The Kremlin Learns to Strike Back: Assessing Reactions to Protests in Russia

For too long authoritarian regime literature has focused on interstate relations and how like-minded ones learn from each other. However, what works in Tehran does not necessarily works in Kazan. For the Russian leaders it has always been vital to remain in power and prevent “colour revolutions” that overthrew similar governments in some post-soviet countries. In order to do that, the Kremlin chooses to learn from the mistakes of its fallen post-Soviet peers and Middle Eastern regimes (Finkel and Brudy, 2012a; 2012b; Horvath, 2011; 2013). Yet, they had to work with Russian realities and its enormous proportions that complicate using the same strategies against protests everywhere. Overall, Russian regime has not changed in the last 17 years: it remains authoritarian to growing discontent of people. While the first and second Putin presidencies were relatively calm, his decision to run for the third time triggered negative reaction and produced the largest demonstrations since the 1990s. Growing public dissatisfaction resulted in multiple protests on regional and federal levels and called for an adequate governmental response. Even researchers focused on Russia often do not draw a distinction between regions and capital cities (Moscow and St. Petersburg), preferring to look at a general picture (Koesel & Bunce, 2012). By missing the regional context, they are unable to truly understand important trends in the Russian political system (Lankina and Voznaya, 2015: 328). This paper intends to look at the third Putin presidency (May 2012 to June 2017) and test the hypothesis that under the third Putin Presidency the Kremlin engaged in developing practices at the regional level to ensure regime survival when faced with protests. I believe that governmental response – dependent variable – is influenced by features of a protest. I divide them into a type of a demonstration (federal, regional, cities with federal importance), their length and type of demands (economic, political, social and cultural). I find that regardless of the protest regional governments are more concerned with cracking down whereas at the federal level different types of protests are differentiated between, leading to crack downs primarily on political protests.