Maria Kuznetsova and Dan Storyev detail authoritarianism in book
- Authoritarianism rarely arrives with sudden military coups or sweeping overnight declarations.
- A core concept examined in the book is vlast’, a Russian term that translates literally to power but carries the heavy connotation of absolute or extreme state control.
- Tyranny relies heavily on a compliant populace whose livelihoods are tied directly to the state, a group defined in modern Russia as byudjetniki, or budget people.
Authoritarianism rarely arrives with sudden military coups or sweeping overnight declarations. Instead, as authors Maria Kuznetsova and Dan Storyev detail in their forthcoming book How to Survive Authoritarianism: A Russian’s Phrasebook for Everyday Life in America,
a society often drifts toward centralized control while its citizens still enjoy middle-class comforts, visa-free travel, and modern technology. Set for publication by Liveright in September 2026, the 232-page book examines how political oppression takes root through language, examining parallels between early 2000s Russia and warning signs visible in the United States, the United Kingdom, Israel, and elsewhere.
Understanding Vlast’ and Absolute State Power
A core concept examined in the book is vlast’, a Russian term that translates literally to power but carries the heavy connotation of absolute or extreme state control. Russians frequently use the word to describe the government itself, referring to soldiers and police officers as representatives of vlast’
and government officials as vlast’ imooshchie,
or those who possess vlast’. This linguistic habit reflects a political reality where leaders focus on capturing the state. The authors point out that when political figures threaten to deploy supposedly apolitical government agencies against critics, it signals that the leader believes they wield not just ordinary political authority, but absolute vlast’.
The Role of Byudjetniki in Falsifying Elections
Tyranny relies heavily on a compliant populace whose livelihoods are tied directly to the state, a group defined in modern Russia as byudjetniki, or budget people. As outlined in the phrasebook, byudjetniki comprise teachers, doctors, social workers, students, and bureaucrats. These citizens form the human material used to cheer at demonstrations organized by Russian President Vladimir Putin and to help falsify election outcomes. Their economic dependence on government budgets effectively binds their daily survival to the continuation of the ruling apparatus.
Historical Roots of Aesopian Speech and Resistance
Oppressive political systems in Russia have long generated specialized linguistic defenses, forcing citizens to adapt their communication to survive. During the late 1800s under Tsarist autocracy, satirist Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin developed Aesopian speech, an ironic and coded vocabulary designed to obscure meaning from the authorities while remaining clear to those in the know. Soviet-era satirists like Fazil Iskander later refined these tongue-in-cheek fables to mock state tyranny and corruption. In contemporary Russia under Putin, language continues to serve as a vital mechanism for ordinary people to make sense of and cope with daily life under the heavy weight of the state.
