Putinism and Markets: How (and Why) Do They Fit Together?

Abstract

In Russia, positive attitudes toward a free market economy and competition are firmly associated with the “Western” intellectual imports the country experienced in the 1990s. Anti-Western intellectuals and politicians typically embrace an anti-market stance calling for an economy with greater level of governmental interventions. There is a highly prominent exception to this logic: Putin himself appears to have a positive attitude toward free markets—in particular, free and unconstrained competition. This attitude does not seem to have changed even after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. This article reviews Putin‘s rhetoric with respect to markets, competition, and economic freedom and offers several explanations for it. In addition to the more conventional story of the “authoritarian capitalism” logic, it offers a further explanation: the reinterpretation of markets in line with a “Darwinian” point of view where markets are perceived not as spaces of freedom but as spaces of hierarchy and power.