the verticality of fear: order and allegiance in Putin’s russia

Gilles Favarel-Garrigues

(La Découverte, 304 pages, 2023)

As the war in Ukraine rages on, many people seek to explain how Putin continues to maintain his hold on power and impose such an implacable political agenda. What does the longevity of the current regime owe to the fears it arouses, the economic interests it secures, and the social support from which it benefits?

Based on more than twenty years of investigation, the sociologist and eminent Russian specialist Gilles Favarel-Garrigues explores the political and social anchoring of Putinism by examining the practices inherent in the “dictatorship of law” proclaimed by Putin in the early 2000s—a provocative phrase at a time when Russian political elites and Western pundits concerned themselves with the democratization of the country and the need to establish the “rule of law.”

This book explores the mechanisms of the exercise of power in Russia and describes how the skills required—intelligence gathering, media manipulation, and judicial expertise—are exploited by an array of social actors well beyond the Kremlin walls. It shows how the maintenance of the elite in constant state of insecurity cements the political order, as well as the role played by a whole cast of characters: blackmailers, vindicators, vigilantes, scandal hacks, media influencers, obedient judges, “anti-migrant-raid specialists,” and debt collection agents.

Plunging us deep into Russian society, The Verticality of Fear illuminates, through a series of vivid portraits and striking anecdotes, how the hijacking of the law for coercive purposes allows the power in place to maintain tight control over society and neutralize any potential threats. Notably, Favarel-Garrigues moves away from analyses that excessively personalize political power; that attribute to Russians a whole set of common values—imperial nostalgia, shared taste for despotism; or that overestimate the numbing effect of state propaganda on their critical thinking. Rejecting any culturalist explanation, he concludes that the cogs of the “dictatorship of law” machine are neither exceptional nor specific to the Russian context.

Gilles Favarel-Garrigues is a CNRS Senior Research Professor at CERI-Sciences Po, Paris. He is the author of Policing Economic Crime in Russia: From Soviet Planned Economy to Privatisation (Hurst, 2010) and the co-editor of the upcoming Proud to Punish: The Global Landscapes of Rough Justice (Stanford University Press, 2024). In French, he recently published Fiers de punir. Le monde des justiciers hors-la-loi (Seuil, 2021).