Return to Normality and Advanced Democratisation: Scenarios for a normal Russia in the future. Parts 1–2

The report published below was prepared as part of the collective project ‘Platform for Normalisation: Restoring the Future’. Launched several years ago at the initiative of Russian economist Andrei Yakovlev, who has remained its coordinator and driving force, the project has brought together a substantial group of experts (in the broadest sense of the term). Their aim has been to articulate pathways for Russia’s exit from the state of profound abnormality into which it was plunged by the unjustified war that began on this day four years ago.

Perhaps what united us, above all, was the conviction that the formulation of an alternative political and economic agenda must be directed inward, towards Russia itself. That agenda must be sufficiently realistic and potentially acceptable to different groups within Russian society, including those who reject both the war itself and the degradation of Russia’s social order associated with it.

At present, the project does not have a single consolidated text. In the near future, materials addressing different aspects of the ‘restoring of the future’ agenda will appear on various platforms. The authors also intend to bring these materials together in a book.

The present report is devoted to the problems and tasks of transforming the political system, at the centre of which must stand the democratisation of Russia, which today finds itself in the grip of a brutal and aggressive dictatorship. Unlike other exercises in designing political reform, this report focuses less on the normative dimension of democratisation and more on its social foundations.

Today we are publishing the first two sections of this rather lengthy report.

1. The new abnormality: its dimensions and prospects

Three dimensions of abnormality

Russia’s aggression against Ukraine has now lasted four years. In addition to inflicting incalculable suffering on Ukrainian territory, the war is costing Russia approximately 10% of GDP and 400,000 killed and wounded each year. Yet these are far from the only losses and consequences of the war, and represent merely the tip of the iceberg. Without exaggeration, the war has infected Russia and poisoned the entirety of its political and social organism.

As a result, the current state of the country can only be described as one of profound abnormality: a protracted war with its closest historical neighbour, human losses on a scale unseen since the Second World War, confrontation with the most developed countries in the world, militarisation of both the economy and consciousness, brutal repression of dissent, pervasive censorship, and yet another redistribution of property.

The reckless attack on Ukraine has turned into a protracted war that has become the defining factor of state and social life, a universal cause and justification for the abnormality now in place. A contrived doctrine of an existential conflict with the West now almost entirely shapes state policy, returning it to the long forgotten Soviet condition of a 'besieged fortress'. The illusory aims of war and confrontation have displaced and supplanted the natural goals of development and prosperity. While remaining clientelist and corrupt, the Russian regime is simultaneously mutating into a semi-closed ideocracy, sacrificing economic interests for geopolitical objectives that it is incapable of achieving. This stands in stark contrast to the strategies of other developing countries which, while distancing themselves politically from the West, make full use of global markets for their own development.

The ideology of confrontation has become a tool for Russia's self-isolation externally and a tool of political, economic and social de-modernisation internally. Russia today finds itself not only in an external conflict but also in an internal one, in which the views and assumptions of one segment of society are forcibly imposed as mandatory and exclusive, while opposing positions are expelled and persecuted, and their proponents repressed or excluded from public life and deprived of civil rights. The attack on Ukraine has, in effect, turned into a hybrid civil war within Russia itself. A repressive dictatorship is a form of civil conflict in which only one side has weapons at its disposal.

This hybrid civil war has far reaching consequences even for those who had no intention of participating in political confrontation, as it erodes the legal and moral foundations of society and the state and distorts the civic order. Beyond political repression, one manifestation of this distortion and a marker of hybrid civil war has been the systematic practice of releasing criminals from punishment, including those convicted of the gravest offences, and elevating them to the status of heroes solely on the grounds that they took part in a fratricidal war in Ukraine.

The permissiveness and lawlessness of law enforcement agencies, extraordinarily long prison sentences for fabricated and unproven crimes, the widespread use of torture, and the normalisation of unlawful violence and extrajudicial killings, targeting both political opponents and Russia’s own soldiers at the hands of military commanders, are all symptoms of legal disintegration and signs of hybrid civil war. The wartime logic of dehumanising the ‘enemy’ has been redirected inward and is spreading through the social fabric, while the binary of 'us and them' has supplanted and corrupted the foundations of law and the normative character of the state. The same logic underpins the forcible redistribution of property and the deprivation of civil rights from dissenters arbitrarily and falsely labelled ‘foreign agents’, ‘extremists’ and ‘terrorists’.

Alongside internal civil conflict, Russia has entered a period of isolation unprecedented since the Soviet era. The rift with Western countries, which resulted from the invasion of Ukraine, has led to the country's exclusion from global markets, where it now operates largely through indirect channels and grey or semi-legal schemes. At the same time, Russia’s isolation is not limited to the West. In the East, owing to its vulnerability to sanctions, it acts as a disadvantaged and unequal partner, almost exclusively as a supplier of resources at discounted prices. The past four years have clearly demonstrated that the much proclaimed ‘pivot to the East’ has not restored even relative external economic normality.

Isolation is another striking manifestation of the prevailing abnormality. Russia has been forcibly torn from its natural, historically established geo-economic environment. Two-thirds of the country's population lives in its European part, and two-thirds of Russia's GDP is produced there. The economic symbiosis between Russia and Europe evolved over decades and passed through several stages of development. Over the past twenty years, the interpenetration of investment and value chains became increasingly complex, while the technological impulse received from Europe enabled the modernisation of the resource sector and laid the foundations for advanced manufacturing, a new digital economy, and opportunities for reverse export expansion by Russian businesses.

In the pre-war period, Europe accounted for 42% of Russia’s foreign trade, while China accounted for 18%. Over the past year, Europe’s share has fallen to below 20%, while China’s has risen to 35%. This redirection of trade flows is artificial and economically unjustified. Having abandoned premium Western markets, Russia now sells the same raw materials to China that it once sold to Europe, but at significantly lower prices and without receiving investment or technological stimulus in return. In terms of integration into global investment flows, Russia has stepped back by two decades. This exchange, irrational from a practical standpoint, is another manifestation of the new abnormality in which considerations of efficiency and benefit have been supplanted by geopolitical mirages and fantasies.

Three interrelated abnormalities — foreign policy, in which the goals of development have been replaced by the goals of confrontation; domestic policy, in which a hybrid civil war has been fomented within Russia; and geo-economics, in which an organically developed system of economic ties has been abandoned — are driving Russia into a historical dead end.

How inevitable is the ‘new abnormality’?

The war in Ukraine has been going on for four years, and during this time Russian troops have unsuccessfully attempted to seize the entirety of Donetsk region. The sole result of this recklessness has been to entrench the regime of abnormality in domestic politics and the economy. Within both the elites and society, a ‘war coalition’ has taken shape, a system of group interests, institutions and habits linked to the economic and ideological servicing of war and foreign policy confrontation. This coalition represents a minority that benefits from the redistribution of national resources, yet it commands a substantial repressive and propaganda apparatus that secures its political dominance.

Meanwhile, the imbalances and challenges associated with war and isolation have not disappeared but have merely been frozen through repression and budgetary injections. In the medium term, Russia’s social order is likely to follow a path of declining stability. This vector will be determined by the following factors:

— the inability to compensate for the losses incurred as a result of the economic rupture with the West, either in terms of technology transfer or access to investment and financial markets;

— a decline in the competitiveness of traditional Russian export goods and, accordingly, a decline in revenues from their sale on foreign markets;

— mounting pressure on public finances, burdened by the double burden of high military spending and the need to replace lost private investment;

— political tension associated with the deterioration of the ruling coalition, as pragmatically minded factions are squeezed out and groups committed to coercive policies and an ideology of isolationism come to dominate;

— social tensions stemming from the fact that the aims of the war, which has absorbed vast human and economic resources, do not appear clear or justified to society.

The situation will be further exacerbated by the dictator's declining health, which will contribute to the fragmentation of the elite in the face of looming uncertainty. At the same time, growing one sided dependence on China is likely to fuel disillusionment within the elite with the strategy of a ‘pivot to the East’ and with the ‘Putin model’ more broadly. Although there are currently no visible signs of regime crisis, its evident imbalance and structural weakness make the accumulation of crisis potential virtually inevitable.

Looking at Russia today may create the impression that a return to normality, to non-repressive civic and political life, is impossible in the foreseeable future. Yet this is hardly surprising. Creating precisely such an impression is the aim of every repressive dictatorship. Its efforts are directed at excluding any realistic conception of alternatives from public debate. Moreover, the escalation of repression, censorship, ideological prohibitions and measures of forced indoctrination indicates that the forms of social and state life now being imposed are neither balanced nor natural for Russian society, but rather externally enforced upon it.

Unfortunately, unbalanced repressive regimes that consume national wealth amid declining living standards can prolong their existence for a considerable time through violence. Sooner or later, however, the trajectory of deteriorating stability will confront society, the elites and the broader population with the question of an alternative, a return to the path of normality: civil peace, economic pragmatism and an end to isolation.

The absence of opportunities for Russian citizens to influence political change should not be confused with the absence of demand for such change. Under conditions of repression, it is more accurate to speak not of the absence of demand but of its suppression. For a period of time, Russian society will exist in a state of suppressed demand, until particular triggers that intensify the imbalances of the repressive-militarist model create conditions for its activation.

A return to normality from a historical perspective

From a historical perspective, Russia’s return to a path of normality appears inevitable — the only question concerns how much time the nation will lose to yet another senseless experiment. The conviction that such a turn will occur is reinforced by modern Russian history, which can be seen as a sequence of oscillations between vectors of isolationism and openness. Periods of deliberate separation from and hostility towards the West, which were also periods of heightened repression, centralised control over resources and suppression of internal competition, have been followed by periods of reorientation towards the West and efforts to overcome accumulated technological and social backwardness.

However determined isolationist elites have been in attempting to erect an ‘iron wall’ between Russia and the West, the project has at best enabled them to concentrate power in their own hands for a time, only to fail in the longer term. This is not merely the result of errors in authoritarian management but reflects systemic factors. Russia is not part of Europe, yet it has lived in symbiosis with it for centuries. In renouncing that symbiosis, it does not become a ‘self-sufficient civilisation’, but rather a hostage to mobilisation experiments that lead to technological and social stagnation.

Nor should one discount the experience of a quarter of a century in which Russian society operated within a relatively competitive and pluralistic environment. The post Soviet experience of electoral democracy in Russia is often judged critically today. Nevertheless, the twenty five years from the late 1980s to the mid 2010s constituted the longest period of non-despotic political development in the country’s history. Even in the 2010s, as the political regime evolved into an increasingly entrenched autocracy, processes of social modernisation at the grassroots level continued, shaping new standards of civic and social life. The social capital accumulated during these decades possesses significant inertia and may at some point provide the foundation for a return to a trajectory of normality.

In the long term, democratisation is not a linear and unidirectional process. In many cases, periods of democratisation are followed by reversals towards autocracy. However, only around half of such episodes result in the consolidation of durable authoritarianism, while the other half lead to renewed democratisation (→ V-Dem: When Autocratization is Reversed: Episodes of Democratic Turnarounds since 1900). No one can state with certainty which of these two scenarios will materialise in Russia’s case, and propaganda driven expectations of the inevitability of the former should not be mistaken for historical determinism.

External factors and the broader international context typically play a significant role in episodes of democratisation. At present, the external environment is not especially favourable to a new democratic turn in Russia. The Western model appears to be experiencing a period of (cyclical) crisis. In the near future, Russian elites are likely to watch closely the trajectory of confrontation between the United States and China and to assess whether the Western coalition retains its unity and its capacity for economic and political leadership. In the medium term, however, the West is unlikely to serve as the institutional beacon that it represented at the end of the twentieth century.

At the same time, the imbalances inherent in the current militarised version of the regime generate substantial crisis potential that may materialise irrespective of how favourable the external context proves to be for democratic transformation. Market incentives are significantly distorted by voluntaristic political interventions, creating pockets of inefficiency whose destructive role increases as the resource base contracts. Over the past three years, a significant share of the reserves of the National Welfare Fund has been squandered on ambitious and poorly conceived import substitution projects. Major market segments have been divided among families and clans forming the dictator’s personal clientele. While a market environment enhances the economy’s adaptability to external shocks, it also creates vulnerabilities to structural imbalances and arbitrary intervention.

The deterioration of the economic situation under conditions of despotism and isolation will inevitably bring the question of an alternative to the current course, and thus the question of a more balanced political model, back to the agenda. Demand for an alternative is not about tomorrow, but about today. To become influential at a moment of intensifying internal contradictions within the present dictatorship, that alternative must be formulated and delineated as early as possible, and it must appear realistic rather than utopian. It must grow out of the suppressed demand for change. It will stand a chance of success if it is positioned not as a leap into a democratic utopia, but as an agenda of normalisation, a return to ordinary civic and state life in contrast to today’s abnormality, opening for the country the prospect of returning to a path of economic and social development.

2. Two agendas: a return to normality and advanced democratisation

Two visions of democratisation: the 'big bang' or the 'winding road'

In a series of discussions and projects devoted to a possible ‘post-Putin’ future for Russia, the dominant analytical frame rests on the assumption that Day X (e.g., Putin's death) will come, after which a ‘window of opportunity’ will open. IAt that point, it is assumed, the task of democratic forces would be to introduce legislation and institutions that take account of past mistakes and prevent a renewed usurpation of power. The task today, accordingly, is to describe this legislative and institutional optimum (informative examples of this approach → Krasheninnikov, Milov: A Normal Russia of the Future; the ‘One Hundred Days After Putin’ project, etc.).

While such exercises are undoubtedly useful, two considerations are important. First, the ‘window of opportunity’ will be created not by Putin’s disappearance as such, but by a regime crisis either triggered by or preceding that disappearance. The nature and depth of that crisis will largely determine both the parameters of the ‘window’ and the composition of the anti-crisis coalition that formulates reform objectives and becomes their driving force. This does not render discussion of a democratic optimum meaningless, but it does serve as a warning that the real political process will be shaped by quite different constraints and dynamics.

Second, regardless of what formal provisions are enshrined in new democratic legislation, the central question will be the capacity of a reformist coalition to implement them and the willingness of society to accept, internalise and subsequently defend them. In other words, even if a democratic coalition has the opportunity to legislate a package of far reaching democratic reforms, the country will face a prolonged period of debate and political struggle over their adaptation and consolidation. Russia, with all its problems, prejudices and the legacy of Putinism, will not disappear, even if Putin himself were to depart the scene. This reality will define the corridor of feasible changes to the social order.

The establishment of a stable and consolidated democracy in Russia is undoubtedly a desirable strategic objective. However, it will not be achieved by decree, even by a democratically elected body. Movement towards such an outcome will be a long process, involving political contestation, reversals and compromise. It is impossible to eliminate overnight the corruption, monopolisation and administrative arbitrariness that permeate the state system, the political influence of oligarchic interests, the high concentration of property ownership, or the inertia of entrenched institutions, personnel and incentives.

The transition to a consolidated democracy and to what scholars describe as ‘open access orders’ will require the gradual formation of consensus around certain rules and institutions, as well as the creation of broad organisations capable of sustaining them. Advanced democratisation should therefore be seen not as a leap through an open window, but as a lengthy and highly winding road. The long term success of democratisation depends less on the speed with which an optimal democratic design is legislated than on the durability of a broad coalition capable of resisting renewed attempts to monopolise power. It is the disintegration of such coalitions, rather than flaws in institutional design, that has most often underpinned episodes of re-autocratisation.

Accordingly, the task is not so much to devise a ‘recipe’ for a future Russian democracy as to outline a realistic roadmap of goals and critical junctures along the way.

For this reason, it is useful today to speak of two agendas of political change in Russia: an agenda of normalisation, a return to normality, and an agenda of advanced democratisation. The eventual shape of a Russian democratic model will be determined through competition of ideas and interests, through struggle and compromise. However, for that process to begin, certain preconditions, well known in comparative politics, must be in place. ‘Normality’, in this understanding, consists of the basic conditions of non-violence and political pluralism that allow society and its various factions to advance in search of nationally specific forms of democracy and federalism, engaging in political competition while preserving social peace and gradually achieving a more balanced political model, including broader access to decision making for interest groups and civic organisations.

In other words, while the above-mentioned projects focus attention on a hypothetical ‘Day X’ and proceed from a ‘big bang’ model of Russian democratisation, we propose instead to understand democratisation and the emergence of mature democratic institutions as a protracted process, to discuss its stages, turning points and objectives, and the coalitions required to achieve them. A maximalist ‘big bang’ conception, even in the presence of a relatively wide ‘window of opportunity’, as in the early 1990s, risks rapid disappointment with the practical outcomes of the ‘explosion’ and the fragmentation of the democratic coalition, which may once again become mired in disputes over who is to blame for the insufficiency of results.

Decentralisation of power and distributed control over violence as preconditions for civil peace.

The principal reason Russia has fallen into a state of political and economic abnormality is the degradation of its political system. This degradation manifests itself in extreme centralisation of power and in the near total exclusion of virtually all groups in Russian society from meaningful participation in decision making. Not only ordinary citizens, political parties and civic organisations are deprived of such opportunities, but also the business community, regional elites and segments of the professional state bureaucracy. All have effectively lost their voice in governing the country and live under the constant threat of repression and reprisals.

The concentration of power in the hands of a narrow ‘coalition of violence’ and the quasi-‘tsarist’ powers of an irremovable president, which extend beyond any republican framework, led to the catastrophic decision to attack Ukraine and to society’s inability to prevent that destructive step. Two wars, external and internal, have followed from the privatisation of the state’s monopoly on violence by a narrow group of regime beneficiaries and its increasingly broad use to secure their sectional interests and ambitions.

Control over the institutions of state violence is the central question in the organisation of any social order. The way in which this question is resolved determines the real contours of that order, including who truly holds power (for a detailed discussion of this topic, see North, Wallis, Weingast: Violence and Social Orders). When society loses effective control over these institutions, the result is catastrophic: the state monopoly on violence is appropriated by a narrow coalition that uses it to suppress competitors and monopolise access to rents.

Dismantling the mechanisms that enabled the ‘capture’ of the state and its subordination to the interests of a narrow coalition and to obsessive ideological projects is the central task of returning to normality and civil peace. These mechanisms are well known. They include the dominance of the security services, which informally manage many processes in the civilian sphere and the economy; pervasive censorship and the monopolisation of information channels; the persecution of political opponents and those expressing dissenting views; and the complete degeneration of the judicial system into a servant of arbitrary power.

The usurpation of the institutions of state violence became possible as a result of the centralisation and ‘verticalisation’ of power, depriving all branches and levels of authority of meaningful autonomy and electoral legitimacy. The exclusion of opposition candidates from elections and the falsification of voting results; the substitution of federalism with the appointment of presidential governors accountable to the Kremlin rather than to the population; and the replacement of local self government with a bureaucratic hierarchy are all elements of a political design that sustains the dominance of an unaccountable ‘monopoly of force’

For a long time, the Russian business elite regarded electoral legitimacy, political competition and the separation of powers as a secondary, even optional, agenda, one associated with inconvenience and with the dilution of the exclusive privileges of those capable of creating market value by ‘playing by the rules’ and securing preferential access to markets. The present state of abnormality and legal arbitrariness is in many respects the consequence of that outlook. The expectation that delegated powers within the ‘vertical of authority’ would be exercised ‘within reasonable limits’ has not merely proved misplaced but has collapsed entirely. Delegation turned into a mandate for dictatorship and political recklessness. The perpetuation of power under the slogan of ‘stability and predictability’ has resulted in the maximisation of instability and unpredictability.

The only alternative to this model, and the only guarantee of minimum rights for citizens, economic actors and even elite groups, lies in dispersed power, involving a greater number of veto players and effective constraints on the use of state violence for narrow group interests. No mechanism superior to electoral legitimacy, which allows both social groups and organised interests to operate and compete within legal procedures, has yet been devised. The short agenda of a return to normality is therefore a standard agenda of de-monopolising political power. However, in order to restore a lawful electoral order, Russia must first exit the state of war, the external war that projects itself into an internal one and legitimises the institutional framework of the ‘besieged fortress’ and the political disenfranchisement of its supposed ‘defenders’, who in reality have been turned into prisoners.

Accordingly, a short agenda for normalisation should include:

1. an end to the war and the opening of negotiations for a real, rather than fictitious, settlement of relations with Ukraine and the West;

2. a reorientation of foreign policy priorities from confrontation to pragmatic cooperation in the interests of economic development and rising living standards;

3. the repeal of the unlawfully adopted 2020 constitutional amendments, which enshrine the ‘vertical’ presidential monopoly on power;

4. the release of political prisoners, the cessation of political repression, and the repeal of the corresponding legislative provisions introduced since 2012;

5. a ban on censorship and ideological control over the media, and the lifting of politically motivated restrictions and internet blocking;

6. the restoration of the inherent and inalienable right of citizens to peaceful protest, demonstrations and rallies, which are declarative in nature;

7. a return to competitive elections, guaranteed access to them for political associations and citizens, full transparency of the electoral process, and the termination of practices of result falsification.

It is important to recognise that these measures in themselves would not establish a stable democratic order or provide safeguards against renewed attempts at the usurpation of power. Indeed, dismantling the monopoly on violence would initially be accompanied by heightened social polarisation, an upsurge in populism and more decentralised forms of corruption. Nevertheless, such steps would restore to citizens and organised groups the ability to express their views freely, exchange information, defend their beliefs and interests, protest and participate in political life. A return to normality in the political sphere means a return to open dialogue about the country’s development and to the principles and agreements that underpin and sustain civil peace.

Two agendas for democratisation: broad and narrow coalitions

Conceiving the ‘map of transformation’ as encompassing two horizons of objectives, those of restoring a normal civic order and those of advanced, institutional democratisation, corresponds to the actual structure of public demand. Despite the difficulties of measuring public opinion under dictatorship, it is possible to state that there exists in Russian society a committed minority that consistently opposes the war and favours a shift in the political vector towards deep democratic transformation. This minority is inclined to support relatively far reaching reforms: a decisive reorientation from an anti-Western to a pro-Western course, substantial constitutional change, and accountability, including lustration, for those responsible for unleashing the war and conducting repression.

This is the agenda of a narrow anti-war democratic coalition, broadly reflected in the ‘big bang’ democratisation projects mentioned above.Its electoral potential may be very roughly estimated at 8–15% of the population. This is not insignificant, given that around 65–70% of eligible citizens typically display some degree of political engagement, and that a party securing more than 20% of the vote in genuinely competitive elections, approximately 13% of the voting age population, would become one of the largest factions in the State Duma. Under certain conditions, such a minority could thus become one of the key political forces in a renewed Russian multiparty landscape. However, in the foreseeable future, it would be unable on its own to manage the transition to a new regime or to determine its foundational institutional design.

Alongside this significant minority in Russian society, there is a larger group of anti-war citizens who will undoubtedly welcome a return to normality, however their grievances against the regime are far more moderate. These voters are dissatisfied with the war, which imposes political, moral and economic costs; with the radical rupture with the West, which has curtailed their personal opportunities and choices; and with state interference in private life, education and culture. They are uncomfortable with the escalation of repression and censorship, and with expanding internet restrictions. They are troubled by pervasive militarisation and the rising level of violence in society. They would favour a swift end to the war, a return to the more restrained norms of coercion that prevailed in the first half of the 2010s, and a pragmatic, though not necessarily value driven, normalisation of relations with the West.

At the same time, this category of voters does not exhibit strong demand for deepened democratisation. Indeed, it is likely to view a radical political reform agenda with suspicion, fearing that such reforms would generate high levels of uncertainty and destabilise the state rather than strengthen it. While broadly supportive of ending the war and reducing violence, these voters are concerned about potential endgame scenarios that might further worsen Russia’s international standing or economic position. They are even more wary of notions of ‘accountability’, ‘repentance’ or ‘punishment of the guilty’, which they perceive as posing risks to an indeterminate and potentially wide circle of individuals.

A similar assessment applies to segments of the Russian elite, including the medium and large-scale business communities, the managerial strata and parts of the state bureaucracy. A moderate agenda of normalisation would resonate with a broad range of actors within this milieu, whereas a radical reform programme would more likely be perceived as a threat and push them towards supporting the status quo.

All this suggests that a narrower and more moderate agenda of normalisation is more conducive to the formation of a broad anti-war coalition opposed to dictatorship and the abnormality it generates. By contrast, a more radical agenda of deep systemic transformation would at this stage be more likely to hinder such coalition building.

A more radical agenda may prove necessary in the event of a deep and prolonged crisis that strips the regime of legitimacy and radicalises the sentiments of today’s moderate opponents of the war and of militarised Putinism. Under such conditions, the formation of a broad revolutionary coalition and the implementation of scenarios discussed, for example, in Mikhail Khodorkovsky's book How to Slay a Dragon. However, this would likely require a prolonged economic downturn, administrative collapse or military defeat. The probability of such scenarios is not negligible, but nor does it appear especially high at present. In the absence of these preconditions, a radical agenda is more likely to alienate moderate ‘dissenters’ from the opposition and to contribute to its transformation into an ‘oppositional ghetto’, whose internal debates appear irrelevant to the regime’s moderate critics, as is to a considerable extent the case today.