In our new article by Post-Soviet Affairs with Kirill Petrov we discover a remarkable continuity b/w Soviet and Putin-era elites. We analyzed Putin's top 100 elites and found that the share of those with Soviet nomenklatura ties NOW (30 years after the USSR collapse) is ~60% 🧵1/
Most of these 60% come from the middle and lower, and not the highest, Soviet nomenklatura ranks. The share of people with a nomenklatura past is much (TWICE!) higher than the share of siloviki.2/
Where some rotation of elites did take place, it happened primarily through the "infusion" of siloviki into Russia’s power vertical. Hence, Russia’s top elites represent a "nice" combo of the individuals with nomenklatura and siloviki backgrounds. 3/
These findings have important policy implications for today's moment. In fact, Russia’s democratic transition in the early 1990s may be, to a large extent, described as a revolt of lower ranks of the Soviet nomenklatura against its older top ranks.4/
Rather than transitioning from one system to another, it was a resolution of an intra-system crisis that eventually and logically led to the restoration of a system of authoritarian power. This helps understand why the Putin regime quickly reinstated many Soviet practices,... 5/
...why sanctions have failed to split the elites, and why many members of the power vertical comply with the dynamics of Russia's re-autocratization.
Please message me in case of your interest - I am happy to send a copy! 6/6
doi.org/10.1080/106058…
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