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A review by oleksandr
Putin v. the People: The Perilous Politics of a Divided Russia by Graeme B. Robertson, Samuel A. Greene
4.0
This is a political science / sociology non-fic that attempts to look on the current situation is Russia not from usual top-down approach (“Putin’s Russia” where a dictator guides and everyone follows or else) but bottom-up (where Putin tries to get support of the governed and fulfill their desires of e.g. ‘Russian greatness’ so they don’t mind a kleptocratic and abusive authorities). I read it as a buddy read for August 2021 at Non Fiction Book Club group.
The authors had a unique opportunity to measure how the occupation of Crimea affected popularity of Putin – in 2013 (before the grab, which happened in March 2014) they made a survey of Russians regarding their attitude toward the authorities and found what other similar surveys shown – a veining popularity of Putin, outrage about high level corruption, etc. However, when they surveyed again the same people after the occupation of Crimea, not only their increased but even high level corruption suddenly became less of an issue. The fact that after a ‘little victorious war’ there is a sort of “rallies around the flag” which is reasonably common. However, in the West it quickly stops because an opposition starts to show problems there or elsewhere, while in Russia it remains high, not at the least due to the media control.
The authors try to find why and first go after the idea of the pathbreaking French sociologist Émile Durkheim, who studied the religious rituals of Aboriginal groups in Australia, and found out that the key to making something sacred was togetherness: engaging with other people in the same unusual moment that transgressed the rules and tedium of everyday life. The euphoric feeling that this extraordinary togetherness causes—the same powerful emotional excitement that we get from being “in sync” with others, what Durkheim called “collective effervescence.”
Then they journey into studies was a system of five basic personality traits that was both stable and, more importantly, useful in predicting officer performance on the job. These traits were Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism (OCEAN). They find out that [a] split into Openness-strong democrats and Conscientiousness-strong Republicans, or their analogs in other Western democracies isn’t present. What does distinguish Putin’s supporters is high scores on Agreeableness, even if it works in reverse way compared to the West, where Agreeableness e.g. means greater support/compassion to minorities, while in Russia they are ok to support anti-gay laws, etc. The authors assume that this means that Putin’s support might vein again, if his / authorities actions became less socially accepted.
Despite there are some issues with their depictions of Ukrainian situation, overall the book is well-researched and I agree with their underlaying point (which wasn’t written explicitly) – the majority of Russians perceive the West as plotting against them, and aggressive actions on the part of Russian authorities as ‘getting from the knees’ and that expansion is driven not by a madman on the top, but by a large share of supporters of the myth of Russia as the Third Rome
The authors had a unique opportunity to measure how the occupation of Crimea affected popularity of Putin – in 2013 (before the grab, which happened in March 2014) they made a survey of Russians regarding their attitude toward the authorities and found what other similar surveys shown – a veining popularity of Putin, outrage about high level corruption, etc. However, when they surveyed again the same people after the occupation of Crimea, not only their increased but even high level corruption suddenly became less of an issue. The fact that after a ‘little victorious war’ there is a sort of “rallies around the flag” which is reasonably common. However, in the West it quickly stops because an opposition starts to show problems there or elsewhere, while in Russia it remains high, not at the least due to the media control.
The authors try to find why and first go after the idea of the pathbreaking French sociologist Émile Durkheim, who studied the religious rituals of Aboriginal groups in Australia, and found out that the key to making something sacred was togetherness: engaging with other people in the same unusual moment that transgressed the rules and tedium of everyday life. The euphoric feeling that this extraordinary togetherness causes—the same powerful emotional excitement that we get from being “in sync” with others, what Durkheim called “collective effervescence.”
Then they journey into studies was a system of five basic personality traits that was both stable and, more importantly, useful in predicting officer performance on the job. These traits were Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism (OCEAN). They find out that [a] split into Openness-strong democrats and Conscientiousness-strong Republicans, or their analogs in other Western democracies isn’t present. What does distinguish Putin’s supporters is high scores on Agreeableness, even if it works in reverse way compared to the West, where Agreeableness e.g. means greater support/compassion to minorities, while in Russia they are ok to support anti-gay laws, etc. The authors assume that this means that Putin’s support might vein again, if his / authorities actions became less socially accepted.
Despite there are some issues with their depictions of Ukrainian situation, overall the book is well-researched and I agree with their underlaying point (which wasn’t written explicitly) – the majority of Russians perceive the West as plotting against them, and aggressive actions on the part of Russian authorities as ‘getting from the knees’ and that expansion is driven not by a madman on the top, but by a large share of supporters of the myth of Russia as the Third Rome