Siberian bosses : elite formation and legitimization in Russia from a regional perspective (1991-2004)

Abstract

The political power to direct society is legitimate only when it expresses the identity of society and is attached to social values and norms. The problem is that, in Russia, the demolition of the Communist ideology and the disappearance of the country’s borders as defined by the Soviet Union called the essence of Russian identity into question. This question was mainly answered in negative terms by rejecting the Soviet model of social and individual existence. The paradox is that the majority of the new political elites in fact possessed rather extensive records of political, professional and personal commitments to the now defunct Soviet constitutional order. This thesis undertakes to illustrate the elements upon which the newly institutionalized elites subsumed themselves into self-legitimizing narratives with the goal of obtaining, maintaining and exercising power in the remote Russian regions. Provided that the cohort of central elites had been historically recruited from the pool of regional elites, the findings of the thesis present a viable study of successful narratives of legitimization for the securing of elite positions far beyond the regional level.