Hard to disagree with @paulkrugman that the economic collapse after Gorbachev helped to set the stage for Putin. But on the details, I think we know a bit more than he suggests.

A short 🧵 on Russian economic reform. 1/

nytimes.com/2022/09/02/opi… As Krugman notes, output collapsed in Russia during the 1990s. It was bad everywhere in the former Soviet empire, but it was especially bad in Russia. Here, from a 2002 JEP paper by @Jan_Svejnar. 2/

aeaweb.org/articles?id=10…

How popular is Vladimir Putin really?

In 2015 @timothymfrye, @kailmarkvart, @reutertweets and I tried to answer this question with a series of list experiments. Our conclusion: Putin was roughly as popular as opinion polling suggested (i.e., very).

What about now? A thread. 1/ In the six years after we ran those first list experiments, Putin's apparent popularity declined dramatically—more so than for other Russian politicians. 2/

I desperately hope that Western sanctions and the corporate exodus encourage unrest and split the Kremlin elite.

Here are three forces that might push the other direction.👇🏼 1/4 With respect to unrest, the implicit model seems to be dissatisfaction —> voice. But dissatisfaction also encourages exit, as Hirschman taught us. And the people exiting are among those most skeptical of the war and most opposed to Putin. 2/4

https://twitter.com/k_sonin/status/1501136362002546688

Lots of evidence that Russia botched the logistics of its military operation. But I think this video illustrates another problem for Putin: a failure to prepare Russia's population, including its soldiers, for war. A short thread. 1/

https://twitter.com/aliostad/status/1497519061554630658

Until the war actually started, most Russians seemed to believe it could not—that this was just another example of Putin extracting concessions from a weak negotiating partner. 2/ themoscowtimes.com/2022/01/19/nav…