THE MUSCOVITE MODEL

Russia's postcommunist economic system has undergone a profound metamorphosis from a planned to a mixed-market authoritarian system with distinctive Russian characteristics traceable to the post-Mongol rise of Muscovy, including modernized forms of autocracy, sovereign authority over private property (patrimonialism), de facto tenure grants to servitors (pomestie), rent seeking (kormlenie), network mutual support (krugovaya poruka), plunder (duvan), protectionism (Slavophilism), subjugation, and extreme inequality – a system that can be concisely called the Muscovite model. The Putin administration portrays the new regime as a transparent, consumer sovereign, laissez-faire system that includes private ownership of the means of production and operates under the rule of law. But in reality it is a “ruler sovereign” rent granting system in which alienable proprietary privileges masquerade as rights and in which the protean rule of men is organized to harness the nation's productive capacities to satisfy the autocrat's desires through state bureaucracy and tiers of powerful agents. The bureaucracy includes civil administration but most importantly the security services and the military. Powerful agents, typified by Putin's “oligarchs,” oversee key productive activities on his behalf, collecting and remitting taxes and other payments as implicit asset usage fees.

As a Muscovite autocrat, Putin grants revokable charters or sinecures to lesser favorites, who are also required to serve the state. Bureaucrats, agents, and other supporters must be loyal to their liege – in particular, must work through insider networks to implement his commands – and are dismissible without cause.