Putinism Represents ‘Not a Failure of the Post-Soviet Transition but Its Full Realization,’ Shtepa Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 22 – Many Russians view what the Putin regime has done to the rights and freedoms they gained under Gorbachev as a complete reversal of the direction they thought Russia would take after 1991; but in fact, Vadim Shtepa argues, Putinism is in no way “a failure of the post-Soviet period” as they and others imagine but rather “its full realization.”

            The Russian regionalist, who edits the Tallinn-based Region.Expert portal, points out that Boris Yeltsin came to power openly committed to reversing Gorbachev’s modernizing and internationalizing reforms by arguing that “Russia must be revived” and that its people must “rise from their knees” (moscowtimes.ru/2025/10/22/obyazatelnoe-vozrozhdenie-imperii-ili-kuda-zavel-nas-postsovetskii-tranzit-a177923).

            By so doing, Yeltsin acted more like a Russian autocrat than a reforming democrat, Shtepa continues. And he continued in that way both by refusing to take part in any debates during elections because that was beneath the dignity of a Russian leader and by declaring war on the Chechens.

            Moreover, the expert on regionalism continues, the incomplete destruction of the Soviet Russian empire ensured that the Russian Federation would become “a base for imperial restoration given that it occupied a disproportionately major place in comparison with the other union republics” precisely what Yeltsin began and Putin has continued.

            Already under Yeltsin but ever more intensively under Putin, “post-Soviet Russian began to position itself as a continuation of the Russian Empire in its Soviet form.” That made conflicts with its neighbors and others inevitable because “form the imperial point of view, all post-Soviet republics were viewed as ‘unreal’ and their independence conditional and a formality.”

            Tragically, Shtepa concludes, the failure to recognize the ways in which Yeltsin created the road map that Putin has continued to follow, one that reverses the progressive moves taken by Gorbachev rather than extending them, continues to infect almost all discussions of why Moscow is doing what it is now and what it is likely to do in the future.