Top Down or Bottom Up? Public Control of the Armed Forces in Post–Soviet Russia

Abstract

This article engages in an analysis of contemporary relations between civic actors and state power structures, notably the military organization, in the Russian Federation. The main focus is on the complex tension and interaction between state-sanctioned forms of control of the armed forces and public control, exercised by grassroots actors. The underlying assumption is that an institutionalization of control of state power structures is taking place in Russia. The article seeks to understand whether these processes are prevalently a top-down or a bottom-up phenomenon, how public control as a “civic duty” can be effectively characterized, and what implications this has for Russian civic activism more generally.