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Lev Gudkov
is a sociologist and the head of the Social and Political Studies Department of the Yuri Levada Analytical Center (Analititscheskij Centr Jurija Levady), Moscow.
Eurozine Articles
A state without society
On the technology of authoritarianism in Russia
Far from having "restored Russia's greatness", the Putin regime has ushered in a new stage of social decay. Elections in Russia have become an act of mass obedience on the part of a society unable to imagine anything better. [more]
Russia's systemic crisis
Negative mobilization and collective cynicism
Russia is degenerating into a police state, society has descended into poverty, and the country is becoming increasingly isolated, writes Lev Gudkov. Worse still: the Russian public is united only in the view that talk of common goals is the empty rhetoric of demagogues. [more]
The oligarch as public enemy
How the Khodorkovsky case benefits the Putin regime
Cynicism, argue Gudkov and Dubin, is eroding the foundations of the Putin regime and destabilizing its system of controlled democracy. [more]
The fetters of victory
How the war provides Russia with its identity
On the symbolic role of the Great Patriotic War in propping up national confidence, and how the taboo on the underside of victory serves the interests of the post-Soviet social order. [more]