Carnegie Moscow Center
The current political system in Russia is a hybrid of democracy and authoritarianism, or an “overmanaged democracy,” where the elements of authoritarianism dominate democratic ones. The system seems stable on the surface, but is in fact very fragile.
Russia retains interests throughout the post-Soviet regions, but Moscow’s considerable influence is no longer dominant.
The economic crisis has devastated the Russian economy, where GDP is expected to contract by nearly 10 percent in 2009. Despite optimism among government experts, ballooning debt and plummeting revenues threaten the recovery effort.
The hydrocarbon industries of the former Soviet Union are undergoing innovative development. In Russia, conditions both enable and inhibit the construction of a new economy focused on incentives for innovation.
The economic crisis may have exacerbated many of the vulnerabilities in Russia's economy, but it stopped the deterioration of U.S.-Russian relations, which were the lowest they had been in twenty-five years.
Pushing the "reset button" on U.S.-Russia relations will be impossible if a dramatic curtailment of Russian state resources produces harder political crackdowns, economic nationalism, and isolationism.
Russia remains hobbled by an unfulfilled need to diversify its economy and to strengthen the independence of its economic and judicial systems. A global turnaround will not solve these problems.
The economic crisis has had a clear impact on the already impoverished countries of Central Asia, but few Americans and Europeans have noticed. China and Russia have stepped in to provide aid, and their investments threaten institutional reform in the region.
The federal highway occupation by workers in the small town of Pikalyovo illustrates both the fact that the Russian people have no way to communicate with their government and that the government's only method of resolving problems is through Putin's direct intervention.
Newly-released survey results show that Russians are holding regional leaders, rather than the federal government, responsible for the economic crisis in their regions. But federal authorities won't be able to get away with this forever.