Russia's authoritarian system

Domestic Media and Propaganda: Control of Television

TV is the primary medium 86% of Russian receive news

• 2000s: Putin targted media oligrachs Gusinsky and Berezovsky = 3 major national networsk (Channel 1, Rossiya, and NTV) under majority state control or state owned enterprises

• State-linked entities control all radio stations, national newspapers (20,000 regional periodicial that refused to align were shut down)

Domestic Media and Propaganda: Patriotic framing

State media shows optimistic, patrotic narrative of state stability and national revival = emotional gratification to viewers

• Heavily distorts/falsifies foregin affairs and wester relations = deflects blame away from putin to other foreign officials

State Control Over Information: “Stop Lists”

Kremlin official have weekly meetings with executive from national tv networks and maintain direct phone lines to dictate daily talking points

• Stop lists: Ban specific opposition figures from appearing on broadcast media

• Journalists face pressure to self-censor

State Control Over Information: Infrastructure Control

2016 Yarovaya Law: Internet comapnies have to store user data in Russia and provide access to security agencies

• Ex: VKontakte coerced into ownership to state aligned entities like Gazprom

State Control Over Information: Wartime Consolidation

War censorship laws: Criticizing the military or referring to the conflict as a “war” has punishable offenses

• Blocked around 100 new sites and banned social media apps = Great Firewall (caused indepenent journalist to practice aborad)

Repressive State: Rise of the Siloviki

Filled key government posts with siloviki individuals from secuirty, intelligence, and military backgrounds

• FSB gained vast counterintelligence and montoiring power in the government

Repressive State: Specialized Repressive Institutions

• Investigate Committee (2007): Broad authority to investigate corruption, foreign agents, and political targets

• National guards (2016): Oversaw OMON riot police to crush street demonstrations/safeguard regime against internal threats (over 1 million officers)

Repressive State: Surveillance, Physical Coercian, and Assassinations

Employ the SORM system for widespread digital communication monitoring

• Approaches political opposition with physical intimidation, imprisonment and targest assassinations

Managing Elections: Electoral Autocracy

Maintain election to demonstrate popular legitimacy, collect data on public sentiment, and co-opt regional elites into the ruling party

• Blantant fraud has the risk of triggering mass protests (Ex: 2011 and 2012 election cycle)

Managing Elections: Pre-Election Engineering

• Candidate Disqualification: Burdensome standards and legal disqualification to prevent true opposition figures from ballot

• Resource Asymmetry: Independent financing is restricted but United Russia holds/gove state admin. resources and state media coverage

• Voter Mobilization: Employers and public sector supervisors exert pressure on budgetniki (state funded workers) to mobilize their personal networks

Managing Elections: Election-day fraud and digital manipulation

• Illegal Schemes: Ballot box stuffing, falsifying tallies, forcing voters to submit photos of complete ballots

• Monitoring suppression: Banned Independent election monitoring organization to prevent exposure of fraud (Ex: Golos)

• Electronic voting: (2020) Lack transparent auditing, used to reverse offiline opposition to United Russia victories