Russia and Covid-19: Russian Adaptive Authoritarianism During the Pandemic

Abstract

This paper explores Russia"s response to Covid-19, with a focus on its implications for political freedoms and human rights across the country. It investigates the relationship between the pandemic and reinforcing authoritarianism in Russia. This paper is an in-depth case analysis that uses policy analysis and process tracing to examine Russia"s response to Covid-19 and its effects on Russian domestic politics. The study concludes that the Russian authorities have considerably abused Covid-19-related restrictive measures, not least through curtailing the freedom of assembly and expression. In doing so the Russian authorities have conveniently shielded themselves from mass protests amid constitutional amendments and upcoming legislative elections. Nevertheless, while the authoritarian practices that the Kremlin resorted to during the pandemic are not much different from those of other authoritarian regimes, they proved insufficient in curbing anti-regime dissent. This study inquires into the political repercussions of crisis management in authoritarian regimes and concludes that their authoritarian reactions lead to further crackdowns on civil liberties and political freedoms.

Covid-19 and the Russian Regional Response

“…Secondly, by making regional governors accountable for the management of the crisis, the central authorities could shift blame downwards (Smyth et al 2020;Blackburn and Petersson 2021;Terzyan 2021;Shirikov et al 2023). The simple rationale was that the political centre takes the credit for impressive nation-level achievements while regional leaders, deprived of sufficient resources, are the ready-made fall guys when chaos and disorder strike at the local level (Busygina 2019;Smyth et al 2020;Malinova 2020;Petersson 2021).…”