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Misreading Russia or Misreading Putin? 

Commentary on Leigh Sarty’s Article 

Joan DeBardeleben, Carleton University 

 

Leigh Sarty’s thesis that the West and Western scholars have repeatedly misread Russia might seem 

to be supported by the fact that ‘Russia experts’ did not foresee and, in fact, were most commonly 

surprised by Russia’s attack on Ukraine in February 2022. We did not correctly read the warning 

signals of Russia’s 2008 actions in Georgia and the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014. The 

fact that we did not anticipate Russia’s 2022 actions suggests, however, that we misread Putin, not 

Russia. And perhaps also that we ‘read’ Ukraine better than Putin did, expecting that Ukrainians, 

based on their history, would not bow down in defeat and, therefore, Russia would not launch a 

doomed attack. If we misread Putin, it was probably because we overestimated his rationality and 

savvy. We did not expect him to embark on what would turn out to be a counterproductive action 

that would create a self-fulfilling prophecy—namely, the further expansion of NATO on Russia’s 

northern flank and a reinforced determination on the part of Ukrainians to ‘join the West,’ meaning 

both NATO and the European Union (EU), all of this potentially reducing Russia’s perception of 

its own security.  

If we misread Putin, whether we ‘misread Russia’ is another question. Equating Putin’s action with 

Russia is a perilous road to follow because Russia’s political and social reality, beneath the 

apparently controlled surface, is as multifaceted and varied as its geography. Just read Larry 

Black’s (2024) piece in this issue on the variety of viewpoints and methods being used to oppose 

Putin, even under highly repressive conditions.  

Because social scientists generally did not predict or foresee Russia’s actions in 2022 also does not 

mean that those actions were predetermined or that they defy a nuanced explanation that takes into 

account a range of factors. There is already a large literature trying to explain Russia’s invasion of 

Ukraine, and many of these explanations are quite plausible without appealing to historical 

determinism. Many analysts consider contingent factors or point to previous critical junctures 

when a particular path was taken rather than other possible ones. Contingent factors include those 

relating to Putin’s state of mind at the time he made the decision, as Sarty acknowledges. This was 

influenced by his relative isolation during the pandemic, unreliable information received from his 

closed circle of advisers, and his mistaken assessment of Western (and Ukrainian) weakness and 

division. In terms of Putin’s faulty assessment of the West, even such contingent factors as the 

timing of Merkel’s withdrawal from the German leadership position may have played a role, along 

with Russia’s misunderstanding of the basis of the transatlantic relationship. Other explanations 

draw on the particularities of the relationship that developed between Ukraine and Russia in recent 

decades (Gomza 2022), marked by a cycle of events and critical junctions that led to one of several 



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possible outcomes. Here, the recent book by Popova and Shevel (2024) is particularly insightful, 

where the authors explicitly consider counterfactuals that could have led to different outcomes. 

Finally, another set of explanations draws on the domestic political situation in Russia itself 

(McFaul 2020). In this instance, one could point to the tightening grip of Putin’s control in Russia, 

the success with which the regime used the Crimean annexation to bolster regime legitimacy, and 

the failure of the regime to embrace a process of economic reform that could assure prosperity in 

peace. This combination created a domestic situation where a further appeal to Russian nationalism 

and Russia’s right to hegemonic control in its neighbourhood might have seemed like an attractive 

option to Putin for securing the elite’s continuing dominance. This latter explanation suggests that 

what is at stake is not Russia’s security but the security of the elite’s power. 

In view of the variety of possible explanations, Sarty’s self-acknowledged determinism is 

somewhat puzzling because he at once critiques the “politics of inevitability” (Sarty 2024, 129) 

that he sees in the deluded optimism about Russia underlying the ‘post-Cold War consensus’ in the 

West while himself endorsing a more pessimistic determinism. While I agree that the optimism in 

the West that prevailed in the late 1980s and early 1990s was exaggerated, it is equally misguided 

to conclude that the descent of Russia into authoritarianism and expansionism under Vladimir 

Putin was inevitable. In arguing that Western actions and assumptions “underappreciated our own 

role in influencing the perceptions and choice of the leadership in the Kremlin” (Sarty 2024, 125). 

Sarty himself implies that the outcome was not pre-determined had we, in the West, but exerted a 

different type of influence. Furthermore, what is the point of ‘reading Russia’ more correctly if 

everything is already determined?  

As a social scientist, I balk at the idea that outcomes are predetermined as much as I resist the 

notion that they can be reliably predicted. Social scientists try to explain outcomes without 

claiming to be able to predict the future. The reason for this is simple: social science explanations 

are probabilistic, not deterministic. We most often conclude, based on our attempt to apply a 

‘scientific’ method to the study of society and politics, that some kinds of outcomes are more likely 

than others, but we can never find the certainty of outcomes that is expected by the natural sciences. 

Our inability to reliably predict outcomes is, in part, because what occurs is the result of the 

interaction of so many diverse factors; we could never know them all, take them all into account, 

or devise a ‘controlled experiment’ to test them. But our inability to reliably predict is also, and 

probably most importantly, because human will and human choice are important determinants of 

outcomes, even if, for any given individual, that choice is constrained by upbringing, genetics, the 

environment, and chance happenings. People make choices in complex situations, and these 

choices influence the choices and decisions of those who come after them. During critical historical 

junctures, those choices can have a pivotal influence on later circumstances, but even then, further 

decision points arise where various paths are possible.  

One can point to the importance of the Orange Revolution and the Euromaidan as key critical 

junctures for Ukraine, where the future trajectory was shaped by the choices of both thousands of 

individual protesters but also by a small group of leaders that responded to them. Turning to Russia, 

the peaceful collapse of Soviet power, which represented a critical juncture, was a result of 

Gorbachev’s decisions, which could have gone otherwise or have been different had another leader 

risen to power. That the peaceful collapse of the USSR was something unanticipated by many 

experts would suggest that Russia is not on an inevitable path to dictatorship and aggression. The 



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subsequent authoritarian turn under Putin’s leadership was also not predetermined or inevitable. 

Factors that affected it are multiple, including the failure of an effective opposition force in the late 

1990s and early 2000s (Gel’man 2005) to project itself as a viable alternative, Yeltsin’s own 

personal weaknesses, which Sarty correctly identifies as contributing to his political downfall, and 

Yeltsin’s choice of Putin as interim prime minister, which was hardly inevitable. The fact that 

Gorbachev’s reform direction was reversed under Putin does not mean it was inevitable. Sarty is 

correct, however, to point out that a belief in its inevitable success was also incorrect. The failure 

was instead the product of underlying dynamics, contingent factors, and the choices of individual 

leaders, as well as citizens. One could add to this policies adopted by Western actors, although it 

is contested whether the West ‘provoked’ Russia through policies such as NATO expansion 

(Mearsheimer 2022) or was inadequately responsive to Russia’s concerns.  

Sarty suggests that Russia is so unique that general theories or concepts that Western scholars use 

to explain political outcomes elsewhere are of little use for understanding Russia, and in trying to 

apply them, we end up “misreading Russia.” He argues that “the explicit assumption was that 

Russia’s ‘flaws’ did not render it unique, that it was on the track to develop like any other ‘middle-

income capitalist democracies’ in accordance with the postulates of social science theory” (Sarty 

2024, 130). No doubt Russia is unique, as is every country, and Sarty is correct that prescriptions 

for success cannot be copied from one society to another. However, this does not mean that 

analyzing Russia in a comparative context is useless or that Russia is exempt from insights 

generated by the study of comparative politics. A major turn in political science studies of Russia 

following the collapse of the USSR was precisely an effort to bring the study of Russia into the 

field of comparative politics (Chandler 1994), challenging the notion that Russia is so distinctive 

that it is exempt from factors that might be influential in other contexts. We should remind 

ourselves that this effort to ‘bring Russia in’ to the realm of political science analysis was viewed 

as particularly promising because we could, through the comparison of several post-communist 

countries, try to develop general insights about determinants of political outcomes of reform in 

countries that shared many commonalities in terms at least of recent historical experience (Hanley 

2011). Several of these states, like Russia, have seen efforts at liberal reform either stillborn or 

reversed. In this, Russia is not unique. True, no other post-communist state has executed an attack 

of this scope on a neighbouring country (but bringing China into the universe of cases raises the 

possibility that that may happen). Therefore, expanding the comparative sweep, Russia is also not 

unique among nations in this characteristic either.  

The effort ‘to bring Russia in’ to the study of comparative politics has not been in vain and has, in 

fact, produced very important insights. The types of questions that these studies have sought to 

answer include the following: why did some post-communist or post-authoritarian countries 

develop consolidated democracies while others did not? What impact did various economic reform 

strategies (e.g., shock therapy versus gradualism) have both on economic outcomes but also on 

political trajectories? What types of institutional features (e.g., electoral systems, parliamentary 

versus presidential systems) were more conducive to successful liberalization? What role have 

identity factors played in influencing the likelihood of liberalizing reforms or a reversion to 

authoritarianism? These are just a few examples of the types of questions that social scientists have 

explored using the universe of post-communist systems and sometimes the broader database of 

post-authoritarian systems. This work has, in fact, yielded important results and helps us to better 

understand the trajectory of Russia’s development. Fruitful examples of this type of work include 



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the insights of Henry Hale explaining why colour revolutions occurred in some post-communist 

countries and not others, and Lucan Way (2015), who explains why authoritarian governments 

sometimes fail. Some of the very factors that Sarty himself mentions are mobilized in these 

explanatory frameworks to elucidate outcomes that differentiate post-communist systems from one 

another more generally, for example, “the preponderance of the state over society” (Sarty 2024, 

127). Others include the degree of elite unity in times of leadership transition (Hale 2005), the 

types of linkages that exist between economic and political power, and the impact of conditionality 

by the European Union in acceding countries (Vachudova 2009). 

The one feature that Sarty attributes the most importance to, however, in explaining Russia’s attack 

on Ukraine, is “the ceaseless quest for security in conditions of relative backwardness,” and indeed 

the paramount impact of the “security imperative” (Sarty 2024, 127). No doubt this is an important 

factor that drove Russia’s 2022 war on Ukraine, along with Russia’s “status aspirations” (Götz and 

Staun 2022). But as constructivist theorists and the ‘ontological security’ school emphasize 

(Akchurina and Della Sala 2018; Mitzen 2006; Moulioukova and Kanet 2021), a state’s definition 

of security is constructed, not given and is closely tied to notions of identity. If Sarty is correct that 

Russian leaders are preoccupied with security, one should examine what Russia’s current leaders 

mean by security. Few would claim, and probably Putin himself does not and did not believe that 

NATO, Ukraine, or the EU was going to attack Russia; thus, there was no material threat to 

Russia’s security. However, for Russia’s current leaders, security is apparently understood to 

equate to Russia’s hegemony in its neighbourhood. Tom Casier calls this idea “no great Russia 

without greater Russia” (Casier 2023), while Götz and Staun (2022, 491) point to the Russian 

leadership view that a few great powers “are entitled to have their own spheres of influence, 

whereas the sovereignty of smaller states in negotiable.” On this point, Western leaders and many 

scholars have ‘read Russia’ (or at least Putin) quite correctly but are unprepared to accede to the 

implications of Russia’s position. Most Western leaders have chosen to challenge this position, in 

other words, to reject the notion that large states have a right to hegemony over weaker and smaller 

neighbouring states. Thus, the problem may not be ‘misreading Russia’ but rather contesting 

Russia’s reading of itself. History and political culture, of course, matter, but this does not mean 

that other nations need to accept the narrative about history and culture put forth by authoritarian 

leaders. In accepting that narrative, Western actors would, in fact, reinforce whatever inevitability 

Sarty may see in Russia’s actions. On the contrary, in supporting those Russians who choose to 

endorse other more liberal and less aggressive identity narratives, Western voices are affirming 

Russia’s possibility of choice. I stand on that side of the debate. Both as a social scientist and as a 

human being, I stand with Alexander Gabuev’s (2023) view that the Russian state’s path is the 

result of choices, primarily of Russia’s elites. That said, the war in Ukraine is a critical juncture 

for Russia, with path dependency in the direction of continued authoritarianism, although this also 

is not inevitable or predetermined.  

Certainly, Sarty is correct that we should strive to ‘read Russia’ better if that means trying to 

understand the depth and breadth of that complex society and polity. We should also recognize that 

current choices are constrained and influenced by history and culture. However, they are choices, 

and our task as social scientists is to understand what influences them. That requires a deeper 

knowledge of Russia, including its language, society, culture, history, and politics. Nevertheless, 

this should not be done in isolation, with an assumption that Russia is totally unique and, therefore, 



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exempt from social and political dynamics that affect other societies and polities, and we should 

not bow to the temptation of determinism, which can lead to fatalism and complacency.  

  



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