In Moscow's Shadows

In Moscow's Shadows 236: What Is Russia?

• Mark Galeotti • Episode 236

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In the first half, I look at the latest news about Navalny's death, what a change in the composition of the Russian negotiation team in Geneva may mean, and why looking for a dubious Russian connection in the Epstein case risks missing the real scandal: how powerful people and institutions tolerated what they knew.

Then, to answer the larger question—what kind of country is Russia?—I spin off two books: a long view of survey data that charts a hybrid regime’s rise and fracture after 2014, and a cultural study that sees Russia as fluid, formed by global flows rather than failing toward someone else’s model. Putin’s project tries to bank the gains of global capitalism while fencing off its social and political shocks. That balancing act is faltering. Deglobalising Russia has become both strategy and trap.

But arguably Russia isn’t an aberration; it’s an early case of how globalisation scrambles identity, power, and legitimacy. From Brexit to big tech, we’re all negotiating the same tides—just with different weather. 

The books are Paul Chaisty & Stephen Whitefield’s How Russians Understand the New Russia (Princeton UP, 2025), and Vera Michlin-Shapir’s Fluid Russia: between the global and the national in the post-Soviet era (Cornell UP, 2021).

The podcast's corporate partner and sponsor is Conducttr, which provides software for innovative and immersive crisis exercises in hybrid warfare, counter-terrorism, civil affairs and similar situations.

You can also follow my blog, In Moscow's Shadows, and become one of the podcast's supporting Patrons and gain question-asking rights and access to exclusive extra materials including the (almost-) weekly Govorit Moskva news briefing right here. 

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MG:

War fighting, navalny poisoning, yet still, for all Putin's efforts embedded in global cultural and informational as well as political and economic spaces. What kind of a country is Russia? Hello, I'm Mark Galliotti, and welcome to my view of Russia in Moscow Shadows. This podcast of varying length, frequency, and format, yet always reassuringly low production values, is supported by generous and perspicacious patrons like you, and also by the Crisis Exercise software company Conductor. Hello, and yes, it's a big question what kind of country, what kind of society is Russia? I want to address that in the second part of this podcast. But first, well there are some recent news items that I really do need to cover. And I suppose we should start with the news about Navalny. So yesterday, five Western countries announced at the Munich Security Conference that he had been poisoned with epibatidine, which is a neurotoxin derived from, of all things, Ecuadorian Dart frogs. And this is about 200 times stronger than morphine and thus capable of causing cardiac arrest. Now, first of all, one has to ask the question, is this credible? Now, because as I'll come into in a moment, one always does need to have a certain scepticism about Western claims. However, look, I'm willing to believe that this is the case. Now originally, I'll hold my hands up, I had thought that Navalny was probably not killed directly by poison, but indirectly, through being deliberately, well I hesitate to say killed by neglect, but putting someone whose immune system was already compromised by Novichok nerve agent into the inhuman conditions of the Arctic polar wolf prison camp, so that in some ways they knew he wasn't going to be coming out, they just didn't know precisely when he would die. That was as much as anything else based on timings, in that the timing his death wasn't particularly convenient. But look, as we know from the 2022 invasion, it's always risky making assumptions based on one's own beliefs about what makes sense, because they may well not be the same as the other sides. So okay. You know, and in terms of the actual agent in question, as I said, one one does need to be cautiously sceptical of claims made by the West. You know, certainly I'm still still rather burned by the Nord Stream bombing, which everyone gleefully well not everyone, a lot of people, but certainly Western states, gleefully jumped on the claim that clearly this was a Russian operation, and it's looking increasingly clear, though not proven in a court of law, that actually it was Ukrainian, and I find it hard to believe that none of the Western agencies at the time had any inkling of that. So, you know, again, we just have to always note that caution. However, at the same time, some of the attempts that we're already seeing to debunk it really don't hold water. First of all, in terms of the language, oh highly likely. The Russians do love jumping on that one, highly likely, as if somehow that makes it sound as if the West is just having a guess. Highly likely is part of the very specific language of intelligence services making judgments about how certain they are about something. Highly likely, which is also used after all in terms of the attribution of Russia to the Skripal Novichok agent attacks in Salisbury, what that is is it reflects a level of confidence that is just below certainty. But for certainty, you'd actually have to have video footage of Putin puffing a blowgun dart into Navalny or something similar. Highly likely means short of that actual smoking gun in our hands, we are pretty damn certain. So again, don't let that language make it sound as if they're kind of having a guess. Secondly, a lot is made about the fact that this drug is being compared to morphine, vastly more powerful than morphine, which is a painkiller. And therefore people are saying, well, then wouldn't Navalny just quietly slipped into an endless slumber? Well, no, because at higher doses, epibatidine poisoning apparently, in fact, it's a bit like nicotine poisoning, it produces symptoms which are frankly fitting in with Navalny's observed symptoms, confusion, vomiting, muscle spasms, that kind of thing. So that doesn't hold water. And then the third one is, well, why would the Russians use something so obscure when they have more conventional poisons in their arsenal? Well, I mean, first of all, perhaps for the sake of potential deniability, but also maybe to make it harder to identify the agent in question. So again, you know, who can who can tell for absolute hundred percent certainty? But I think we can be pretty comfortable with this claim. But of course, does this actually change anything? Well, no, not really. I mean, as I said, though, the question was not only has the Kremlin tried to kill Navalny before with Novichok, but by putting him in that particular camp in the conditions to which he was exposed, they were essentially sentencing him to death. The only question was how and when. So the fact that we now know it was a poison and which poison? It makes for a good splash at the Munich Security Conference, which is undoubtedly the intent. But although no doubt there will be claims that, well, there should be more sanctions or take this to the OPCW, which is the the international body against chemical weapons attacks, which this counts as being. But in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't really change anything except in terms of a campaign by the West to continue to ratchet up revulsion against Russia. And as I say, the fact that it's the Munich Security Conference makes it fairly clear that they had a political intent. The conference provides a certain platform, a certain opportunity to be able to get your message out more easily, more quickly, and perhaps more broadly than you might otherwise have done. And why is the West doing this? Well no, I say the West. It's worth noting the Americans are not part of this. The five countries in question are all European countries. Who is it? It's the UK, it's Sweden, it's France, it's Germany, it's the Netherlands. All countries which I think we could fairly claim are more on the hawkish side of the current debate, and therefore obviously are trying to keep up the pressure on Russia. I mean it was interesting. I looked at the tweet that Keir Starmer put out, in which he says, I'm not going to try and do the voice again, Alexei Navalny displayed huge courage in the face of tyranny. True. His determination to expose the truth has left an enduring legacy. Absolutely true. And my thoughts are with his family today. I am doing whatever it takes to defend our people, our values, and our way of life from the threat of Russia and Putin's murderous intent. So, you know, he immediately pivots this to a broader challenge. It's not as though Putin is trying to spread Ecuadorian frog poison throughout the West or whatever. So again, it's it's essentially harnessing Navalny. And in that context, Yulian Navalna, his widow, had previously claimed that she and the FBK team knew that Navalny was poisoned, but were not at liberty to actually give details. And in that respect, again, it could have been just simply made her show. But instead, I mean, obviously she was there and she expressed her revulsion of what happened and so forth. But it I can't help think it's a little bit sad that these countries were so keen to co-opt Alexei Navalny's death for their own purposes, particularly because they were often willing to ignore the detail of what he said while he was alive. But again, there is no hero as convenient as a dead one, because you get to essentially use him as you see fit. I know that sounds terribly cynical, and I'm not saying for a moment that these countries have not put a lot of resource into precisely trying to find out what did happen precisely to Navalny, and also genuinely mourn his loss. But we have to realise the degree to which this is also very much a political act. And speaking of political acts, let's talk about negotiations. The next round of the trilateral talks opens this time in Geneva on the 17th of February, so in a couple of days from now, Tuesday. And the Russian delegation is now being led not by Admiral Kostuk of Military Intelligence, but by Vladimir Medinsky, former Minister of Culture, now presidential aide, and the chair of both the Military History Society and the Union of Writers. Inevitably, some people are saying, oh, this proves that the Russians aren't serious about negotiations, and indeed it's an insult. It's worth noting that some people were saying that sending Kastyuk was an insult, whereas apparently sending Budanov, former head of Ukrainian military intelligence, although be it now presidential chief of staff, was not. Look, Medinsky is someone who absolutely is going to get up the Ukrainian's nose, because he has a tendency to fall back onto his main stock in trade with his tendentious pseudo-history, and also actually the very fact that he was born in Ukraine, in Cherkassi region, I recall, if I recall rightly. But that said, and although I'm, it has to be said, no fan of Medinsky, especially because of the uh butchery he's doing to Russian history, nonetheless, just as I did the first time Medinsky was being tapped, this time for the Istanbul talks, I don't think we should sort of rule out the path the fact that this can still be a meaningful set of talks. Kastjuk presided over what were actually quite successful but entirely technical talks. They were about specific modalities, understanding that the issue of essentially territory versus security guarantees for Ukraine was one that was above their pay grade. So instead of trying to tackle that and getting nowhere, instead they looked at the modalities of how things could be handled if there was that kind of a deal. And I think the answer about why Medinsky now is that it is time to try and move to the political level. And that political level will almost certainly end up having to involve, well, either Putin Zelensky talks or at least something at a very close to presidential level. But the point is Putin's not going to agree to that unless he's pretty damn sure what the agreed deal is is going to look like. He's not going to risk going there being outpointed by Zelensky, who was a much, much more competent uh sort of operator when it comes to the sort of PR side of politics. And anyway, Putin basically doesn't want to have bad surprises land on his lap. So I think the sign that is being given by sending Medinsky instead of Kastuk is precisely that the talks are being moved on to the political level. But also that Medinsky is, I would hesitate to say a no one, but he's a he's a small person. And from Putin's point of view, that is probably what he needs. If you send someone bigger, and I mean let's say that would be someone like maybe Shuigu, Secretary of the Security Council, certainly no longer Lavrov, foreign minister, who has has shrunk over time to almost infinitesimal sort of size. I mentioned in one of my Gavarit Moskvar press briefings that in some ways he has experienced the medvarification and now is just simply a toxic mouthpiece coming out with all sorts of ludicrous statements, which allows Putin, Peskov, Urchakov, essentially the Kremlin, to sound relatively moderate simply because they're not presenting that kind of a line. So yes, it wouldn't have been Lavrov. But the point is, you send someone who might have some kind of personal views, then that becomes their negotiation process. Medinsky is the next best thing to an unmanned political vehicle, a drone. He is there to convey, actually, no, again, I think a parallel I've used in the path is he is the mouth of Sauron, who has no real will of his own, but just simply is the loyal bullhorn for his master's voice. And that's not necessarily a bad thing, because this is the close you're going to get to actually having Putin or a little Putin minimi at the table until you actually get the man himself. But as I say, I still have to think that I'm not really optimistic about this round. I think these talks are necessary because they are the John the Baptist that will lay the ground for the real talks which actually have a serious chance of agreeing a piece of some kind, which will probably take place later in the year, after these ones have failed. I hope I'm wrong. I hope these ones actually work out. It's worth noting that Marco Rubio, the American Secretary of State, said at the Munich Security Conference in a question and answer session after his speech there. What we can't answer, and what we're going to continue to test, is whether there is an outcome that Ukraine can live with and that Russia will accept. And I would say that has been elusive up to this point. It is indeed elusive. But nonetheless, it's not dead. Nor is it only resting. There is slow progress being made. And the final news story that, honestly, with a considerable degree of reluctance, I feel I have to address is the whole Epstein business. And the whole question about, oh, was Epstein working hand in glove with the Russian intelligence agencies, honey traps, comprobat? People always love throwing in Russian words to make it sound particularly sort of somehow outre and exotic. Muskyrovka, Vranio. Most recently we we had MAT, which is basically just Russian obscenity, but somehow suggesting it's some whole cultural way of life for dealing with authoritarian regimes. But anyway, the thing about the Epstein case is that it's no longer, in my opinion, really about Epstein. It's about all the other people with whom he was connected. And as such, it offers what we could almost think of as a buffet of outrage. That you can wander along and you can pick the from the particular dishes that suit your political needs, your particular political orientations, your particular sense of who your who your demons are. You can go after Clinton and Bill Gates, you can go after Moscow, you can claim that Epstein was working for Mossad and Israel, you know, you name it. You can find data points that you can assemble to make whatever story you really want. And well, of course, then we are going to get the Russia angle in this day and age. And that ever-reliable source of unreliable assessment, Christopher Steele, he of the Golden Showers dossier and such like, which still there is absolutely no evidence to support most of the allegations he presented as his raw intelligence assemblage. Anyway, he told the press, My sources in America tell me that Epstein was recruited as early as the 1970s by Russian organized crime figures in New York, and his information and operational techniques were being used from that point onwards. Really? So is this while Epstein was a failing math student at NYU in 1974? Or while he was a primary school teacher until 1976, or when he was a junior assistant to a floor trader at Bear Stearns? Now, admittedly, in that role, he rose to becoming an options trader before he was sacked in 1981. But the point is that in the 1970s Epstein was not anything. So many of these narratives, and we also see it with the whole Trump Russia issue, depend on somehow the KGB having a crystal ball whereby they can identify who is going to become, in the future, someone of great significance. And they can somehow recruit them. I know it says Russian organised crime, but this idea that his informational and operational techniques were being used, that stretches beyond that. Anyway, that he could be recruited at that stage for when he ended up being useful. There was nothing at that point to suggest that Epstein was more than just simply a glib, flashy, and plausible Playboy on the make. Now, a lot is made of the fact that if you search the files, there are 1,056 references to Russia and Putin, and 9,629 references to Moscow. That's perfectly true. However, the overwhelming majority of these, if you actually look into them, they're just simply news stories that are being forwarded through his emails. They're not actually about you know they're not actually personal emails about Putin or whatever. And just for context, I had a little search. There are twice as many references to Saudi Arabia, almost four times as many to Israel, and about as many to India. So from this should we infer that he's also a Saudi Israeli Indian spy? I think not. He was using girls from Russia, and indeed from Ukraine. Well look, that should hardly be a shock. Sadly, especially in the 1990s, but then you know also thereafter, Russian and Ukrainian Slavic girls have been a highly prized commodity. Sadly that's what they are, commodity on international prostitution rings. Sometimes women of age, sometimes girls who are underage. If you are going to be procuring that kind of commodity, well, yeah, you're going to look to the Russians. That does not in any way require you to have some kind of deep connection to organized crime, let alone the state. And yes, there are Russians who crop up in his circle. Clearly, he had some kind of connections and dealings with Aleg Diarypaska, the oligarch. In particular, we saw this connection with Sergei Belyakov, who was the Deputy Economic Development Minister between 2012 and 2014, although at that point he was then dismissed. He's now president of the National Association of Non-Sate Pension Funds. There's a mover and shaker for you. But the point is, because Belyakov was a graduate of the FSB Academy, well, that somehow is parlayed into something meaning that much more significant. And also Epstein, Epstein did have regular coffee mornings with the former Russian ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin, whom he claimed he had given sort of great insights into American politics. Well, of course, that's no surprise. How did Epstein work? Essentially, he cultivated all kinds of rich, connected, and potentially useful people of all kinds of different nationalities. Again, as I say, you know, frankly, Saudi and Indian as often as Russian, if not more so. And likewise, people allowed themselves to be cultivated in some cases, yes, because they enjoyed the debauched pleasures of Epstein's parties and his island and such like, but also because people saw advantage in being connected to him. Because he was this nexus. He could essentially assemble all kinds of different arrangements of deals and mutual acquaintances and so forth. You know, from Belyarkov, it was useful for him, I'm sure, to know Ipstein because of the entree that that gave him to other circles. As for Turkin, look, the job of a An ambassador is precisely to talk to people who might be useful, to cultivate them, to gather whatever kind of political and other forms of intelligence they can provide and send it back to the voracious moor of the foreign ministry at home. Because who knows what's going to be useful. So of course Turkin would have been perfectly happy to have coffee boardings with Epstein. Whether he thought Epstein was a fine stand-up chap or whether he thought he was a ghastly excuse for a human being, that doesn't matter. If you're an ambassador, that's your job. The point I'm making, and I know this is difficult because people always say, oh well, you're always trying to downplay all these Russian operations, and to a degree I am, simply because I feel I'm pushing back against a needlessly, indeed dangerously conspiratorial view that as soon as anyone sees anyone Russian involved somewhere, they assume there is some grand Kremlin plots at work. But the point is I'm making is that to do this, first of all, actually distorts the real story and takes the focus away from where it should be, which is precisely not just the ghastly urges of one particular man, but the extent to which so many powerful people and powerful institutions, who definitely knew what was going on, were willing to turn a blind eye so long as it pleased them to do so or they found it advantageous, or just simply they felt they had no reason to do anything about it. When we come to Epstein and Russia, though, for me the fascinating particular thing is he travelled to Russia a few times, particularly in the context of going for the 2018 World Cup. But we also know that he had multiple attempts to actually get to see Putin, and they all failed. Whatever the relational firepower that Epstein could assemble, nonetheless, he never got that meeting with Putin that he so obviously craved. Now, why is this? Well, one is precisely that the Russians may well have known with whom they were what they were dealing with. But, you know, again, I'm I'm not going to claim that there's going to be so many moral scruples when it comes to Putin. I think it's also because Epstein's shtick was one that I think the Russians are very familiar with. Epstein clearly relied on building these grand vaporware dreams of huge economic and social opportunity and selling those dreams, and people bought into them because they wanted to basically indulge those dreams and they thought that they might be real. The Russians play this game very well themselves. If you just look at what Kirill Dmitriev has been doing with Whitkov and through Whitkov with the White House, again spinning these sense these notions of some extraordinary economic opportunities for the United States just once the Ukraine war is settled. All you need to do is lead on Kyiv to get them to sign the peace that suits us, and then look at these opportunities, everything from Aeroflot restocking with Boeing airliners through to America getting in, having privileged access to Russian resources, whether it's oil and gas or rare earth minerals, to codominium in the Arctic, you name it. Whether or any of these actually make sense, quite frankly, they don't, doesn't really matter so long as the dream has been sold. So I think the Russians are able to see through him more effectively than many others simply because he was using their own shtick too. When it came down to it, Epstein depended on the friendship, the tolerance, the protection of powerful people. And this is one final reason why I don't buy the idea that he was being used by the Russians to gather compromising material sorry, compromat, on all sorts of rich and powerful people. Because after all, the people who Epstein was connected with are themselves well protected, in some cases precisely by state security services. And also they did not necessarily lack the means and the capacity to strike back. Had there been a hint, just a hint, and there would have been a hint in these circles, that precisely Epstein had used or gathered compromise that the Russians or anyone else had used, then frankly it would have destroyed Epstein. People would no longer have wanted to be connected with him, people would have not just distanced themselves from him, but probably turned against him. So I think just from a pragmatic point of view, Epstein would not, could not have done that. And he himself was in some ways, you know, until the fall, to a degree bulletproof, precisely because of this code of omerta around all the rich and powerful people with whom he was connected. And a final point, if he had all this compromise anyway, why didn't he use it? Why did he end up going down? So this is why, again, I'm I'm deeply skeptical. Now it may be that somewhere there is some real evidence, more than just simply assumptions based on connections, when one can just as easily play that game to create all sorts of different conspiracy theories. But for the moment, my view is a kind of um informational informational approach. Not like the Hippocratica oath, first do no harm, but rather first assume there isn't a conspiracy. But anyway, talking about conspiracies, let's have a break. And then let's talk about what is Russia. Just the usual mid-episode reminder that you're listening to the In Moscow Shadows podcast. Its corporate partner and sponsor is Conductor, which provides software for crisis exercises in hybrid warfare, counterterrorism, civil affairs and the like. But you can also support the podcast yourself by going to patreon.com slash inMoscow Shadows. And remember that patrons get a variety of additional perks depending on their tier, as well as knowing that they're supporting this peerless source on all things Russian. And you can also follow me on Twitter at Mark Galliotti or on Facebook, MarkGaleotti on Russia. Now back to the episode. So what is Russia? Look, clearly that is a ridiculously huge question that can go in so many different directions. What I want to do today is just to take discussion of two books as an opportunity to explore one particular angle of this assessment. And the two books in question are Paul Chasty and Stephen Whitefield's How Russians Understand the New Russia, Princeton University Press 2025. And the other one is Vera. Now I don't know, is this Michelin Shapir? Michelin Shapir's. My apologies to the author for mangling your name, no doubt. Anyway, Vera Michelin Shapir's Fluid Russia between the Global and the National in the Post-Soviet era, Cornell University Press 2021. Now, Fluid Russia is obviously older, but how Russians understand the New Russia, while more recently published, is essentially based on data from before the 2022 invasion. So you've got to keep that in mind. Now, Chase and Whitefield's book is based on almost 30 years of survey data from the New Russia Barometer and other face-to-face surveys. And this does provide a methodologically clear basis for trying to kind of assess the longitudinal changes taking place in public opinion. Now, there are inevitably concerns with public opinion surveys in authoritarian systems in particular. Not least that people are much, much more likely to give what we could think of as safe answers. In other words, answers that are not going to get them into trouble because they don't necessarily trust the confidentiality of the polling agencies. And there's a lot of issues around, for example, the Levada Centre and their claims about the degrees to which people are willing to basically let them in through their doors and open their hearts to them. Nonetheless, look, in fairness to the authors, they absolutely make efforts to try and test for and address these concerns. But again, it is something just one has to keep in mind as a kind of constant reality check in a way. And as a result, what we get, there's always a chance, is not so much an assessment of changes in opinion, but rather the evolving sense of what the official line may be and thus what the safe answers may be. So there is something there, but again, we have to discuss what that something might be. But still, what emerges from this book is it, as we said, rather, in some ways rather quant-heavy, tale of a society that is broadly coming to accept what they call a hybrid system, you know, one that fuses authoritarianism and market capitalism with the kind of facades at least of democratic institutions. Anyway, so this hybrid system is pretty much accepted between 2000 and 2014. Yet it begins to become stressed with the Balotnaya protests of 2011 onwards, and then the nationalist turn within the Putin state with the annexation of Crimea in 2014. And the idea is that this fractured the old consensus of the so-called system consolidators, that basically everyone was happy just to kind of go along with the status quo. And Russians instead, from this point, became polarized between statist authoritarians, these are their terms, and market democrats, both of whom, interestingly enough, are in their own ways opposed to the status quo. Now, I think there's always a bit of a problem with actually assuming this connection statist authoritarians and market democrats. Assumes that if you are a political statist, you're also an economic statist, not necessarily the case. And likewise that you're a political democrat that you also believe in the free market, not necessarily the case. But look, one has to make certain kinds of approximations, and Chasty and Whitefield make a good case for why they have sort of framed it in these terms. Anyway, the point is that both of these groups, in their own ways, as I say, have problems with the Putin system. And thus the claim is that in effect it was the Kremlin that undermined and destabilized its own system and the consensus that was behind it, by its increasing reliance on revanchist, anti-Western, and traditionalist, social traditionalist narratives. And the authors particularly frame this as, in effect, a revival of a Soviet identity, which appeals to the older statist types and much, much less to the younger, more pluralist Russian citizens. Now look, I appreciate that a Soviet identity doesn't necessarily require any kind of commitment to Marxism, Leninism, to red flags, to Mayday parades and all that as such, but instead is manifest towards you know, in attitudes rather towards privatization, towards the multi-ethnic state or whatever else. But I am, I will confess, somewhat sceptical about the true Sovietness of Putin's nationalist project. After all, one can just as easily present it as much more traditional czarist Muscovite, in its sort of whether it's the aesthetics or whether it's the themes of not just nationhood after all, but a sense of special mission that is nationally rather than ideologically rooted, the social traditionalism, all that kind of thing. After all, I do feel that however much it was often just a veneer, nonetheless, in Soviet times you can't completely disaggregate the ideological messages of internationalism, of egalitarianism and such like from the great power politics of the Soviet Union, or just simply the authoritarian preservation of power by the nomenklatura elite. Putin's state is still, even now, in so many ways, frankly, neo-feudalism meets neoliberalism, which is hardly the stuff of Sovietism. So I agree entirely with Chase Dean Whitefield that there was a change, that the early Putin consensus did begin to break down, and that it has something to do with Putin's own political evolution, or devolution one could almost think of it, but perhaps I'd not frame it in the same terms. Now look, in particular, this study, which is a very serious and well framed analysis, must be praised for focusing not only on elite politics and the propaganda that it puts out and so forth, which too often otherwise ends up treating society as just simply the subject, you know, how far is it moulded by the Kremlin, but rather considering society as an active factor, interpreting, reacting to, but also influencing the political and economic context of Russia. And this challenges the assumption that hybrid regimes that cloak authoritarianism behind a facade of democratic institutions rely simply on depoliticizing the electorate, just making them, you know, whether despondent or apathetic or feeling content so that they just let the Vlasti, the powerful, do their thing. No, it's rather that actually these kind of hybrid regimes try to co-opt society and in the process open the way to a degree of political action by society. In some ways, society seeks also to co-opt the state. Now look, I'll be honest, I'm old school to the point of paleolithy, and I'm no great fan of the quantitative approach that is at the heart of this book. That's just my own thing. And one does need to be keenly aware of the limitations of the survey approach. And to be fair, as I say, the authors do indeed do what they can to mitigate this. But I do find myself wondering much more about the unasked questions and the unspoken answers rather than what's actually in the surveys. And in particular, while this is, as I say, a serious, meticulous, and impressive work, I was just left uncomfortable with the subtext. And that is that hybridity is in some ways an unstable and ultimately untenable halfway house between authoritarianism and democracy, between statism and the market, indeed, arguably between the past and the future. I don't really want to accuse Chase Dean Whitefield of this, but to at times it almost feels a little bit like Whig history. Now, if you know Whig history, that was this school of thought in British historiography back in the day, which essentially regarded the British political system as the pinnacle of human development, and therefore interpreted all the past simply as how was it an element of the evolution to this particular acme of human political development? Admittedly, obviously in vastly more sophisticated form. I mean, actually, if you follow the line through that says that hybridity is in some ways authoritarianism's trying to stop the slide towards democracy by taking on a chameleon-style protective colouration of its institutions, well, take that to its logical extent, and you end up with the kind of triumphalism that sees Francis Fukuyama proclaiming the end of history with the end of the Soviet Union. You know, what do you call the endpoint of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government? That really hasn't aged all that well. History always has the last laugh. Anyway, it's in these kind of musings that is precisely where Vera Michlin Shapir's fluid Russia comes in. And I very much actually regret not getting round to it sooner, as it's not just a very clever and innovative work, but it paints a compelling picture of a Russia which was undergoing not well creation, recreation, call it what you will, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, in the full blast of globalization, of culture, of money, of people, of power. And the result was the emergence of something which wasn't really a failed or partial or hybrid something else. The implication of so much scholarship is, after all, precisely that Russia is just that, something that is still forming or abortive, but instead something new, something that is actually defined by its very protean nature, its fluidity. And in this context, the blurred character of Russian national identity, its apparent lack of clarity about, again, culture, ethnicity, citizenship, residence, even language, its history, is not just a bug, but a feature of its system. So this isn't just a post-imperial syndrome. Russia responding to a perceived national humiliation and economic hardship with all the attendant and often questionable parallels people draw with, for example, the Weimar Republic in Germany. Instead, it's about what Michelin Schapir calls late modernity, which is not necessarily a very comfortable experience. Globalization has created insecurity everywhere, from workers unsure if their jobs are about to be outsourced, to governments chasing tax revenues from offshore incorporations, to societies facing the impact of mass migration and what could be almost regarded by some as cultural colonization. We now live in an age of insecurity and un a pervasive unease. And especially in the light of the collapse of the old certainties that the Soviet system provided, Russians felt unmoored, insecure. And that was how Putin could create his new Russia, precisely by offering a sense of stability and security, a common identity to promote that lost sense of national togetherness. And this helps explain the nostalgia, this hearkening back to Soviet times. It's not people are thinking, oh, I wish we could have Goss Plan, five-year plans, I wish we could have the Afghan war, I wish we could have the Gulags. No, of course not, it wasn't that. It was that sense that there was a period in which global influences and the insecurity that comes with them were penned away to a much greater extent. Russia was much more of an enclosed political, cultural, economic bubble. However, now well you get a Russia which is intrinsically, inextricably connected, embedded within a global world. I know that sounds wrong, but I hope you know what I mean. And subject thus to the constant destabilizing influences from them. Look, uh it's an it's an anecdote that I've I've turned to a few times, but it still, I think, in some ways illustrates this so well. I remember once walking through Moscow, and on one side of me there was a huge mural all the way up the side of a big apartment block. And that mural was depicting Marshal Zhukov, one of the great victorious commanders in the Great Patriotic War. And on the other side of me, again occupying the whole side of an apartment block, was a huge advertising hoarding for a forthcoming film. And what was that film? Captain America. One could argue that that's the distillation of American jingoism in human form. And there I was walking between the two. And in some ways, that's where Russia was and to a degree still is. Michelin Shapir talks of the young person, quote, with Putin on his shirt and an iPhone in his pocket. And that is where I think most Russians still are to greater or lesser extents. The thing is, there is no such thing as Putinism as an ideology. What it offers has never been cohesive. And instead, yeah, a lot of it has been superficial and packed with internal contradictions. Indeed, I mean Putin always tries to have his cake and eat it. He wants all the benefits of global capitalism, whether it's in terms of cheap imports or at times useful migrant labour, of an opportunity to let his elites play wherever they want, even to be able to weaponize foreign courts against his critics. Yeah, he likes all that, but he wants to try and pick and choose the influences of that globalization at home. And surprise, surprise, this doesn't really work. And so he has moved back to an attempt to uncouple Russia from the world, create some new identity, and that is proving very, very difficult. Frankly, that is impossible. So the great virtue of this notion of fluid Russia is, first of all, that it doesn't make Russia into, in effect, a failed state. Instead, it's a different one. Putin's vision was not so much as to subvert liberal democracy around the world, but to hold back, to control global influences. And the rise of authoritarian politics in Russia, therefore, can be seen as a reaction to the disruptions produced by global trends. That's why people were willing to listen to Putin, to give him the time of day, to actually support him. But the point is, that's also a sign of just how globalized Russia was and despite everything still is. So this is a Russia which is having to constantly reinvent itself because it is based on such shifting sands. I know I'm mixing my metaphors there, but forgive me. Second great advantage of this notion is exactly it does explain this deliberate attempt to deglobalize Russia. And indeed, although, as I say, this book came out in 2021, it fits very well, I would say, with what we've seen since 2022. And this desperate attempt by Putin to create a kind of national autarky. That yes, I don't mean in economic terms, he still needs to import his microchips and whatever else. But the point is this idea that Russia can stand up against the tides of global society and global history. And it's not really working. But the point is, this is why, from his point of view, he needs to hold the world back. Because it is both part of his social contract with the Russian people, I will protect you from that, and also he realized it is undermining his own vision of a Russia. And just as a little side note for that, it's also one of the reasons why so many of the kind of sanctions which have been applied by the West to try and keep Russia out actually play to Putin's strategy. And I'm not talking about the economic sanctions, I'm talking about the cutting of transport routes, the denial of visas and all that kind of thing. These are helping Putin try in his ultimately failed quest to de-globalize Russia. As the author wrote in a blog on the Cornell University Press site, in order not to let Putin win, the West must acknowledge the holistic character of the struggle that Putin engages in. We must stand with Ukrainians who heroically defend their freedoms. We must also find channels to communicate with ordinary Russians and not let Putin complete a deeper transformation of the Russian society that might outlive his presidency. Amen. But there's a final, much wider point I want to make that really goes beyond what's being said from either of these books. Is Russia our future? Micheline Shapir recognises that Russia is not actually simply trying to exclude itself from the world full stop, so much as trying to push back against a particular form of globalism that is pretty much encoded with Western hegemony. I mean, just because Putin claims it, that doesn't mean it's not actually quite true. Russia under Putin is still active in both trying to not just cherry pick the global trends that suit it, but also to create alternative globalizing notions. I mean, one can see this in some ways in his policy towards Africa, which is shallow and opportunist and not vastly successful, but nonetheless, the attempt to basically say there can be a different world, there can be a different version of sovereignty, in which individual countries can do their own thing, in which they don't have to worry about being lectured by the West and in effect being dim facing the demands that they conform to Western expectations and Western demands, many of which are hypocritical and self-serving. There is within that shallow and equally self-serving message a sense of an alternative globalization. But more to the point, Russia's attempt to try and recreate a pre-globalised and indeed totally mythical idyl, and to determine which global influences it exploits and which it tries to push back against. Well, in some ways this is an accelerated case study of how globalization is breaking down so many existing political and social structures and creating turmoil in its wake. Brexit, Donald Trump, far right populism in Europe, the emerging struggle between nation states and multinationals, especially embodied in the techcos and tech bros, the challenges of outsourcing, digital nomadism, mass migration. I mean, how far are Western states also engaged in their own much more cautious and much less bloody-handed ways, in trying to hold back the tide of globalisation's disruption? And how much are we all Canutes sitting in front of the tide? Though that's actually a bad analogy because King Canute actually wasn't really trying to hold back the tide. He was actually trying to demonstrate that even the powers of a king cannot shape the natural world. But anyway, again, I digress. Before 2022, and it's something I may well, I would like to return to at some point, I was toying with writing a book about how Russia was the true cyberpunk nation. But the essence of the cyberpunk genre, after all, and my apologies for those of you who aren't into science fiction, but it's your fault for not having the wit to realise just how far our future is best explained through good science fiction. But anyway, the essence of the cyberpunk genre isn't acid rainwashed neon leather trenchcoats and hackers, so much as about exploring societies that have been shocked and shaped by accelerating technological and thus social change, with power flowing to new structures, whether cabals or corporations, and new forms of resistance in an age when everything can be monitored and monetized, outsourced and overclocked. It's not necessarily a very comforting thought, but it is possible that where Moscow goes, we in due course may follow. But that's a whole other podcast. So for now, let me go and get my leather trench coat and head for the door. Thanks very much. Well, that's the end of another episode of the In Moscow Shadow Podcast. Just as a reminder, beyond this, you can follow my blog, also called In Moscow Shadows. Follow me on Twitter at MarkGaleotti or Facebook, MarkGaleotti on Russia. This podcast is made possible by generous and enlightened patrons, and you too can be one. Just go along to my Patreon page, that's patreon.com slash inMoscow Shadows, and decide which tier you want to join, getting access to exclusive materials and other perks. However, whether or not you contribute, thank you very much indeed for listening. Until next time, keep well.