BREAKING DOWN DEMOCRACY: Goals, Strategies, and Methods of Modern Authoritarians

BREAKING DOWN DEMOCRACY: Goals, Strategies, and Methods of Modern Authoritarians in Ukraine, the Maidan uprising of 2013-14, forced him to flee to Russia after a bloody crackdown failed to disperse the demonstrators. Among other things, the episode shattered the old political establishment, which had been more or less equally divided between parties that were friendly to Russia and parties that favored independence from the Kremlin and an orientation toward Europe. For the foreseeable future, pro-Russian parties were unlikely to play a major role in Ukrainian political life. Russia responded by seizing and illegally annexing Crimea and fomenting a frozen conflict in eastern Ukraine. But the Kremlin also stepped up its campaign to demonize color revolutions more broadly as Amer- icas favored instrument of regime change, though no serious evidence of U.S. involvement in the Maidan revolution was put forward. The color revolution threat became a major theme of Russian domestic propa- ganda and political discourse. It even became a focus of the country's military planning. When speaking of color revolutions, Russian officials and commentators have struck several common themes: 1. Color revolutions are a U.S. strategy to break Russia's influence over its neighbors.' Nikolay Patrushev, secretary of Russia's Security Council and a longtime director of the Federal Security Service (FSB), has described color revolutions as an American scheme to bring down gov- ernments through the financing of opposition groups and economic sanctions “under the pre- text of human rights protection and the neces- sity to form civil society institutions.”? Russian officials in 2015 warned that Electric Yerevan, an Armenian protest movement against electricity price hikes, could be a provocation by the West dedicated to toppling a Moscow-friendly admin- istration? 2. The threat of military action is an integral part of the strategy. While color revolutions by definition employ nonviolent tactics, Russian strategists claim that the military dimension can be indirect, embedded in democratic governments’ warnings not to use force against protesters. In other words, according to the Kremlin, the United States and its allies stoke uprisings and then threaten to in- tervene if the authorities defend themselves. Rus- sias own response to the Maidan revolution was a reflection of this distorted image: It orchestrated separatist revolts in parts of Ukraine and then used its military to defend them.* 3. Color revolutions pose a danger to Russias allies around the world. To communicate its concerns on this front, the Kremlin has invited military delegations from China, Iran, Egypt, and other authoritarian regimes for meetings at which countering color revolutions is an important theme.® Russian propaganda encourages gov- ernments to do what is necessary to put down civil society challenges, and praises incumbents who succeed. 4. Russia itself is under threat. “The aim is obvi- ous,” Putin said of protests and social media ac- tivity in 2015, “to provoke civil conflict and strike a blow at our country's constitutional founda- tions, and ultimately even at our sovereignty.”® 5. Incumbents are ‘legitimate’ rulers. Russian offi- cials have stressed the legal and constitutional legitimacy of authoritarian leaders facing major protests, regardless of their crimes and blatant abuses of human rights and democratic norms. Moscow insisted that Yanukovych remained the “legitimate” president even after he had aban- doned his post to escape punishment for his role in the crackdown on demonstrators. 6. Russia reserves the right to intervene in defense of ethnic Russians. By asserting this right, the Kremlin is effectively saying that any color rev- olutions in neighboring states—many of which have Russian-speaking minorities—could trigger a Russian invasion, as in Ukraine. It could also become a self-fulfilling prophecy, whereby the governments of neighboring countries come to mistrust and mistreat their ethnic Russian citizens, providing the Kremlin with an excuse to get involved.’ The Russian leadership's reaction to the color revolu- tions, with its paranoid obsession with sinister outside forces, is a clear indication of the lack of self-confidence that is shared by all authoritarian powers. Whether the state is led by a strongman, a politburo, or a supreme religious leader, the world’s most repressive regimes understand that their systems offer few regular outlets for public frustration with government performance. Fear of color revolutions has intensified since the 2014 events in Ukraine, with a particular focus on the alleged 24 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019258