The Rise of Personalistic Autocracy in Post-Soviet Russia
The collapse of the Soviet Union was a defining turning point in the course of modern history, as at the time, its collapse was unexpected both domestically and internationally. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, many political scientists wondered what would come next for the Russian Federation. While some were optimistic about the prospect of a Yeltsin government and major reforms to the Russian State, others questioned if a Westernised Russia would be possible so soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union. What we see today is not a liberalised Russia that has adopted Western values, but a country run by an autocratic dictator who has repeatedly bent the rules to consolidate power and remain in authority. In this essay, I will argue that the rapid rise of personalistic autocracy in post-Soviet Russia can be explained by three key factors: weak democratic institutions, a lack of state-monopolised legitimate violence, and economic collapse.
Firstly, to understand the rise of Vladimir Putin in post-Soviet Russia, and the subsequent personalistic autocracy built around him which still exists today, it’s necessary to understand the state of governance which existed before he came to power, and which has allowed him to retain firm control of the Russian State. Immediately following the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was a belief that Russia would reorient itself towards a Western approach, with a liberalised economy and democratic governance (Hanson, 5 March 2025). While economic liberalisation was attempted and will be discussed later in this paper, it's clear that meaningful institutional reform was not a result of economic liberalisation, nor was it a priority of the Yeltsin government. As Maria Snegovoya (2023) argues in her article “Why Russia’s Democracy Never Began”, a significant portion of the elite which existed in the former Communist Party retained positions of power in a government that did not see significant reform or restructuring following the collapse of the Soviet Union. What took place instead was a temporary weakening of the former regime, which would ultimately be strengthened again following the Constitutional Crisis of 1993. As Stephen Kotkin outlines in his book, Armageddon Averted, the provisions in the new Russian constitution paved the way for an autocratic regime to maintain power with a strong emphasis on presidential power through decrees with the force of law, broad executive authority, and the power to dismiss the State Duma after three votes against a prime minister nomination (2008, 127). These broad sweeping powers of the presidency with limited checks and balances are what allowed Putin to consolidate power to prevent political opposition during his early years as president, making it extremely difficult for meaningful reform to take place after he came to power (Hale 2005, 148).
Secondly, the poor state of Russian security at the time of Putin’s rise to power was a key factor in building support for his leadership and autocratic governance. Two main aspects of Russian security are necessary to take into consideration when answering the question of how a personalistic autocratic government could gain prominence in Russia as suddenly as Putin’s did following the collapse of the USSR: the Chechen War, and the rise of criminal organisations and private security groups. The Chechen War began in 1991 after the region attempted to declare independence from the Russian Federation following the collapse of the Soviet Union (Kotkin 2008, 130). While the Russian military was deployed to Chechnya, they faced considerable opposition and were not able to retake the region without inflicting significant casualties to themselves and the civilian population, with the conflict ultimately coming to a temporary halt in 1996 following heavy casualties from a chaotic Russian military operation and growing public opposition. In 1999, when Vladimir Putin was serving as the Russian Prime Minister, explosions in two apartment buildings in Moscow went off, killing hundreds, with the Chechen forces being blamed, effectively reigniting the conflict. Putin’s response to the bombings was aggressive, sending the military into Chechnya again, a move which was seen as extremely popular, boosting his polling numbers significantly (Hale 2005, 147). before the bombings in Moscow, Putin had been selected to succeed Boris Yeltsin, despite his low polling numbers and lack of national recognition. Putin’s decisive and effective action against the Chechen forces was a stark contrast to previous suppression efforts and propelled him into the public eye.
Beyond Putin’s administrative actions taken while serving as prime minister, there was also his personality and connection to the former KGB, the primary intelligence agency of the former Soviet Union, that made him stand out to Russian voters. As Valerie Sperling writes in her article, “Putin's Macho Personality Cult”, Putin was often portrayed as a hyper-masculine leader who could “successfully defend[ing] Russian national interests at home and abroad” (2016, 15). This portrayal of Putin was built on his background of working as a colonel in the KGB during the Cold War, which many Russians viewed as one of the few Soviet government agencies that functioned effectively, further boosting his image as a qualified candidate to turn the country around (Hanson, 24 March 2025). Putin’s KGB connections would later come to serve as a key tool in consolidating power while serving as president. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Boris Yeltsin directed the deconstruction of the KGB and the founding of the FSB, the Federal Security Service of Russia, resulting in tens of thousands of former Soviet KGB officers finding employment elsewhere, like in private protection companies (Kotkin 2008, 132-134). However, a significant portion of these officers engaged in illegal activity for criminal organisations, which resulted in widespread lawlessness and chaos around the country (Volkov 1999, 748). On top of that, state funding for protection services and internal police forces had diminished significantly amidst the financial crisis and ongoing criticism of state agencies acting as tools of a totalitarian regime (Volkov 1999, 749). What resulted was a loss of monopolised legitimate violence by the state, which Max Weber would define as the collapse of the state, as the state could no longer enforce the rule of law through legitimised force. Once Vladimir Putin came to power, he utilised his network from when he served in the KGB to establish a base of power built on security services that would prevent opposition and bring about a “dictatorship of laws” (Hanson, 26 March 2025). This strengthening of the FSB was appealing not only to those who had previously served in the KGB but also to the general public, as lawlessness continued to be a major problem throughout the country. Putin was successfully portrayed as a decisive and dominant leader who would take the necessary steps to get things done, and the Russian public was behind him.
Lastly, it’s important to recognise the role the state of the economy played in Putin’s rise to power. Within the past century, there had been four major “revolutions” which resulted in economic hardships in Russia: The Bolshevik Revolution and the Introduction of NEP under Lenin, the First Five-Year Plan under Stalin, Perestroika under Gorbachev, and Shock Therapy under Yeltsin. The most relevant revolution at the time, which was still having major effects on the Russian economy during Putin’s rise to power, was shock therapy under Yeltsin. This approach is characterised by the rapid privatisation of property, liberalisation of prices, and the flow of free trade (Murrell 1993, 114-115). While this method of reinventing a nation’s economy following the collapse of a communist regime had worked in countries like Poland, shock therapy had significant negative consequences on Russia’s economy, with the general public having to suffer the consequences while Russian oligarchs grew their wealth, primarily as a result of the failure to reform existing institutions (Huygen 2012, 66-70). At this point, Russians across generations were increasingly wary of the prospect of a new economic revolution, especially given past failures and their consequences (Hanson, 26 March 2025). Vladimir Putin satisfied the desire for a new approach, as his priority was not to overturn the system and create something completely new, but instead to focus on building the state on a system that had proven to work, capitalism and loyalty (Taylor 2018, 113-114). Putin believed in the “oneness of the state and business” and did what he could to ensure that the oligarchs within Russia maintained loyalty to the state (Taylor 2018, 114). Putin served as a stark contrast to the revolutionaries that came before him and appealed to a significant portion of the Russian population, with his economic policy seeing major successes in the Russian economy with an overall growth of 7% per year from 1999 to 2007 (Taylor 2018, 114). This rapid economic growth following the 1998 economic collapse helped solidify Putin’s popularity among the public, as not only did he represent a new kind of leader, but his policies were working.
Given this, some believe that democratization was still a strong possibility for the Russian Republic after the collapse of the Soviet Union. American economist Jeffrey Sachs, who collaborated with the Yeltsin government to incorporate shock therapy into the Russian economy, has repeatedly stated that had the Russian government fully embraced shock therapy and had Western nations contributed more funding to the development of Russian social safety nets and currency stabilisation, democracy would have emerged and the Russian economy would have performed significantly better than it did (Sachs 1994). The problem with this argument, and is something that Sachs inadvertently admits in his argument, is that the state institutions which existed at the time of the implementation of shock therapy were remnants of the old soviet system, primarily composed of officials who had served during the Soviet Union (Snegovoya 2023). Sachs argues that the failure of shock therapy to have as wide-sweeping an effect on the Russian economy was because of the failure of the legislative body to get behind Yeltsin and his proposed reforms, which in turn led to the Constitutional Crisis of 1993. Had the priority been to reform the existing institutions with the goal of democratization, then perhaps economic reform could have been successful, but with the existing structures in place, democratization was not a likely outcome, regardless of economic reform approaches (Kotkin 2008, 121-123)
In conclusion, the rise of an autocratic regime and Vladimir Putin is a result of the failure to reform existing and strengthen democratic institutions following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the erosion of state-monopolised legitimate violence, and the collapse of the Russian economy. While these three factors do not serve as a blueprint for how all autocratic regimes take shape, and while I do acknowledge that it’s easy to state that these were the defining features ex-post facto, I do believe that removing one of these factors would result in Russia looking very different to how it does today. The key defining factor, however, is the failure to develop democratic institutions and a democratic constitution following the collapse of the Soviet Union, as that would have likely prevented the need and ability for Vladimir Putin to come to power and oversee a strong consolidation of state power.
References
Hale, Henry. 2005. “Regime Cycles: Democracy, Autocracy and Revolution in Post-Soviet Eurasia,” World Politics, Vol. 58(1), 133-165
Huygen, Christopher. 2012. “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back: Boris Yeltsin and the Failure of Shock Therapy”. Constellations 3 (1). https://doi.org/10.29173/cons16287.
Kotkin, Stephen. 2008. Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse, 1970-2000. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Incorporated.
Murrell, Peter. 1993. “What is Shock Therapy? What Did it Do in Poland and Russia?” Post-Soviet Affairs, Vol. 9(2), pp. 111-140
Sachs, Jeffrey. 1994. “Betrayal” The New Republic. https://www.jeffsachs.org/newspaper-articles/ky53w3k2273hhecby8hbwls8r9gems
Snegovaya, Maria. 2023. "Why Russia’s Democracy Never Began." Journal of Democracy 34, no. 3: 105-118. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/jod.2023.a900436.
Sperling, Valerie. 2016. “Putin’s Macho Personality Cult,” Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Vol. 49, pp. 13-23
Taylor, Brian D.. 2018. The Code of Putinism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Incorporated.
Volkov, Vadim. 1999. “Violent Entrepreneurship in Post-Soviet Russia,” Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 51(5), 741-754
