Top Down or Bottom Up? Public Control of the Armed Forces in Post–Soviet Russia

• Date: 01 October 2019
• DOI: 10.1177/0095327X18771002
• Published date: 01 October 2019
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Top Down or Bottom Up?

Public Control of the

Armed Forces in

Post–Soviet Russia

Nadja Douglas

1

Abstract

This article engages in an analysis of contemporary relations between civic actors

and state power structures, notably the military organization, in the Russian Fed-

eration. The main focus is on the complex tension and interaction between state-

sanctioned forms of control of the armed forces and public control, exercised by

grassroots actors. The underlying assumption is that an institutionalization of con-

trol of state power structures is taking place in Russia. The article seeks to

understand whether these processes are prevalently a top-down or a bottom-up

phenomenon, how public control as a “civic duty” can be effectively characterized,

and what implications this has for Russian civic activism more generally.

Keywords

civil society, civil–military relations, public control, Russian Federation

Below the radar of Western perception, post–Soviet Russia has seen some degree of

social change and societal emancipation during the last two decades, accompanied

by claims for more transparency, participation, and accountability, among others in

the politico-military sphere. Public control of state power structures is an expression

1

Centre for East European and International Studies, Berlin, Germany

Corresponding Author:

Nadja Douglas, Centre for East European and International Studies, Mohrenstr. 60, Berlin 10117,

Germany.

Email: nadja.douglas@zois-berlin.de

Armed Forces & Society

2019, Vol. 45(4) 746-768

ªThe Author(s) 2018

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DOI: 10.1177/0095327X18771002

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of what has come to be considered more widely a “civic duty.” Civic activism in the

military realm is part of what is generally labeled as “society–military relations,”

which in turn is embedded in the literature on civil–military relations. One of the

majorpremisesinthisarticlederivesfrom the observation that traditional

approaches to civil–military relations and civilian control fall short of considering

alternative societal agencies, which are result from a changing international security

environment and the transformation of relations between society and the military.

This nexus has been aptly conceptualized by Webber & Mathers (2006) who coined

the term “society–military r elations” as a suitable prism f or the analysis of the

Russian case.

While past research concentrated mainly on the issue of civilian control of armed

forces as a necessary condition for the consolidation of democracy mainly in

“transition states” (see, e.g., Croissant, Kuehn, Chambers, Vo¨lkel, & Wolf, 2011;

Dahl, 1971; Diamond, 1999; O’Donnell & Schmitter, 1986), the aim of this article is

to shed light on the phenomenon of control of state power structures, notably the

armed forces, in a stable authoritarian context.

1

In Russia, in particular, the under-

standing of the term “civilian control” often still differs from Western

interpretations.

Recent events in Ukraine and the Middle East have induced the Russian political

leadership to obtain the approval of the Russian Federation Council for controversial

foreign military interventions.

2

In this context, Russia’s foreign and defense policy

strategies and military capabilities have been discussed widely both on the national

and on the international level. However, much less in the focus was and still is the

internal dimension of Russia’s military power and society–military relations more

specifically.

The current state of Russian society–military relations and the Russian Armed

Forces have the potential to elucidate the topicality of this issue: Continuous inci-

dents of serious abuses and human rights violations, especially against conscripts,

stagnating military reforms, repressive recruitment procedures, forced labor, and an

annual peacetime death rate of 3%(Peredruk, 2013), are just a few indicators that

illustrate the results of a dysfunctional system of institutional control.

Various groups of civic activists

3

have in the past attempted to oppose the strong

Russian military lobby. Today’s military operations, however, have gained in com-

plexity and are therefore less unambiguous in terms of their political and military

consequences and implications than were, for example, military operations in

Chechnya or South Ossetia in the past. Therefore, it has become more difficult for

civic activists today to exercise public oversight, demonstrate their resistance, inves-

tigate military deployments, and shed light on the individual fate of conscripts and

contractors who are being sent to combat zones. Civic activists today work under

even more complicated conditions, especially due to endeavors by the Putin regime

to simultaneously establish a system of monitoring institutions from “top down” that

is meant to function as a legitimizing mechanism. The discrepancy is still big

between incremental steps of authentic civic engagement and an overwhelming state

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