Putin Consensus More Likely to be Destroyed by Putin Regime than by the Russian People, Inozemtsev Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 11 – Much Western analysis and even more Russian opposition understanding is based on the assumption that relations between the Putin regime and the Russian people are based on an exchange in which the Russian people give up something in exchange for something else, Vladislav Inozemtsev says.

            But such a model leads to the conclusion that “the absence of benefits and advantages can provoke discontent and ultimately lead to the collapse of this contract,” a fallacy with far-reaching implications because that is not what has been happening, the Russian economist and commentator says (moscowtimes.ru/2025/06/11/putinskii-konsensus-i-ego-vragi-a165881).

            According to Inozemtsev, the real consensus between the Putin regime and the Russian people is different. It reflects the inertness of the population and means that “the people do not demand changes for the better: they are satisfied with what exists” and their support for the regime requires only that “life remains on the whole as it is now.”

            And that means that “the modern Russian system is strong not because it has the support of the majority as is so often claimed but because that majority is indifferent” to what the regime does except when the powers try to change something that affects most people. Thus, Russians were more upset by the threat of mass mobilization than by the invasion of Ukraine.

            This leads to two important conclusions: first, it explains why the Russian liberal opposition has completely failed, a development that is “due less to the persecution of it by the authorities than to the obvious inferiority of the agenda it has chosen.” It focuses on moral issues and the defense of minorities, neither of which agitate the Russian population.

            And second, it shows why “the only thing the current Russian regime cannot achieve are actions of a mobilization kind.” Indeed, a classic confirmation of this is the hopeless struggle the Kremlin has gotten involved with to increase the birthrate … The majority doesn’t want to strain themselves in that way [or any other] in anything and even not for money.”

            What this means, Inozemtsev says, is that the chief threat to the consensus between regime and population comes not from the population but from the regime many of whose members want to do things. But if they try to do anything that will require the people to act, they will upset the applecart and threaten their own power.