The Russia File
Recent Analysis
The Russia File provides textured, fine-grained analysis of Russia and its surroundings.
The war Russia is waging against Ukraine is the predominant regional concern, highlighting the question of Russian motivations and the question of domestic-political support for the war. Neither question admits clear-cut empirical answers. Both must be continuously puzzled through, without assuming the war will be permanently fought and without indulging in wishful thinking about a quick end to a war that has already lasted many years.
The Russia File does not define its topic narrowly. It incorporates the attitudes and the thinking of diaspora Russian populations. It does not endorse the presumption that everyone living in Russia is Russian (whatever this word means), and The Russia File is alert to the debates about belonging and non-belonging that have haunted Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Culture, history and language exert a shaping force on the Russian element in Russian politics.
The Russia File embraces Kremlinology. It traces the sinews of power in Russia, the institutions that collect and transmit power and the competition for power and influence within the Russian government. At the center of Russian power is the person of Vladimir Putin, one of the world’s longest-serving leaders, whose stamp is felt at every point on the Russian political spectrum. Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine in February 2022 is among the most consequential in Russian history. His future decisions about the war will not be less consequential.
Yet even when power is concentrated in only a few hands, it is never absolute.
For this reason, The Russia File carefully examines state-society relations in Russia, the ways in which the state fashions Russian society and (of equal significance) the ways in which society fashions the Russian state. Putinism is a state-society construction; its transformation or demise, when it comes, may well originate not in the career of Vladimir Putin but in the unpredictable movements of society, as happened in Imperial Russia in 1917 and in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s. The Russia File combines these strands into real-time reflection on Russia’s ongoing evolutions.