Russia Turns to Tried and True Tactics
Everything Old is New Again
Russia has never ceased viewing the United States and NATO (the two are indistinguishable in the Kremlin’s eyes) as its primary national security concern, so Moscow has been sticking to its tried-and-true strategies when dealing with the West. Those who are surprised at Russia’s aggression against its neighbors, its suppression tactics at home, and its assassination efforts of opposition figures at home and abroad should take a closer look at the country’s history after the fall of the USSR.
Russia has not changed much. After dabbling in free markets for a bit, its attempts at capitalism turned sour. Freedom isn’t easy. True freedom requires commitment to the consequences—good and bad. Quoting an old movie, “You want free speech? Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who's standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours.” You want free markets, freedom of association, or freedom of religion? Let’s see you recognize and protect the views of those with whose faith or partnerships you ardently disagree. Let’s see you defend capitalism, while at the same time protecting it from special interests, power grabbers, and influence peddlers.
Russia has done none of these things. Privatization in Russia merely transferred wealth to a small group of oligarchs. For Moscow, rewarding those who toed the party line and had an “in” with the Kremlin, while paying lip service to free markets, was an easier route to an alleged “market economy” than actually tolerating dissent and opposition to the Kremlin’s policies that could reduce the authority and wealth of those in power.
The Russian mindset has not changed much, and neither have Russian strategies to ensure domestic support for Putin.
Putin’s popularity has not fallen below 60 percent in more than 20 years with good reason: Russians tend to be relatively conservative, and Putin has effectively used the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church to coopt support, portraying himself as a defender of traditional, conservative morality. Russia’s 2013 anti-gay propaganda law, for example, has been marginalizing and penalizing LGBT youth for years, denying these individual mental health services and shutting down online information and resources—all in the name of protecting Russia’s children and traditional families.
Russian nationalism has been on the rise, despite western sanctions imposed after the 2014 Crimea invasion, and ethnic Russian nationalism has been growing since the fall of the Soviet Union.
The Kremlin has successfully used domestic propaganda to consolidate support among the Russian people, despite some serious violations of international law, assassination attempts, and use of chemical weapons against adversaries.
In recent years, a key piece of Putin’s domestic consolidation of power has been informational in nature. Russia’s strongman has worked diligently to create a profound sense of siege among his populace via a steady diet of state propaganda that amplifies Western transgressions, minimizes the Kremlin‘s culpability in global disorder, and generally inverts the global security situation.
Is it any wonder that despite expert analysis and outright admission by a member of the FSB assassination team that put the nerve agent Novichok in opposition leader Navalny’s underpants in 2020, half of Russians are skeptical that Navalny was poisoned at all?
The FSB has called that recording a fake designed to discredit it, however, and has said that foreign intelligence services helped Navalny make it while the Kremlin has mocked Navalny and tried to call his sanity into question.
The strategy of denying, staying on message, and blaming the West has been working well for Moscow. The Kremlin denies its role in the Navalny poisoning despite German experts presenting conclusive proof to the contrary. Russia also continues to deny its involvement in the downing of the MH17 aircraft over Ukraine in 2014, despite evidence of separatists and Russia’s operator plant Strelkov celebrating the downing of the airliner on social media in a since-deleted tweet.
Russia in 2016, named NATO activities—and specifically the alleged US policy of “containment toward it”—a threat to its national security, harkening back to the bad old days when Moscow needed a big adversary to keep its populace in line. Moscow is still engaged in active measures against its enemies in the West, adapting its age-old disinformation and provocation tactics to today’s online environment—a cheaper and simpler alternative to sending sleepers and operatives to foreign lands—all the while claiming that the West is inventing allegations, and Russia is ever the victim, even though ample reporting exists to show that Russia funds political movements, foments unrest, and interferes with elections in the West.
Again, these are tried-and-true tactics that Russia has adapted and continues to use at home and abroad. Domestically, the censorship, the detention of opposition figures and protesters, the listing of press outlets as foreign agents, and the assassination attempts against Navalny, against oppositionist Vladimir Kara-Murza, and former military officer and double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the UK, are tactics the Kremlin has used for decades.
In addition, it looks like Russia is bringing back a few more onerous tactics it has used during the Soviet days to crush the opposition. Researcher and analyst Olga Lautman highlights a dark development harkening to Russia’s old strategy of discrediting dissent by painting opposition figures as mentally ill. After all, who wouldn’t want authoritarianism and sacrifice for Mother Russia? Anyone who doesn’t just has to be crazy, right?
During the Brezhnev era, a mental disease known as “sluggish schizophrenia” emerged and was applied to political dissidents expressing politically unacceptable views. They were thrown into mental institutions and treated with massive doses of psychiatric drugs meant to punish people, deter others, and as a means to discredit their ideas. Recent years have seen the return of such reports. A regional deputy in Primorsky was admitted into a regional clinical psychiatric institution after accusing the governor of corruption and bribery.
An activist who frequently demonstrated in Red Square, demanding to be taken to Ukraine and granted Ukrainian citizenship, was held in a psychiatric hospital during his last arrest in April 2021, while awaiting trial. According to Andriy Us, he was given a “political diagnosis” of schizotypal personality disorder. And most recently, a history teacher who complained to Putin about low wages for teachers was fired with a recommendation that he “undergo treatment in a mental hospital.
Nothing in Russia’s arsenal is innovative or shocking. We’ve seen their strategies over and over again throughout the years, and the nationalist resurgence, along with the renewed focus on Russia’s “great soul” are all indicators of the Kremlin’s headspace. Putin’s turn to historical Russia, his repatriation of the remains of Russian philosopher Ivan Ilyin for reburial in Moscow in 2005, and his admiration for the nationalist’s views about the lost “Russian spirit” that should be protected against all external threats—including individualism—by the creation of a new Russian nation should have been a big, red flag to anyone who has been watching the country develop after the fall of the Soviet Union.
As Lautman so astutely observed, Russia is returning to its past. I would add that it almost certainly never fully left.