Arkady Ostrovsky on Russia’s Wild Wild Far East
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 25 November 2017
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Putin’s government is often painted as an all powerful, centralized regime. But, in reality, it’s far from that: in Russia’s Far East, Moscow is either resented or disregarded by many, and the security services are the only agents fully loyal to Moscow. This week, special guest host Alina Polyakova interviewed Arkady Ostrovsky, the author of “The Invention of Russia: The Rise of Putin and the Age of Fake News” and the Russia and Eastern Europe editor at the Economist, on life Russia’s wild Far East, the tensions between the Kremlin and its far flung provinces, and what it all means for the limits of Putin’s power and his deepest fears.
This is the second podcast in a new series with Alina Polyakova to shed light on Russian politics and society in an effort to understand the Kremlin’s intentions toward and engagement with the West.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising. |
| 0:04.0 | To access an ad-free version of the LawFair podcast, |
| 0:08.0 | become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash law fair. |
| 0:14.0 | That's patreon.com slash law fair. |
| 0:18.0 | Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, |
| 0:22.0 | rational security, chatter, law fair no bull, and the aftermath. |
| 0:30.0 | Any regional governor has a double loyalty. |
| 0:36.0 | He has a loyalty to Moscow because he is, you know, |
| 0:40.0 | draws his legitimacy from that, from being approved or appointed by the |
| 0:46.0 | Kremlin. But he also has to have, or she has to have |
| 0:50.0 | some standing with the people and the local population of |
| 0:54.0 | local elite and has to derive some legitimacy from being acknowledged by those elites. |
| 1:02.0 | So it's, it's that have been much more nuanced picture than one imagines that the |
| 1:08.0 | Moscow controls everything. Moscow doesn't actually control everything. |
| 1:12.0 | And it's sort of authoritarianism which works by consent, by the consent of people |
| 1:18.0 | who support Putin because they see him now, it's obviously, |
| 1:22.0 | the consent of the elites. |
| 1:24.0 | I'm Alina Poliakova and this is the LawFair podcast for November 25th, 2017. |
| 1:30.0 | And once again, today my colleague at Brookings Ben Wittis has let me take over the |
| 1:34.0 | podcast to talk about Russia. |
| 1:38.0 | And today I talk to Arcadia Stovsky, who's a Russian-born British journalist |
| 1:42.0 | and the Russia and Eastern Europe editor for the Economist. |
... |
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