Thousands of Russians have left the country since the beginning of the war. One of the most recent and probably most prominent example is Ekaterina Schulmann. The political scientist is an associate professor at the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences and a lecturer at the Russian Presidential Academy of Economics and Public Administration. In Russia, Schulmann is well-known. Her YouTube channel, where she comments on current political events in Russia, is followed by close to a million people.
We meet the scientist in her new office at the Robert Bosch Foundation in central Berlin. There she is now a Richard-von-Weizsäcker-Fellow. In mid-April, she fled Russia with her husband and three small children. The Russian government now classifies her as a "foreign agent".
Hier lesen Sie die deutsche Version des Interviews.
ZEIT ONLINE: Two days after arriving in Berlin to work at the Robert Bosch Foundation, you were declared a foreign agent by the Russian government. Did you expect such a thing?
Ekaterina Schulmann: It was not much of a surprise generally, but I must say that there had been no preliminary warnings whatsoever.
ZEIT ONLINE: But you’ve been opposed to the war since its very beginning.
Schulmann: It depends on what you mean by opposed. I wrote that it is a horrific, historic tragedy. That we're entering a tunnel of catastrophe. When I was speaking on my radio program at Echo Moscow, I took care to call it a "special military operation," just for the sake of being able to continue speaking on air, which proved to be largely futile because the radio station was shut down during my program. We had to go on air at 9 p.m. on a Tuesday March 1st, and while we were in the studio, the lights on the sound equipment started to turn off and the sound technicians said: Moscow doesn't hear us, Samara doesn't hear us, Kazan doesn't hear us. It was like the end of the world in real time.
ZEIT ONLINE: So you avoided calling it a war right from the beginning because you feared repression from the government?
Schulmann: I didn't want to bring trouble to the radio station. And I hoped to continue my program. But after February 24th, it became self-evident that our old life was over. I was not sure if I was going to leave the country or stay, whether to stop my public appearances or continue. But it was absolutely clear that things would not go on as they were. I continued to appear on social media. I continued my weekly program until the radio station was closed down, and then the program continued on YouTube. My co-host, Maxim Kurnikov, left the country almost immediately. Now we are in Berlin together. Most of the Echo Moscow staff left the country much sooner than I did. Editor-in-Chief Alexei Venediktov, the last samurai, is still in Russia. They threw a pig's head in front of his door. A severed head of the pig in a wig, evidently representing his hairdo.
ZEIT ONLINE: Did anything like that happen to you?
Schulmann: The first thing that could possibly be called a repressive step, although it sounds ridiculous, was when VKontakte, the Russian social media platform, shut down my fan group. What happened later was more serious. For years I've been a teacher and associate professor at Shaninka, the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences. Last autumn, even before the war, a criminal case was launched against the former deputy minister of education, Marina Rakova. In October 2021, the rector of Shaninka was indicted and placed in pretrial detention. In March, the economic crimes department of the Moscow City Police sent a letter to Shaninka asking for detailed information about a number of professors and teachers, including myself. By that time, a sizable portion of the list was already out of the country. I was still there. A couple of days later, the investigation was published in Kommersant, one of Russia's major business newspapers.
ZEIT ONLINE: By then, you had already been planning to go to Berlin to work at the Robert Bosch Foundation. Did the article in Kommersant accelerate your departure?
Schulmann: Yes it did, because this meant that they could come for me at any moment. First, they ask you for a conversation. Then, you are a witness in the case. Then, your procedural status changes and you are no longer the witness. This has happened to so many. I had very little enthusiasm for leaving. Had there been no such threat, I would have tried to keep a low profile and be a little quieter for the sake of staying in the country. You will probably understand how hard it is to disrupt a household of three small children and sever your connections with your relatives or your social circle for no-one knows how long.
ZEIT ONLINE: Considering you were already under investigation, does being listed as a foreign agent make any difference?
Schulmann: Me being declared a foreign agent effectively precludes my returning to Moscow, because this status prevents you from leading any sort of social or professional life. If you have been declared a foreign agent, you have to label every publication, including scientific articles and everything on social media. You won't be invited to speak publicly, to participate in conferences and events, or to hold lectures. You have to report to the Ministry of Justice all of your earnings and your expenditures four times a quarter which, by the way, I'm going to do, just to stick to the rules.
ZEIT ONLINE: What’s it like for people who oppose the war and the government but have decided to stay in Russia?
Schulmann: One feels a kind of envy, perverse as it may seem, for people who are both able to be at home and also brave enough to speak up. Certainly, the large-scale emigration has made the situation at home worse. Fewer voices, just less presence. Even if you don't say anything, but people know you are there, it's something. I recently talked to a friend in St Petersburg and she said: "You are miserable and I am afraid." That's the difference between staying and leaving.
ZEIT ONLINE: The repression, though, seems to be working. Early in the war, there were protests. Now, we hardly see any at all. Is there any anti-war movement left?
Schulmann: If by movement you mean some sort of bigger organizations or NGOs, then I don't think so. Since the repressions against Alexei Navalny and his network, there has been no organized opposition in Russia. You may, with some reservations, count the Yabloko party, since they are opposing the war. There are still certain impromptu small bodies that work mostly online, informing people, teaching them forms of relatively low-risk protest. The feminist antiwar movement, for example. There are others who don't want any publicity. Some of them are just chats in Telegram or Signal.
ZEIT ONLINE: What effect are they having?
Schulmann: They unite the people. They spread information. They offer instruction, for example, on how to talk to your parents if they are supportive of the war. One can hardly keep track of this activity because they don't want to be known. So we have this impression that repressions have been effective and that there is no antiwar activity, when, just based on the number of people fined or investigated, we see that every day, somewhere in Russia, some sort of protest is happening. Somebody holds a one-person picket or some inscriptions on walls appear, or green ribbons in public places. Some things we can see, others happen in the fog of social media.
ZEIT ONLINE: What’s the mood among the wider population?
Schulmann: Judging by sociological data, April has seen less enthusiasm than March. In March, there was a wave of support for the president, for the military operation and for other political figures, like the minister of defense and the minister of foreign affairs. But in April it went slightly down. For example, according to the polls of Levada, 44 percent of respondents cited the president as somebody they trust. In April it was 40 percent. And we see anxiety spreading, fear for the future and pessimism as to the economic situation. When we look at polls that do not ask direct political questions and where respondents know beforehand that the wrong answer will get them 15 years in a penal colony, anxiety appears to be the prevalent emotion.
ZEIT ONLINE: Would you read that as a change of public opinion on the war as well?
Schulmann: No, not yet. But this is a very natural process. We are still in the very early days of this military-political crisis. The approval of the annexation of Crimea lasted only three years, from 2014 to 2016. It started to erode in 2017 and fell apart in 2018, after the presidential elections and the pension-age reform. But even in 2014, at the highest point of enthusiasm and support, it was much more uniform than today. It united all age and social groups and demolished all differences between the regions. It was a sociological miracle.
ZEIT ONLINE: They all believed Crimea belonged to Russia?
Schulmann: Yes, it was a national consensus. Today, the situation is different. We perceive strong differences, especially in regards to age. The older you are, the more enthusiastic you are about the "special military operation." Also, males are more supportive than females, and the more well-to-do also show higher levels of support than the poor.
ZEIT ONLINE: Why is that?
Schulmann: They expect fewer negative personal consequences from the sanctions. They suppose they can weather it. We're not talking about the wealthy. We're talking about the middle class. And the middle class in Russia largely consists of civil servants, people working for the government, for state corporations and state banks, and people serving in the military and in the secret services. These people are sure that they will get their salaries no matter what. They do not expect to lose their jobs. The only thing they have to fear is inflation and the disappearance of goods and services. And they hope to somehow adapt to that.
"Poor people's children serve in the army"
ZEIT ONLINE: Russian casualties have been very high thus far. To what degree has the Russian population noticed?
Schulmann: The situation is different from the late 1990s and early 2000s, when Russia suffered losses in Chechnya. And it's different from when the Soviet Union suffered losses in Afghanistan. Back then, people from all classes and all regions served in the army. Of course, Moscow residents and the privileged classes had more opportunities to get their sons out of conscription. But still, it was a universal duty. So when coffins started coming back into the country, it was known to large circles.
Today it's different. For years, the army has provided a social lift for those with no other resources. To put it bluntly, poor people's children serve in the army. There are also regional disparities: among the casualties, there's a huge disproportion in favor of soldiers from national republics and poorer regions. We hear of relatively few casualties from Moscow and St. Petersburg, more from Dagestan, Buryatya and Tyva. This disparity has, for the moment, prevented the appearance of something like the Soldiers' Mothers movement we saw in the 1990s. The families of these people are very poor.
ZEIT ONLINE: Putin has promised compensation to the families of fallen soldiers.
Schulmann: Yes, and the families often want to keep silent to receive the compensation. Sometimes, relatives are made to sign non-disclosure agreements under threat of criminal prosecution or of not getting their money. And even if the casualties increase, the change in numbers will not change the social composition of those affected. That would only change in the case of broader mobilization. We will have to wait until May 9th to see if that is coming.
ZEIT ONLINE: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has denied that there would be a general mobilization.
Schulmann: Again, I have no inside information, but I rather doubt the government would take that step. The regime is trying to keep the appearance of normalcy: We are coping, everything is OK, you’re safe. Declaring a mobilization would shatter this image. It would tell the people first of all that this is a real war and not a "special military operation," and second, that it's going badly. And that would also test the degree of enthusiasm for this whole affair. Stylistically, May 9th is not for declaring a war, it's for ending a war. It's for declaring victory.
ZEIT ONLINE: Do you think that will happen?
Schulmann: It would fit the calendar nicely. The whole thing began right after February 23rd, Red Army Day, and on almost exactly the same day when the Crimean operation started back in 2014. And then, to have it end by May 9th, Victory Day, with some sort of triumph – possibly declaring that this or that territory will now be an independent republic or part of Russia – harmonizes with my view of the Russian political system. But I must also say that while I've been studying our decision-making system since 1999, until the very last days of February, I could not believe that an invasion would actually take place. So my judgment needs to be called into question.
ZEIT ONLINE: Why do you think you got it wrong?
Schulmann: Since February, we Russia watchers and political scientists have been asking ourselves that question. It's far too early to come up with any definitive answers, but I have a hypothesis. One thing that may have contributed to this fatal decision and also constituted a blind spot for us were the transformations of 2020 and 2021. We underestimated the degree to which the top of the decision-making pyramid detached itself from the rest during the pandemic.
ZEIT ONLINE: Some people are saying that Vladimir Putin, as the severed top of the pyramid, is also not being correctly informed about the state of the war and the situation in the country. How dangerous is that?
Schulmann: You know what is dangerous? The concentration of power in a single person's hands. That's dangerous. I don't think it matters much whether the person at the top is well-informed or misinformed. It’s the lack of checks and balances, the lack of civic control over the government in general, a virtual monopoly of power, the monopolization of the public sphere - all that matters much more.
ZEIT ONLINE: Has the war increased the concentration of power?
Schulmann: Yes, but at the same time, war is a form of ultimate reality. It can be swept under the table for a certain time and victories can be proclaimed on state television. But there are hard realities which will eventually surface and are hard to explain away. In peacetime, the Russian state could always cover up mistakes with money. The Russian state has been extremely rich since early 2000s. Whenever something went wrong, they just threw more money at it, and then it turned out to be right. And whatever didn't turn out to be right, you just didn't mention it, and it eventually went away. This is the way the system is used to working. But in war, or a "special military operation," this doesn't seem to work so well.
ZEIT ONLINE: If the economic costs of the war, in the form of sanctions for example, prevent the Russian government from relying on this strategy, would that destabilize Putin’s regime?
Schulmann: I don't think this is the case just now. The reserves are still large and a lot of money is coming in both for oil and gas, and for grain. I am unable to competently judge the medium or long-term effect of the sanctions, whether by the end of the year, the country will be left without money. If that happens, it will be a whole new situation. Since the end of the 1990s, people in Russia have forgotten what that feels like. The government has always had a lot of money.
ZEIT ONLINE: Some people have said the sanctions feel like collective punishment for Russians. Do you agree?
Schulmann: As far as I understand, the purpose of the sanctions was not to make Russians protest because Uniqlo or a McDonald's outlet have been closed. If there is a real purpose, it is to make people feel that the situation is not normal. The Russian government is doing a lot to ensure that the horror of the 1980s does not return: empty shelves in supermarkets.
ZEIT ONLINE: Have they been successful?
Schulmann: Yes. Prices have risen, but there is no visible shortage of goods or services, except, of course, for products of companies that have left Russia completely.
ZEIT ONLINE: Is there anything that makes you hopeful about Russia right now?
Schulmann: As a political scientist it's not my business to be hopeful or despondent, but to monitor and analyze what is happening. But if we try to wrap it up with something that may resemble hope, it lies in Russian society. Not in a Russian society that will rise and chase away the current regime. But in a society that is educated, urbanized and that we’ve been working with and for over the last 20 years. I have trouble believing that this picture of general unification under the letter Z is a true picture of Russian society. Many people have left, but there are many more still in the country heroically doing their jobs. It's not just about protesting, it's about educating children and students, playing music, writing essays. Sometimes I wish I could have been part of this as well.