Putin's Leadership and Historical Legacies in Russia — Gulnaz Sharafutdinova (1.25.18)

This study contributes to the debate about the legacies of the Soviet era in contemporary Russian politics. Critical of treating legacies as causal factors, Sharafutdinova advances a socio-cognitive approach that brings together political leadership, legitimacy concerns and factors that constrain/enable the choices of legitimating narratives that resonate with the masses. She argues that Vladimir Putin has indeed relied on the revival of the central dimensions of the Soviet collective identity evoking a sense of exceptionalism and using conflict as a means of consolidating the Russian domestic public.