The Putin Succession

The perennial subject and the problem of prediction

Succession Politics in Wartime Russia

The Russo-Ukrainian War has led to a clear shift in the fundamental political order of the Russian regime. At the system-level, the regime is more personalist and ‘autocratic’ than ever before. In terms of ideology, it is more nationalist (if of a somewhat complicated polyethnic variety) and self-consciously irredentist. The cohort of upper-tier elites is unsettled, with no clear sense of ‘who is on top’ and obviously in a messy evolution. In terms of its future, we are left even more puzzled than we were two years ago, when the constitution was revised to kick the can of political uncertainty down the road. Uncertainty is back for everyone else except Vladimir Putin himself, which is a dangerous place to be, and one that focuses minds on the succession question both within and outside of Russia.

There is no shortage of prognostication among observers about what the war means for Putin and the broader regime, and I will spare you a literature review on this quickly expanding genre. Indeed, given the dynamic situation - a major land war with Ukraine, economic distress and sudden rupture with the Western financial system, a massive, ongoing geopolitical reorientation that is impacting not only Russia vis-à-vis the collective West, but other non-Western states such as China, India, and others - it would be shocking if everything remained in political stasis. Instead of a crystallized or frozen elite politics within Russia’s authoritarian regime (which we plausibly had from 2020-2022, and really for the larger period 2016-2022), we have subterranean elite jockeying and positioning with no clear signal as yet coming from the apex figure.

And that underlines the fundamental problem right now: the baseline reality is that there is no succession plan in Russia today.

Varying Succession Dynamics Over the Putin Tenure

It is true that political succession has been a problem for those looking to assess the regime’s long-term survival for many years. But the problem itself has changed its features over time - and more importantly, it wasn’t really clear that it was a ‘problem’ per se. Putin’s first two terms did not need a heavily-planned or telegraphed succession plan, as this occurred during the golden days of High Putinism. High performance legitimacy, successful elite cooptation, significant popular support, and economic growth kept things quite pacified, and Putin himself was in his prime, leaving no real concerns about health or sudden departure.

The first succession was managed very well, in hindsight, and brushed aside intra-elite power-struggles that had started to emerge in the 2007-2008 period. Those with a longer memory will recall predictions that a security service head - one of the ‘siloviks’ might be tapped to succeed Putin and usher in a harsher regime. We even observed fighting between the security services themselves, including some possible assassinations and several power-plays that upended certain key agencies. Yet this all came to naught, and the moderate ‘liberal’ faction found itself in a controlled ascent when Dmitry Medvedev was chosen to take over the presidency instead.

The 2008-2012 period was when we saw succession most clearly designed - Medvedev was tested out as a full, proper successor while Putin stayed around as Prime Minister, sitting back and watching how the ship of state was handled by someone else. Between the ambitious, but disappointing modernization drive promoted by Medvedev and Putin’s increasingly sharp disagreement with a more accommodating foreign policy (one that led to the regime-change in Libya, among other points of contention), it was fairly clear (again, in hindsight) that by the summer of 2011, he had decided that this plan was a bad one. So Putin announced his return to the institutional heights of power that fall - prompting the mass electoral protests of winter 2011-2012, the brief moment of genuine political chaos in early 2012, and a forceful revanche that culminated in political repression and a successful reconsolidation of authority by the summer.

Since 2012, the succession question has been subdued. Putin had two more constitutionally-allowable terms, and the ‘illiberal’ or ‘conservative turn’ in the regime’s ideology was easily integrated into the interests and outlooks of most regime elites. By 2016, the over-enthusiastically loyalist parliament was brought back under control and experiments in gubernatorial freedom were again curtailed. By 2018, the only other real politician in Russia - Alexei Navalny - was also successfully neutered as a threat, with the rest of that saga more a tragedy than a genuine question of regime evolution or breakup.

The next stage was the 2020 constitutional revision, which was undertaken specifically to undercut any concerns about succession by ensuring that Putin could remain in the presidency beyond the second round of his nominal two-term limit. Public statements by upper-tier elites at the time were quite clear - the avoidance of political uncertainty was paramount and the need for a solution to the ‘2024 problem’ was evident to all. This elite mentality has been pithily summarized by Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin in previous years with the phrase, “without Putin, there is no Russia.”

One can fairly easily grasp a kind of monarchical logic behind this: while Putin in the 2000s was described as acting most importantly as the apex authority that balanced the various state ‘clans’ (‘siloviks’ vs. ‘civiliks’ - i.e. factionalized groupings of vying security services and liberal-technocrats, was one common framework), by now he was perceived as the core linchpin to the regime proper, a symbol of political sovereignty and even Russian national identity. One would do worse than think in terms of the medieval sense of the ‘King’s Two Bodies,’ although the analogy is imperfect. Something like the ‘eternal Putin’ has become a vague political concept lurking in the headspace of Russian elites for nearly a decade now.

Perhaps most interestingly, there are even certain monarchical institutional elements that have become more prominent since the 2020 constitutional revision beyond Putin’s own person. Non-elective council bodies that advise and coordinate upper-tier elites have been institutionalized, most importantly the State Council (collecting the regional governors) and the Security Council (collecting key officials in the security services, the military, and the high-level constitutional political institutions). Both these ‘conciliar’ institutions are hierarchically subordinate bodies under the authority of the president, rather than institutions designed to provide checks-and-balances in a Madisonian manner. Instead, they gather together the kinds of officials one might expect to be in a privy council or a 19th-century upper chamber of parliament subject to the confidence of the monarch - real, genuinely politically-relevant elites, but not in an adversarial or politically-competitive way.

In principle, if the war had never happened, we might imagine further institutionalization of these bodies, as well as new reliance on them to coordinate, coopt, and commit elites to the regime. Indeed, in some countries such bodies are used to safeguard political succession itself. Russia has not gotten to that point, and it is unclear where they stand now. My guess is that they indeed form the institutional core of the holistic regime (however strong that may be ultimately) - and will end up being critical for any succession down the road - but that is only speculation.

If We Must Predict

Where are we now, then? Putin is not term-bound for many years - his next election is 2024, and if he decides to run (he will), then it should be a time of some inevitable political tension, but not political breakdown. A reshuffle of the political party system that undergirds the formal regime is supposedly being planned for the next few months, but it should not unduly upset regime fundamentals. But every change is dearer now, as Putin is aging into his seventh decade. Succession is not solved, and the term limit solution will not paper over anxieties about a crisis should he pass unexpectedly.

So we have to dig into the twists of Kremlinology, an exercise that amounts to a kind of ersatz horse-race analysis that has no answer and will never have an acceptable answer until the day of succession comes.

Formally, if the president passes, the Prime Minister takes the reins until a new election is called and held. There is no vice-presidential office. PM Mikhail Mishustin is a technocrat’s technocrat however, and has not established a base of personal power himself. Here it is relevant to note that succession in authoritarian regimes does not necessarily end the day after with the formal constitutional procedure. In any hypothetical post-Putin political crisis, Mishustin may only be a caretaker and do his duty diligently. He may of course decide to throw the dice and leverage his caretaker status while holding the most important institutional position in the country to transition to consolidated power. This seems to be what President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has managed in Kazakhstan.

In the vein of Kremlinology, we then must look to heavy-hitter names that seem to be in particular favor or engaged in especially prominent (favored) political activity. This takes the simple assumption that in a sudden crisis, a power vacuum would be a time of clashing elite interests rather than a smooth, institutionalized succession.

Some names stand out, although all are difficult to see as self-evident (this is certainly part of the point in a highly personalistic political system). Some point to Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of the Security Council and former FSB head. Other officials in the military-industrial-security apparatus, like Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, current FSB head Aleksandr Bortnikov, and SVR head Sergei Naryshkin pop up here too. Others might point to powerful bureaucratic officials within the presidential administration, such as Presidential Chief of Staff Anton Vaino or First Deputy Chief of Staff Sergei Kirienko. There are important civilian political figures as well, such as United Russia head Dmitry Medvedev, Duma Speaker Volodin, Federation Council Speaker Valentina Matvienko, or Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin. Other names that are even further afield, but notably rising in the public image include Andrei Turchak, the General Secretary of United Russia and a major player in the political integration of newly-conquered territories in Ukraine (for what it’s worth, Andrei Pertsev has a very interesting article on the development of an ‘outpost state’ staffed by eager low-tier elite status-seekers, which I think is something on which we should keep a close watch).

In any case, this is frankly a mess. Both analytically and for Russian elites themselves. If you ask researchers that follow personnel and clique dynamics in Russia closely, you get a mishmash of assessments about relative influence. Naryshkin was publicly embarrassed by Putin at the February 24th meeting of the Security Council. Medvedev is widely disliked and has a limited set of personal loyalists. Patrushev is older than Putin himself. Shoigu has lost a step since the war’s onset, with considerable health problems. Vaino is sometimes seen as a manager with less heft than nominal deputies like Kirienko. Etc etc. And no one has been given the nod by Putin in any meaningful symbolic way that might help to coordinate elite expectations.

This leaves us with a classic problem. Putin is extremely well-aware that naming a successor undermines himself. So far so good. But most institutions are more atrophied now than they were a decade ago, and a good portion of the upper-tier elite cohort is aging from the same generational position as Putin himself. Successful efforts to ‘coup-proof’ and prevent the rise of a politically-charismatic lesser cohort below the president has left the bench weak of obvious candidates and in many cases without broad, nationwide networks of influence to tap into.

At the end of the day, someone will succeed Vladimir Putin. Whether this is tomorrow, in 2024, in 2036, or some unchosen date is entirely unknown. There is a relevant analogy from Russian history to the immediate post-Stalin period, where a de facto triumvirate between Lavrenty Beria, Georgy Malenkov, and Vyacheslav Molotov (with Nikita Khrushchev, Kliment Voroshilov, and Georgy Zhukov in key, politically-powerful positions) lasted for a few tense months while jockeying and behind-the-scenes coordination left Beria dead, Malenkov sidelined, and Khrushchev ascendant. Something like this occurring is perfectly plausible, but impossible to predict.

That example of a brief collective triumvirate from the 1950s at least had the benefit of key institutional heights being formally divided by the Soviet constitutional order, consisting of the Soviet Premier (Malenkov), Communist Party Secretary (Khrushchev), Interior Minister (Beria), Foreign Minister (Molotov), Soviet President (Voroshilov), and the Marshal of the Soviet Union (Zhukov). The succession today is different, lacking the highly institutionalized party-state political order of Stalinist communism and replaced instead by the unified and highly-centralized executive of the modern Russian presidency.

There are good reasons to think that if we do extend that sort of analytic analogy to today, we look to the ‘conciliar’ bodies (i.e. the State and Security Councils) as well as the government (i.e. the Prime Minister), and the parliament chambers (Duma and Federation Council Speakers) - all notable for being assigned formal constitutional powers and positions themselves. The powerful figures within the presidential administration, despite being often noted in succession discussions, serve at the pleasure of the president and do not hold formal constitutional powers themselves. In periods of political crisis in all political regimes, unless political order breaks down entirely, in most cases elites are highly inclined to fall back on formal constitutional positions, powers, and privileges while taking cues in coordinating around potential new leadership through these previously-extant formal channels.

So perhaps we have a short-list of sorts: Patrushev, Mishustin, Medvedev, Volodin, Matvienko? Reading those names in order immediately triggers Russia analysts, each of whom can advance very good reasons why none of these really work. And for very good reasons. Whether elite coordination around one figure or around a few figures in the immediate days after a succession crisis will be determined strongly by the particular political (and geopolitical) environment of the moment. It will also depend on whether we have Putin dying in office suddenly, slowly fading away in body and mind, or the unlikely even that he decides to suddenly retire after all these years. This is a bad place to be when in the prediction business. And so we have to reiterate the basic reality: there really is no succession plan in Russia today.

It is inevitable that we will continue to be thinking about a world after Putin, and what that will look like when it comes. Do not expect the regular stream of speculative articles and (sometimes) useful Kremlinology to end - and it would be odd if it did. Yet at the end of the day this is a horse-race without a finish line, until the race-ribbon appears in front of our eyes one day all of a sudden.

Extranea

Beyond this discussion I have two notes to share as well. First, you can find a short article from me on the threat of ‘democratic backsliding’ in the United States today, published recently at RealClearWorld. The article distills a portion of an argument about authoritarianism in modern America made in a larger essay for American Affairs.

Perhaps more interestingly, I was also recently interviewed for the “What Happens Next in Six Minutes” podcast, hosted by Larry Bernstein, on the same topic. We mostly discussed American politics, although taking in the lessons identified in the article as well. My interview is paired with a discussion between the interviewer and Moises Naim, a Venezuelan political thinker and writer. You can find the link here.

- Julian