Why do Russians not protest? How social and economic heterogeneity precludes dissent in Russia
Alexei PolianskiMaastricht University
Edited by Zenia Fay Halime, IE University
Abstract
This paper investigates the absence of large-scale dissent in the Russian Federation following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, despite severe economic and institutional deterioration. Drawing on institutional economics, the analysis identifies three key factors: weak property rights, high social heterogeneity, and the mutation of the Russian social contract.
economics, economic inequality.
The start of the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine marked a major transformation in the political, economic and institutional landscape of the European continent. Specifically, the condition of both Ukrainian and Russian citizens deteriorated rapidly. Although the former experienced a sharper economic and security downturn, the latter witnessed a rapid decline in political freedoms, economic conditions, and overall institutional quality. Although scholars such as Hirschman theorize that https://ipr.blogs.ie.edu/ How social and dissent in in the Russian Federation following the 2022 invasion of Drawing on institutional economics, the analysis appropriability, high social heterogeneity, and the the historical trajectory from the post-Soviet privatisation era how centralisation of power suppressed collective action. opportunities for coordinated protest, ultimately enabling stability to militarised incentives. The paper concludes by these dynamics and outlines potential response policies for rights, social heterogeneity, social contract, institutional protests and revolutionary sentiment increase when institutions degradethe Russian Federation did not see any major nationwide dissent movements. These were absent both in response to worsening economic conditions and in opposition to coercive measures, such as mandatory conscription, restrictions on international travel, or limitations on access to financial assets. This paper explores the institutional background of the Russian Federation, tracing its development from the legacy of the Soviet Union to the formation and consolidation of Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian regime. Possible causes leading to the alienation of the Russian population are identified, and the ways in which these factors prevent large scale manifestations of dissent. To this end, an analysis of property rights is conducted, with a specific focus on resource appropriability. Secondly, social heterogeneity is examined as a factor that inhibits trust and collective action, drastically reducing the opportunity window for dissent movements. Lastly, the social contract that emerged from the economic crisis of the 1990s is described, along with its evolution to the present day.
Institutional History of the Russian Federation Although a Russian state has existed in many different forms during many centuries, the Russian Federation was officially formed on the 25th of December 1991. The first decade of its existence was characterised by economic and political turmoil. In the aftermath of the fall of the USSR, the authorities of the Federation inherited a political and economic situation that needed rapid stabilization. As described by Stephen Kotkin, Russia's then 89 regions were in the hands of governors who answered to no one. At the same time, an alternative to the obsolete socialist economic system had to be found. In 1991, a major privatisation campaign was launched, initially being described as a political and economic success. Yet, as Boycko et al. describe, the privatisation process was characterised by strong political interference and weak corporate governance, often leading to insider ownership and episodes of corporate raiding, paving the way for the rise of what would later be known as oligarchs. Figure 1 illustrates how the privatisation process led to a significant reallocation of wealth, creating substantial economic inequality, which was furtherly exacerbated by the decline in public wealth, as the Russian population had been accustomed to relying on welfare and consistent availability of public goods during the Soviet Union era. Figure 1. Public Wealth Share (left axis) and Private Wealth Share (right axis) in Russia. Note. Adapted from Dan Cao and Roger Lagunoff, “The Dynamics of Property Rights in Modern Autocracies,” American Economic Journal: Microeconomics 15, no. 3 (2023): 305–353, https://doi.org/10.1257/mic.20210229. Despite stabilization efforts by Yeltsin's administration, market failures persisted, maintaining high uncertainty and eventually culminating in a default in 1998. In this context, Vladimir Putin came to power in 1999. He gradually asserted control over media outlets, gas and oil industries, and regional governments. The oligarchs, as well as the governors of the regions, were slowly replaced with figures loyal to Putin. At the same time, a mix of favourable conditions, mainly driven by the global commodities super cycle of the early 2000s, produced a period of significant economic growth in the Russian Federation. It is worth noting that the first rounds of international sanctions following the 2014 Russian invasion of Crimea did not significantly impact growth trajectory, with the exception of a brief economic slowdown in 2014-2016. This period of relative economic stability was interrupted in 2022, when the Russian Federation launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, facing unprecedented economic sanctions. In the immediate aftermath, the Russian Federation experienced a period of high inflation, trade and supply chain disruptions, a sharpening of political repression and restrictions of personal freedoms. Yet, neither economic nor institutional deterioration has produced any kind of large-scale dissent movements. Figure 2. Russian GDP since the fall of the Soviet Union, in 2008 international dollars. Note. Adapted from World Bank, “GDP (Current US$) – Russian Federation,” accessed June 10, 2025.
and the Monopoly on Violence
Property rights are a fundamental determinant of institutional quality, and as Amartya Sen points out, institutional quality and effective functioning are essential for democracy and freedom of speech. In the Russian Federation, weak property rights and ease of natural resource appropriability created opportunities for a small group of players to quickly appropriate large portions of economic capital, eventually transforming this capital into political power. They then used it to create a monopoly on violence to suppress and silence dissent.
The first argument is mainly economic, tied to resource endowments and their allocation. Robinson, Torvik, and Verdier distinguish two types of resource appropriability: technical and institutional. Technical appropriability has always been present in the USSR and later in the Russian Federation, which is rich in easily appropriable resources such as oil, gas, and coal, but this aspect is not the primary focus of the present research. Institutional appropriability was also present during the Soviet era, with a strong centralized government, namely the Communist Party of the USSR. But a major change occurred with the privatizations during the 1990s. Property rights were liberalized rapidly and somewhat chaotically, as pointed out by Shleifer and Triesman. The structure of the privatisations was characterised by widespread informational asymmetry. Shares of previously state-owned enterprises were exchanged through freely tradable liquid securities called vouchers, implying that every private individual could participate equally in the privatization programme. Yet, large concessions were made to enterprise managers and workers to secure their political consent, ultimately creating an extremely unequal redistribution. In this scenario, managers with large shareholdings, acquired through privatization, started engaging in rent-seeking extractive activities, mainly in the natural resource and industrial sectors. The figure of the oligarchs emerged, defined by Guriev and Sonin as private agents who are also powerful economic agents. They largely engaged in attempts to influence policymaking on property rights, as well as to influence the media and the judicial system. The fundamental difference between Boris Yeltsin’s 1990s and Vladimir Putin’s 2000s, in terms of their respective influence on the ability of the citizens of the Russian Federation to express dissent, resides in the process of power centralization. Guriev and Sonin describe two kinds of authoritarian leaders: weak and strong. Under the weaker Yeltsin, oligarchs enjoyed lax property rights that allowed them to acquire and influence media outlets. Each oligarch financed communication pro domo sua, with the positive externality of a relative diversity of political opinions, especially in comparison to the subsequent Putin regime. Oligarchs also pursued lobbying and bribing activities in the judicial and police systems, preventing the creation of a monopoly on violence. Putin, on the contrary, exhibited the characteristics of a strong authoritarian leader: he rapidly gained popular support, as well as consensus among segments of the oligarchy. Putin started enforcing property rights to contain rent-seeking, colluding with some oligarchs to expropriate others. As later documented by scholars such as Kotkin, Guriev, and Treisman, he centralized military and police forces, replacing their chiefs of staff with loyalists. He then began using them to suppress armed dissent, as exemplified by the Second Chechen War (1999–2009) and the subsequent appointment of loyalist Ramzan Kadyrov as head of the Chechen Republic. The new centralised police and military forces were employed to suppress freedom of speech, with numerous arrests and assassinations, ultimately creating an environment that resembles Cicero’s dictum that law stands mute in the midst of arms.
Russian Federation
Within the literature on social capital and institutional performance, Keefer and Knack, identify homogenizing factors such as ethnic ties, language, culture, wealth, occupation, political and economic rights, and geographic distance as key determinants for successful social cooperation. In the Russian Federation, characterised by high social heterogeneity, these factors have a detrimental effect. As suggested by Ostrom, this ultimately prevents cooperation and enables adverse selection.
The second argument moves beyond the economic domain and focuses on social composition, specifically how it influences citizens' incentives to express dissent. The Russian Federation fulfils the criterion of large geographic distance, being the largest country on the planet by landmass, complemented with a very low population density of 8.5 people per square kilometre in 2020. The heterogeneity is further exacerbated by large variability between large urban centres, such as Moscow, which has a population density of 5,180 people per square kilometre, and sparsely populated rural areas. Additionally, the country exhibits notable ethnic heterogeneity, comprising over 190 ethnic groups, alongside a substantial migrant population estimated around 11 million people, approximately 8% of the total population, as of 2019. The predominance of ethnic Russians, described by Alexseev and confirmed by Rosstat, with figures that account for 80% of the population as “ethnic Russians”, may hint at the fact that heterogeneity is somewhat narrow. However, a second, perhaps more powerful type of heterogeneity has to be taken into account. Gontmakher and Ross describe significant regional variation in socio-economic development, with some federal subjects such as Chechnya, being subsidized by the central government, while others such as Bashkortostan are expropriated of their resources. The middle class itself is internally divided into a large portion of public servants, called budgetniki, versus those working for the private sector, as depicted in Figure 3. Figure 3. Composition of Occupation of the Middle Class. Note. Adapted from Evgeny Gontmakher and Cameron Ross, “The Middle Class and Democratisation in Russia,” Europe-Asia Studies 67, no. 2 (2015): 269–284. The sum of these factors creates an environment characterized by many heterogeneous groups with distinct, often opposed interests and incentives, which build cooperation and trust only among group members, as theorized by Keefer and Knack, and ultimately prevent large-scale manifestations of dissent. Furthermore, distrust for those who manifest dissent publicly is amplified by the presence of what Hirschman describes as the most effective homogenizing agent: a shared historical experience among all members of a group. Conversely to the previous factors, this dynamic is present in the Russian Federation, described by Alexseev as common memories of imperial and Soviet-era oppression. The economic and political crisis of the 1990s can also be understood as a shared memory, often portrayed by the authorities in highly negative terms. The threat of a return to either of these scenarios of absolute deprivation is instrumentally employed by the ruling group to legitimize their choices and maintain the status quo. The result is adverse selection, as citizens engage in social ostracism of those who challenge the status quo with public dissent, following what Keefer and Knack described as ostracism of the untrustworthy.
exchange for freedom to loyalty in exchange for life
After the period of political and economic instability of the 1990s, a new social contract emerged in the Russian Federation. Similar to that of many resource rich Northern African states, this contract redistributed capital gains from natural resources through a welfare system and a large public sector, ultimately disincentivizing citizens from protesting. In exchange for this redistribution, the social contract obligated citizens to renounce a certain amount of personal and political freedoms. However, unlike its Northern African analogues, where the social contract was broken and replaced mainly by predatory or fragmented institutions, in the Russian case the social contract has mutated into a new form based on relative stability for the middle class, and the army as a social elevator for the poorer strata of the population. Figure 4. Gini Index Dynamic in Russia, 2000–2023. Note. Adapted from Andrei V. Polbin and Tatiana Ivakhnenko, “Income Inequality in Russia to Stop Growing in 2025,” SSRN, 2025.
The final argument analyses the Russian social contract, and its evolution from the 1990s to the present day. As previously described in Figure 2, the rise of Vladimir Putin in 1999 coincided with rapid economic growth, mainly driven by rising prices and demand for oil. Despite some attempts of socio-political democratization by government figures such as Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, Gelman argues that political changes aimed at democratization were intentionally and systematically pushed out of the reform agenda in favour of an "authoritarian modernization" strategy. The result was indeed an authoritarian–redistributive social contract following the description of Rougier, which proved extremely effective in the first 20 years of Putin’s rule due to some enabling factors, such as the previously mentioned instrumental use of shared history and the unequal political and economic treatment of different regions of the Federation. Furthermore, despite economic inequality rising during the first years of the Putin rule, staying relatively high until 2020, Figure 4 shows how the government effectively exploited the expropriation of oligarchs to construct a political narrative in which the common goods were reclaimed under state control. As Hirschman points out, in societies where resources are largely owned domestically, tolerance for economic inequalities may be quite large. Figure 5. Russian Fossil Fuel Exports Since February 24th, 2022. Note. Adapted from Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), Russia Fossil Tracker: Payments to Russia for Fossil Fuels since 24 February 2022, 2025, https://www.russiafossiltracker.com/energyandcleanair.org +6. Davies argues that revolutionary outbreaks happen after a sudden downturn in economic performance coming after a long upswing. The downturn indeed happened in the aftermath of the invasion of Ukraine, but no revolutionary outbreak followed. An argument in favour of this is the evolution of the Russian social contract into a new binary model, characterized by minimal economic and political stability for the middle class with a new strong incentive for the lower income population: the military as a social elevator. “Frustration and continued alienation are the lot of the upward bound,” particularly the highly educated urban middle class described by Gontmakher and Ross. The new social contract allows them a minimal level of freedom, such as the possibility to emigrate, as evidenced by the mass departure of hundreds of thousands of men following the first wave of forced conscription in September 2022. For those who stay and accept the new contract, the relative economic stability is sustained by the efforts of the government to combat inflation and circumvent sanctions, as described by Chupilkin et al. These efforts have been partially successful, since revenues from fossil fuels have remained stable from 2023 onwards, as shown in Figure 5. While the middle class strives to maintain its current quality of life, the lower-income population increasingly views the military as a pathway to upward mobility. Klein notes that the initial round of forced recruitment in September 2022 was deeply unpopular and triggered some localized protests in several regions. In response, the authorities began offering unprecedented incentives to those who voluntarily enlisted the armed forces as contractors. These include salaries more than six times higher than the average of some poorer regions and approximately 2.5 times higher than the national average, alongside generous social benefits in case of injury or death, recruitment bonuses, and simplified citizenship procedures for foreign recruits after one year of service. These incentives are concentrated in the poorest regions which, coincidentally or strategically, are also more ethnically homogeneous and thus more prone to localized protests, such as Chechnya or Dagestan. This economic and welfare incentive strategy, alongside the aforementioned social cooperation and ostracism mechanisms, ultimately serves to dissuade citizens in specific geographic areas from engaging in manifestations of public dissent.
Can Learn
Contract The new Russian social contract is creating negative consequences for the Russian society and its population, further exacerbating pre-existing tensions between ethnic groups and social classes. An example is the growing tension between the “ethnic Russian” majority living in large urban areas, and ethnic minorities such as Bashkirs, Chechens and Daghestanis. The latter live in the Republics, often rural and sparsely populated areas, and face extremely unequal treatment when it comes to military conscription. As described in Section 5.2, the urban middle class is allowed to travel and emigrate, while the rural lower classes are left mainly with the military career as a social lift and de facto forced to recruit, ultimately creating a new adversely-selected caste of enriched military personnel in rural areas, and business owners who are profiting from the vast resources that the Russian government is allocating to military spending in urban industrial areas.
These negative externalities are also likely to affect neighbouring countries, particularly EU member states. Russia’s shifting social contract has already generated significant emigration among the Russian middle and upper-middle classes and is likely to produce a new wave of tourism by the recently enriched members of the military caste. The central externality for the EU is a multi-dimensional security challenge, . The suspension of multi-entry Schengen visas for Russian citizens, approved in November 2025, is described as a reasonable measure to limit the inflow of potentially violent demobilised veterans or intelligence operatives disguised as tourists. However, it is an insufficient short-term measure that has to be complemented with a broader and clearly defined legal framework. Firstly, security concerns require enhanced scrutiny of Russian Embassies, which the Russian Federation has historically used to conduct intelligence activities on European soil. Second, a clear humanitarian protection framework has to be implemented for the Russian citizen who can credibly demonstrate participation in localized dissent and who seek to emigrate to avoid persecution. Third, residence permits for work and study have to be maintained, in order to disincentivize already integrated migrants from returning to the Russian Federation with valuable human capital acquired in the EU, with the condition of a more detailed security screening to confirm that these migrants are not having any contact with the Russian government or business elite. Finally, the EU should implement a harmonized legal framework to exclude any member of the Russian government and military, including relatives and family members, to enter the Union, and create a legal framework to confiscate and resell their assets, such as real estate or luxury objects, following models such as Italy’s anti-Mafia asset-seizure framework. The implementation of these measures has a twofold goal. On one hand, it prevents further inflows of Russian capital to the EU that can be used to finance bribery and disinformation campaigns, and redirects this capital to support aid to Ukraine via the confiscation mechanism. On the other hand, the EU establishes a mechanism of positive selection of human capital, by attracting and integrating qualified immigrants from the Russian Federation while limiting the inflow of potentially dangerous individuals. A crucial condition for the effectiveness of these measures is the implementation at a coordinated EU level, in order to prevent loopholes and arbitrage opportunities within the European Union.
This paper has examined the absence of widespread dissent movements in the Russian Federation historically and specifically after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. As discussed, the primary explanations include the central government’s monopoly on violence, the significant social and economic heterogeneity, with the exception of some episodes of shared common history. This common history is strategically exploited by the authorities to preserve the status quo and foster adverse selection, reinforced through mechanisms of social ostracization. The evolution of the social contract in the Russian Federation is analysed: from a classic authoritarian-retributive model to a dual-structured contract, in which the middle class is granted minimal economic and social stability, while the lower-income segments of the population are offered large economic compensation in exchange for participation in the armed forces. a