Russian Politics Today Stability and Fragility

Environmental politics offers a useful entry point to evaluate the stability and fragility of Russia’s post-Soviet political and economic regime. The politics of the environment in Russia intersects and interacts with a range of other issues – the state’s capacity to enforce its laws; democracy and the ability of citizens to participate in politics; sources of economic growth and the regulation of the economy; inequality; and the diverse cultures of Russia’s multinational society. Russia boasts tremendous ecological diversity and significant protected natural areas, but also faces a number of environmental challenges, not least of which are the effects of climate change. In the post-Soviet period, in an effort to recover from the instabilities of the 1990s, the Putin government developed an economic model based on natural resource exploitation and an increasingly authoritarian form of governance, justifying this system as a means of achieving prosperity and economic security for citizens. Today we see that Russia has strong environmental laws that are not always well enforced. Russians express a high level of concern about environmental issues, but the political climate is increasingly hostile to activism. Russia is also making a big bet on the Arctic region where natural resource extraction is expected to bolster Russia’s future economic prospects and status as a great power, even as climate change and source of environmental degradation threaten Arctic inhabitants, wildlife, and ecosystems.