 years
old, seemingly vigorous and healthy and
capable o governing for many more
years to come. His state is no Brezhnevian
gerontocracy, at least not yet.
But i Putin has aspired to be a ruthless
modern tsar, he is not the all-seeing,
all-powerful one he is often portrayed to
be. He is an elected leader, even i those
elections are shams, and his latest term in
oce will run out in 2024, when he is
constitutionally required to step aside,
unless he has the constitution changed
again to extend his tenure (a possibility
the Kremlin has already raised). Putin has
struggled at home far more than his swag-
gering on the world stage suggests. He
controls the broadcast media, the parlia-
ment, the courts, and the security services,
the last o which have seen their inÇuence
metastasize to practically Soviet-era
levels under his rule. Yet since winning
his latest fake election, in 2018, with 77
percent o the vote, his approval ratings
have declined precipitously. In a poll this
past spring, just 32 percent o Russians
surveyed said they trusted him, according
to the state pollster, the lowest level o
his long tenure, until the Kremlin de-
manded a methodological change, and his
approval rating now stands in the mid-
60s, o from a high o close to 90 percent
after his 2014 annexation o Crimea. The
subsequent war he unleashed through
proxies in eastern Ukraine has stale-
mated. Protests are a regular feature o
Russian cities today—a decision to raise
the retirement age last year was particu-
larly unpopular—and a genuine opposi-
tion still exists, led by such ¿gures as the