The full-scale Russian war in Ukraine has been ongoing for more than a year, and has irrevocably changed the political landscape in Russia. All the social contracts and established practices of relationship that once existed between the state and its citizens have come under severe strain. The future of the whole country seems murky to say the least, but the political regime of Vladimir Putin has demonstrated surprising stability despite the enormous pressure of economic sanctions, international isolation and mass emigration.
Since the regime’s ability to survive directly impacts its ability to act militarily (and vice versa), rational expertise on the internal political dynamics has rarely been so valuable. Pushkin House is hosting a conversation between two leading political scientists, Professor Ekaterina Schulmann and Professor Mark Galeotti, who will exchange their views on how the Russian political regime has evolved over the last fifteen months and how various social groups are contributing and reacting to it. Which sections of the Russian political machine are most effective? Where is the strain of war felt the most, and which parts of the regime are most likely to give way? Who are the beneficiaries of the war within the power system, and in society at large? Do popular attitudes matter anymore and to which tendencies should we be paying attention?
The event will take place at 6:30pm at Logan Hall, University College London, Level 1, 20 Bedford Way, London, WC1H 0AL.
Ekaterina Schulmann is the chair of the panel of judges of the Pushkin House Book Prize 2023.
Media support is provided by Zima Magazine.
The conversation will be held in English.
About the speakers
Professor Mark Galeotti is a specialist on the Russian military and security services, an Honorary Professor at University College London and Executive Director of the UK-based consultancy Mayak Intelligence. He read history at Robinson College, Cambridge and took his doctorate in government at the LSE, and has since been Head of History at Keele University, a Senior Research Fellow with the Foreign Office, Professor of Global Affairs at New York University, and a visiting professor at Rutgers-Newark (Newark, NJ), Charles University (Prague), the European University Institute (Florence) and MGIMO (Moscow).
Mark is the author of Putin’s Wars: From Chechnya to Ukraine (Bloomsbury, 2022), The Weaponisation of Everything (Yale, 2022), We Need To Talk About Putin (Ebury, 2019) and The Vory: Russia’s Super Mafia (Yale, 2018). He has studied Russia for many years, and was on the first list of British people banned by Moscow.
Professor Ekaterina Schulmann is a political scientist specialising in the law-making process in modern-day Russia, parliamentarism and decision-making mechanisms in hybrid political regimes. She holds a PhD in political science and has served as a Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow of the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin. She is an associate professor at KAZGUU University in Astana, Kazakhstan, and an associate fellow in Chatham House.
Before 2023, Ekaterina was an associate professor at the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences (MSSES) and a senior lecturer at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA). From December 2018 to October 2019 she was a member of the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights in Russia.
Ekaterina is the author of the books Legislation as a Political Process (2014) and Practical Political Science: A Guide to Getting in Touch with Reality (2018), and the co-author of a chapter in The New Autocracy: Information, Politics, and Policy in Putin’s Russia (Brookings Institution Press, 2018). She is also a member of the Editorial Board of the UNESCO Courier magazine.