Senior Russian Officials Now Engaging in Flamboyant Populist Rhetoric but with a Twist: Their Target is Putin rather than the Russian People, Pertsev Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 8 – Prior to the beginning of Vladimir Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine in 2022, few Russian officials and even politicians permitted themselves the kind of provocative populist language that had been typical of many Russian politicians in the 1990s and is typical of political leaders in many other countries, Andrey Pertsev says.

            That suggests there is a kind of convergence between the two systems, the Ridle portal commentator says; but this kind of flamboyant language is fundamentally different in the case of Russia than it generally is in Western countries (ridl.io/ru/ot-tehnokratov-k-trollyam-novyj-populizm-dlya-putina/).

            And that difference is this, Pertsev says is this: in the West, those who use populist language are seeking to reach out to and mobilize the population while in the Russian Federation, those who use such language, while they may have some interest in doing that are primarily concerned with attracting Putin’s attention by amusing him.

            Consequently, what some are calling “the new populism” in Russia is not about mobilizing the population to challenge the Kremlin leader but rather about winning his favor given that some of the most outrageous moves, such as Foreign Minister Lavrov’s wearing a sweatshirt with “USSR” on it.

            In the case of Lavrov, few would think that he was challenging Putin by acting in that way; but in the case of many other politicians and even senior officials, many analysts risk falling into the trap of thinking what they are seeing in Russia today as directly analogous to what they are seeing elsewhere.  It isn’t, and that must be recognized.