Is the political regime in Russia really based on one person? Are the worries and guesses about the temporary absence of the first person proof that without him everything will immediately fall apart? Or, on the contrary, first the system begins, if not to fall apart, then to sag, and only then the combination of news and its absence, which passed almost unnoticed two and a half years ago (see the schedule of the president's public meetings on vedomosti.ru - the previous low point in the frequency of Putin's media appearances was in November 2012), causes almost mass panic?

Personalist regimes are the least likely of all types of autocracies to transfer power peacefully; more often, this process occurs with violence, external interference, or the death of the leader (which is also followed by a period of violence). Personalist dictatorships last a long time and end with bloodshed, leaving behind political ruins. Oddly enough, according to statistics taking into account authoritarian regimes from 1946 to 1999, the most accommodating of dictatorships are military ones (juntas). Their rule lasts, on average, less than that of personalist regimes, and they are much more likely to give up power as a result of negotiations or to agree to hand it over to the winner of elections (see Barbara Geddes. Authoritarian Breakdown: Empirical Test of a Game Theoretic Argument, 1999). As is well known, the military is the least fond of war; the most bloodthirsty are staff theorists and self-proclaimed patriots from the humanities.

For better or for worse, in Russia, for reasons that date back to the post-war era, the army is not a political subject. The special services and law enforcement agencies are, but the army is not: this was the case throughout the late Soviet era, and it remains so today (remember the non-participation of the armed forces in the events of 1991 and 1993). Therefore, our regime is not threatened by a military coup in any form. In Russia, power belongs to the bureaucracy – civil, security and economic, representing state corporations and nationalized raw materials enterprises (essentially, the ministries of gas, oil and non-ferrous metals).

The famous phrase of Nicholas I that Russia is ruled not by him, but by 30,000 clerks, can be considered the coquetry of an autocrat, but in the political system that we inherited from the Soviet power, the ruling class is indeed the state nomenklatura. Over the past 15 years, representatives of the special services, law enforcement agencies and law enforcement agencies have taken advantage of all three of its spheres (civil, security and economic). This contradicts the second most popular myth about the political system of Russia after “everything rests on one person”: “After Putin, more radical security officials will come to power.” It is hard to understand where they will come from if they are already in power and intend to remain there regardless of anyone’s individual mood and health. The image of the “first European”, barely holding back the onslaught of ferocious oprichniks, is the most effective and least justified of the propaganda phantoms. It is designed for an educated urban public and speculates on its natural historical pessimism (very understandable in Russia) and ignorance of bureaucratic realities.

What is our ruling class really happy with and unhappy with in its current situation? The stability of the regime depends on the answer to this question to a much greater extent than on mysterious medical and psychological factors, about which no one has a clear idea anyway.

What I like:

- anti-Western, and especially anti-American, rhetoric. The Soviet generation of 50-year-olds and older is now in power, for them "confrontation with the West" is a familiar and comfortable mode. America is a better object of confrontation than Europe, since it is not our predominant trading partner. The "America" of public political discourse is largely a speculative construct, so bellicose talk about it does not threaten anything;

- cancellation, under the pretext of the above-mentioned confrontation and general emergency, of any modernizations and reforms that disrupt the usual existence. There is no time for that now, threats must be repelled;

– the opportunity to use rhetoric about the fight against external enemies and the internal enemies they create in the interdepartmental and apparatus struggle, which is replacing political competition in Russia;

- the prospect of distributing to loyal people the funds accumulated in the prosperous years from the reserve funds;

- an uncontrolled flow of funds going towards various needs of the Ukrainian conflict.

What I don't like:

- instability. A general feeling of anxiety, uncertainty about the future. A feeling that violence has become more permissible, including in sorting out relationships between one's own. It's good if you use this resource, but what if it's against you?

- the emergence of new actors claiming to use the power resource: not only has the intra-elite agreement “not to kill our own,” concluded after Stalin’s death, been shaken, but also those who want to be the operators of these permitted murders have appeared;

- depreciation of accumulated assets: assets acquired during the prosperous oil years suddenly became worth less, unless they were foreign;

- a premonition of a decline in income: loss of faith in the upcoming high oil prices;

– practical isolationism: complication of access to foreign assets, direct impossibility of leaving the country for oneself and one’s family.

It is characteristic that in order to answer really important questions, one never needs to have secret insider information – open sources are enough. Thus, a detailed exposition of the above-described bureaucratic consensus can be seen, for example, in the programmatic article by Yevgeny Primakov, published in January in the Rossiyskaya Gazeta. Since the nomenklatura is the substance from which the vertical of power is made (and in peacetime not particularly strong, and now warping before our eyes, like a Mobius strip), the existence of the regime and the dynamics of its transformation will depend on the subjectively understood balance between the advantages and disadvantages of the current state of affairs.

The author is a political scientist, associate professor at the Institute of Social Sciences of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration

What is the political regime in Russia based on?