The COVID Biopolitics in Russia: Putin’s Sovereignty versus Regional Governmentality

Abstract

In this article, we discuss the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic as a
biopolitical challenge that – along the lines of the contemporary academic
debate on biopower – may be approached through the concepts of
sovereignty and governmentality. Within this general framework, the
authors look at the challenges Russia faces due to the corona crisis from
the viewpoint of domestic transformations within the ruling regime, mainly
focusing on center – periphery relations as a core element of the power
structure in Russia that demands a stronger emphasis on governmentality.
We outline several forms of regions’ distancing from the federal center:
digital empowerment, the resistance of the North, and the demand for
"people’s governors". Our main conclusion is that the relative administrative
autonomy obtained by the regions reflects the ongoing process of
decentralization of the Russian political system which will affect the
structural characteristics of Russian federalism in the future.