Kremlin ‘Gradually Suppressing’ Regionally Distinct Political Cultures but Only as Far as Public Declarations are Concerned, Gilyev Suggests

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 5 – Aleksey Gilyev, a Russian scholar at the University of Helsinki, says that Russia remains “incredibly diverse in terms of its regions” but that the Kremlin is “gradually suppressing regionally distinct political cultures because it believes that such variations are “signs of weakness.”

            The political scientist, who has conducted a variety of surveys in the Russian Federation, says that the Putin regime has been more successful in getting Russians in various parts of the country to declare that they share a common political culture than in getting them to actually adopt it (semnasem.org/articles/2026/10/05/aleksey-gilev-rossiyane-vlast-propaganda).

            That is because on that issue just as in cases of the assessment of the 1990s or the economic situation now and others involving the future course of the war in Ukraine what people say they feel when asked global questions is quite different than what they report when more narrowly focused questions are used.

            Thus, for example, Russians overwhelmingly say they support Putin’s war in Ukraine but they also say they don’t want mobilization and would like to see peace. This reflects the fact that people evaluate issues globally according to one set of criteria and their own experiences and involvement in terms of a different set.

            While Gilyev does not address this specifically in his interview with Horizontal Russia, it is thus likely that rising poll numbers in support of a common Russia-wide political culture are at variance with the actual support people in various places have when the questions are asked about their personal experiences.