5 August 2025
Is there a connection between ‘elite’ and low-level repressions?
by Leonid Nikitinsky
Source: Novaya gazeta
The list of officials and law enforcement officers of the most diverse levels who have been criminally prosecuted for corruption, a list compiled by my colleague Elena Panfilova, makes a powerful impression, both in the scale of the phenomenon and in its (considering the swiftly increasing number of figures) newness. Compared with ‘elite’ repressions, the low-level political ones now look routine.
Is there a connection between these two undoubtedly different types of violence? The hypothesis we are proposing says that behind both stands the problem of legitimacy, which the presidential administration has been following painstakingly, including by ordering closed public opinion surveys, and which upsets it more and more.
Legitimacy as a sociological concept is not identical to juridical legality.
In connection with the reorientation of the courts and ‘law enforcement organs’ from law enforcement, albeit selective, to an ideological foundation for the ‘legality’ of the repressions, the significance of legitimacy is increasing and gradually replacing legality.
The concept of legitimacy was formulated in the early twentieth century by Max Weber, who divided it into three types: traditional, charismatic, and rational. Historically, although not linearly and with digressions, states and societies have been moving toward rational legitimacy, which on the whole is identical to the supremacy of the rule of law. If the ‘masses’ don’t, then the elites at a certain point do arrive at the conclusion that this is the most rational arrangement for a state and society.
There can be a combination of different types of legitimacy. Thus, the decline of rational legitimacy inside a country might be compensated for by certain victorious events that restore the ruler’s charismatic legitimacy. With its amendments to the Russian Constitution of 2020, along with the re-zeroing of presidential terms, the Kremlin attempted to strengthen its traditional legitimacy—in the spirit of ‘it’s always been this way’.
In constructing his concept of legitimacy, Weber says nothing about violence, although a monopoly on it (according to him) is not only the sign of a state but also, it would seem, an important support for a regime. Legal violence is already inherent in the construction of rational legitimacy, though, and violence outside the law’s limits undermines this type of legitimacy (unlike charismatic and traditional).
Ultimately, a leader’s legitimacy (on the level not only of the state but of any community, for example, a classroom or a ‘contingent’ [of prisoners] in a correctional institution) marks the community’s readiness to regard the leader within a spectrum ranging from active support to compelled submission (loyalty).
Rational legitimacy implicitly rests on the so-called social contract, which is not written down anywhere but is understood and more or less observed by all—even if under duress. Inasmuch as we are going outside the limits of the law here, we will be speaking not about the social contract but about an ‘agreement’ or even ‘collusion’.
We will allow ourselves to embellish on Weber: rational legitimacy may rest not only on law but also on ‘mutual understandings’, as often happens in present-day Russia. The main thing is that the rules are understandable and not subjected to one-sided revision. Revision of the conditions of the ‘agreement’ by the stronger side creates a situation of ‘bespredel‘ [‘lawlessness’] (it was in just this meaning that this word, which I first heard from zeks, was first brought into wide circulation in a 1988 essay). In a situation of ‘lawlessness’, the weaker side or the ‘masses’ can either submit and accept the new normalcy or exercise their ‘right of rebellion’.
The right of rebellion stems not only from philosophical doctrines (primarily, John Locke) but is also set down, for example, in the US Declaration of Independence and in the form of the ‘right to resistance’ in the current German Constitution. Legislative reinforcement, though, does not make this ‘right’ legal. This is a political construct. In the current historical situation, it is indistinguishable from unlawful extremism, and it is justified perhaps only in the event of this specific uprising’s success, that is, once again, the establishment of a new normal retroactively.
We have erected this entire complicated conceptual apparatus with the aim of getting at an answer to the question posed at the very beginning: do low-level political repressions and upper-tier ‘anti-corruption’ (in appearance) anti-elite repressions have anything in common?
First, President Putin changed the nature of his own legitimacy over the course of a quarter-century of rule; and second, he rests on different types of legitimacy among different groups of the population.
Besides a ‘charisma’ ably cultivated by his political strategists, Putin’s legitimacy among the people has for a long time rested (rationally) on the ordinary person’s quality of life. Economists can calculate all they like about when this level began to go down, but up to the present day the ‘masses’ assumed that ‘we have never lived so well’. The reserve of stability is on the wane, though, and inflation is having an increasing effect on the mood of the ‘people’. Ending the special military operation does not guarantee the undermined economy’s swift restoration.
Up until now, Putin’s charisma was based on the fact that he transformed into a kind of mythical being and ‘is never wrong’. Current events have put this feature of his rule in question, a question that will become even more acute after it ends and regardless of the outcome: What was all this for? In politics, as we know, a mistake ‘is worse than a crime’.
The traditional component of Putin’s legitimacy in this instance could turn from a plus to a minus. The example of the 1990s Soviet Union showed how instantaneously the vector of the ‘masses’’ pro-European/anti-European moods can change.
As for the elites (without scare quotes, if we include all sober-minded people), then they may have fallen under Putin’s mysterious spell at the beginning of his rule, but for the most part, the longer it went on, the more his legitimacy in circles of officials and businessmen had a purely rational character. Collaborating with the regime was profitable, it fed the ‘elites’ (here in quotes) by offering privileges, including and above all through corruption schemes: you could ‘take’, you just had to ‘share’.
The anti-elite repressions of recent months described in detail by my colleague Panfilova are destroying this scheme of rational legitimacy. Criminal cases that have been opened are a sign of ‘lawlessness’: all those generals and deputy governors ‘never did come to an agreement’, and this is the new normal. Bearing in mind that corruption chains reach upward, it affects interests and players at the very highest level.
In these conditions, it is not enough to pursue anti-corruption activists, which is the essence of low-level political repressions; it is essential to replace the personnel ‘at the trough’, which adds problems with filling this trough—the budget.
The ‘collective Putin’ is changing its support as it goes, seizing their property, and often their freedom, from the previous ‘elites’ and redistributing it in favor of the new ones—not necessarily SVO [special military operation] participants but definitely its supporters.
The new ‘new Russians’ are obliged to publicly support the SVO, which leads to them possibly falling under sanctions and, accordingly, guarantees their future loyalty inside the country.
- On the one hand, this means a decline in the quality of the ‘elites’. If the former ones, along with their demonstration of loyalty, possessed for better or worse certain administrative skills, if only due to their experience, then all that’s needed to become one of the new elites is a loyalty oath.
- On the other hand, among the ‘elites’ that are being pushed aside, thoughts of ‘rebellion’ cannot help but arise. After all, the right to rebellion can be exercised even in elemental, individual forms. This right was exercised by Roman Starovoit, who committed suicide.
The appearance of a critical mass of a dissatisfied ‘populace’, on one hand, and privately dissenting officials and businessmen, on the other, is a major problem for the regime and its inevitable ‘transition’.
In this situation, loyalty is assured only through violence and to an even greater degree by the threat of it—by terror. Here is where, in my opinion, we find the common root of low-level and anti-elite repressions.
Translated by Marian Schwartz
