Political Culture & Participation + Russia Vocab

Civil society

Groups that form outside the government's control

Political culture

A set of collectively held attitudes, values, and beliefs about government and politics

Political socialization

The process through which an individual learns about politics and is taught about society's common political values and beliefs

Postmaterialism

A set of values in a society in which most citizens are economically secure enough to move beyond immediate economic (materialist) concerns to "quality of life" issues like human rights, civil rights, women's rights, environmentalism, and moral values

Individualism

The belief that people should be free to make their own decisions and that the government should not unnecessarily regulate individual behavior or restrict civil liberties

Political ideology

An individual's set of beliefs and values about government, politics, and policy

Neoliberalism

A philosophy favoring economic policies that support the free market and reduce trade barriers

Communism

An ideology that advances state ownership of all property, with the government exercising compelte control over the economy

Socialism

A political ideology in which economic equality is a core value, with the belief that government ownership of the majority means of production is a way to reduce income inequality within the state

Fascism

A nationalist political ideology in which nationalism and the primacy of the state are the core beliefs. It emphasizes the rights of the majority, oppresses the minority, and supports strong authoritarian rule

Totalitarianism

A political ideology that emphasizes domination of the state over citizens. In totalitarian systems, the government has complete control over citizens' lives

Populism

A political ideology based on the idea that the government should put the rights and interests of the common people above the elites

Coercion

A government's use of force or threats to pressure individual behavior

Formal political participation

Voting in elections and on referendums, contacting government officials, joining political groups, working on a campaign, and donating money to a cause or candidate

Informal political participation

Protest, civil disobedience, and political violence, including terrorism

Protest

A public demonstration against a policy or in response to an event, often targeting the government

Political violence

The use of physical force by non-state actors for political ends

Terrorism

Political violence or the threat of violence that deliberately targets civilians to influence the behavior and actions of the government

Civil liberties

Fundamental rights and freedoms protected from infringement by the government

Civil rights

Positive actions taken by the government to prevent people from being discriminated against when engaged in fundamental political actions, such as voting

Social movement

A large group organized to advocate for political change

Social cleavage

Division based on ethnicity, race, religion, or territory

Political cleavage

Division based on different ideas about the role of government and policymaking goals

Ethnic group

A group of people who see themselves as united by one or more cultural attributes or a common history

Race

A group of people socially defined mainly on the basis of one or more perceived common physical characteristics

Social class

A group of people who perceive themselves as sharing social status based on a common level of wealth, income, type of work, or education

Asymmetrical federalism

A system in which some regions have more formal power and autonomy than others

Duma

The directly elected lower house of the Russian parliament that represents the people and has the power to pass laws, confirm the prime minister, and begin impeachment proceedings against the president

Federation Council

The appointed upper house of the Russian parliament that represents the regions and has the power to initiate, review, and amend legislation, approve troop deployments, and remove the president.

Rentier state

A state that relies on the export of oil from the leasing of resources to foreign entities as a significant source of government revenue

Resource curse

A problem faced by countries that have a valuable and abundant natural resource, which limits diversification of the economy, makes government revenue dependent on the world market, increases opportunities for corruption, and lessens the government's responsiveness to citizens

Oligarch

A very rich business leader with a great deal of political influence (particularly with reference to individuals who benefited from the privatization of state-run industries after the collapse of the Soviet Union).

M. Khodorkovsky

A Russian oil tycoon and, at one time, was the richest man in Russia. He was imprisoned in 2003 on charges of fraud and tax evasion. One of Russia's famed "oligarchs," he was convicted of those crimes and others before being released in 2013.

Nalvany

A Russian lawyer, anti-corruption activist, and politician who achieved international recognition as one of the most prominent domestic critics of Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin (1999-2008, 2012- ). Navalny, who suffered a near-fatal poisoning in 2020, was jailed on several occasions, and he died while in a penal colony.

Nomenklatura

A category of people within the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries who held various key administrative positions in the bureaucracy, running all spheres of those countries' activity: government, industry, agriculture, education, etc., whose positions were granted only with approval by the communist party of each country or region.

Super Districts

Federal Districts; eight large regions established by President Putin in 2000 to centralize control and manage the vast country's federal subjects (republics, oblasts, krais, etc.) through Presidential Envoys, overseeing law enforcement, economic development, and federal policy implementation across European and Asian Russia

Slavophile

A movement originating from the 19th century that wanted the Russian Empire to be developed on the basis of values and institutions derived from Russia's early history. Slavophiles opposed the influences of Western Europe in Russia.

Siloviki

A person with a security service background, i.e. government institutions responsible for the exercise of coercive state power.

Democratic Centralism

A Marxist-Leninist organisational principle of most communist parties, in which decisions are made by a process of vigorous and open debate amongst party membership, and action is subsequently binding upon all members of the party.

Cultural Heterogeneity

The presence of diverse cultural groups within a society, each with its own distinct beliefs, values, traditions, and practices.

Collectivization

Policy adopted by the Soviet government, pursued most intensively between 1929 and 1933, to transform traditional agriculture in the Soviet Union and to reduce the economic power of the kulaks (prosperous peasants). Under collectivization the peasantry were forced to give up their individual farms and join large collective farms (kolkhozy).

Chechnya

A de facto semi-independent autonomous republic of Russia. It is situated in the North Caucasus

Crimea

A peninsula in Eastern Europe, on the northern coast of the Black Sea, almost entirely surrounded by the Black Sea and the smaller Sea of Azov. The Isthmus of Perekop connects the peninsula to Kherson Oblast in mainland Ukraine.

Central Committee

A political-executive organ designated as the highest organ of a communist party between two congresses. Per the principles of democratic centralism, a central committee is empowered to deal with any issue that falls under the party's purview.

Shock Therapy

A group of policies intended to be implemented simultaneously in order to liberalize an economy, including liberalization of all prices, privatization, trade liberalization, and stabilization via tight monetary policies and fiscal policies. In the case of post-communist states, it was implemented in order to transition from a planned economy to a market economy.

Yabloko

A social-liberal political party in Russia.

KGB

The main security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 to 1991. It was the direct successor of preceding Soviet secret police agencies including the Cheka, OGPU, and NKVD. Attached to the Council of Ministers, it was the chief government agency of "union-republican jurisdiction", carrying out internal security, foreign intelligence, counter-intelligence and secret police functions.

Federal Security Service (FSB)

The principal security agency of Russia and the main successor agency to the Soviet Union's KGB; its immediate predecessor was the Federal Counterintelligence Service (FSK), which was reorganized into the FSB in 1995.

Semi Presidential

A republic in which a president exists alongside a prime minister and a cabinet, with the latter of the two being responsible to the legislature of the state.

Russian Orthodox Church

One of the largest autocephalous, or ecclesiastically independent, Eastern Orthodox churches in the world. Its membership is estimated at more than 90 million.

Politburo

The highest organ of the central committee in communist parties. In Marxist-Leninist states, the communist party is the vanguard of the people, therefore the legitimate body to lead the state. The party selects officials to serve in its politburo, which decides party policy. As a one-party state, party policy invariably becomes national policy. Each Party Congress elects a Central Committee which, in turn, elects the members of the politburo, secretariat, and a general secretary. This process is termed democratic centralism. In theory, the politburo is answerable to the Central Committee, however in practice all the authority lies with the politburo.

Hybrid Regime

A type of political system often created as a result of an incomplete democratic transition from an authoritarian regime to a democratic one.

Totalitarianism

A political system and a form of government that prohibits opposition from political parties, disregards and outlaws the political claims of individual and group opposition to the state, and completely controls the public sphere and the private sphere of society.

LDU

A prominent ultranationalist political party, or possibly the Democratic Union, an early Soviet opposition group, though LDPR is more commonly known and influential.

United Russia

The ruling political party of Russia. As the largest party in the Russian Federation, it holds 325 of the 450 seats in the State Duma as of 2022, having constituted the majority in the chamber since 2007.

Constitutional Court

A high court that deals primarily with constitutional law. Its main authority is to rule on whether laws that are challenged are in fact unconstitutional, i.e. whether they conflict with constitutionally established rules, rights, and freedoms, among other things.

Vanguardism

A core concept of Leninism, is the idea that a revolutionary vanguard party, composed of the most conscious and disciplined workers, must lead the proletariat in overthrowing capitalism and establishing socialism, ultimately progressing to communism. It works to engage the working class in revolutionary politics and to strengthen proletarian political power against the bourgeoisie. This theory generally serves as a rationale for the leading role of the Communist party, which is often enshrined in the country's constitution if the party attains state power.

Glasnost

Meaning "openness" in Russian, was a Soviet policy introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev in the mid-1980s that promoted greater transparency, freedom of speech, and reduced censorship in the USSR, allowing public criticism of the government, discussion of previously taboo topics (like Stalin's purges and Chernobyl), and fostering civil society, ultimately contributing significantly to the loosening of control and eventual collapse of the Soviet Union by empowering demands for democracy and reform

Perestroika

Program instituted in the Soviet Union by Mikhail Gorbachev in the mid-1980s to restructure Soviet economic and political policy. Seeking to bring the Soviet Union up to economic par with capitalist countries such as Germany, Japan, and the United States, Gorbachev decentralized economic controls and encouraged enterprises to become self-financing. The economic bureaucracy, fearing the loss of its power and privileges, obstructed much of his program, however.