IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/swprps/rp72017.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Fundamental attitudes of the Russian political elite: Law, truth, public welfare and violence

Author

Listed:
  • Stewart, Susan

Abstract

This study examines behavioural patterns of the top echelons of Russia's elite within four fundamental spheres (law, truth, public welfare and violence) since 2008 and discovers certain continuities. It reveals the elite's fundamental attitudes in the four areas as evinced by its actions - attitudes which will have a decisive impact on German-Russian and EU-Russia relations in the future. The study shows that Russia's actions since 2014 - which have surprised many Western observers - are based on attitudes that were already perceptible before then. These attitudes can thus be considered part of the Russian elite's long-standing political culture. Today, it is the instrumentalisation of law, truth and violence in foreign and domestic politics, and a desire for control derived from mistrust in external and internal actors, that especially characterise Russia's elite. The common good or well-being of the Russian people is not a priority for the elite, or only in purely instrumental terms. Politicians and policymakers in Germany and the EU need to take these fundamental attitudes into account when developing a medium- to long-term approach to Russia because they will shape the actions of numerous members of the Russian elite for the foreseeable future.

Suggested Citation

  • Stewart, Susan, 2017. "Fundamental attitudes of the Russian political elite: Law, truth, public welfare and violence," SWP Research Papers RP 7/2017, Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP), German Institute for International and Security Affairs.
  • Handle: RePEc:zbw:swprps:rp72017
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/253180/1/2017RP07.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:swprps:rp72017. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.swp-berlin.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.