Food is and has always been political power. When unequally distributed and not universally accessible, food is a potent tool of domination and social control. Yet despite its significance, before Russia's invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, food availability was rarely discussed as a principal political issue outside the global South. Since then, the world has had to grapple with the fallout from two leading grain exporters warring with each other. From the outset of the conflict, Russia has used food both as a shield and a weapon against international interference, with the world's most vulnerable countries becoming collateral damage. This is not an accident. Since the early days of Russian president Vladimir Putin's rule, the regime has sought to prevent domestic unrest and insulate itself against potentially crippling Western sanctions by promoting Russia's food independence.Russia's focus on nutritional self-sufficiency sets the country apart from almost all modern autocracies. While many authoritarian regimes have adopted industrial import-substitution policies, in Putin's Russia it is the substitution of food imports with domestically produced crops that is crucial for regime survival. Food thus offers an important lens for understanding autocracy in Russia. Recognizing food as a powerful political tool allows us to move beyond the currently dominant focus on institutions or repression for understanding Putin's grip on power to the broader framework of mechanisms of authoritarian stability.The outcomes of the Kremlin's food-import-substitution policies
This article seeks to explain why Boris Yeltsin was able to win I996 Russian presidential election despite prolonged economic crisis and the war in Chechnya. The paper advances the argument which emphasizes Yeltsin's ability to recreate political and social alliances which were crucial to his previous electoral successes, on the one hand, and poor electoral strategy and political beliefs of Yeltsin's main challenger, the head of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Gennady Zyuganov, on the other. In particular, the paper highlights Yeltsin's campaign strategy of turning the election into a referendum on communism rather on his own record and the success of his two candidates only strategy. The paper also argues that Zyuganov communist-nationalist, rather than social-democratic, world view determined his electoral strategy and played a major role in his electoral defeat.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.