A Kremlin advisor says Russians are happy to trade privacy and freedom for convenience. Meduza read his op-ed so you don’t have to.
Separation of powers, competitive elections, and free speech prevent the state from governing effectively, Kremlin domestic policy advisor Gleb Kuznetsov argues in a new essay. Citizens of “illiberal” regimes, he writes, are more than happy to trade democratic freedoms for free and convenient digital services. Meduza special correspondent Andrey Pertsev examines Kuznetsov’s text and explains what the author sees as the secret behind the “success” of “illiberal” systems like Russia and China.
In the summer of 2025, Russia saw the launch of a new policy journal, The State, published by the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA). Its pages are filled with ideological essays by Kremlin officials, as well as political analysts and strategists close to them.
In his first contribution to the journal, an essay titled “Digital Legitimacy,” Kremlin domestic policy advisor Gleb Kuznetsov lays out what he sees as the advantages of “illiberal regimes” over “liberal” ones. Judging by the article’s contents, he’s actually talking about nondemocratic vs. democratic systems.
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As examples of “illiberal” systems, Kuznetsov points to Russia and China. He doesn’t name specific “liberal” countries, referring instead broadly to the West, where, he writes, legitimacy is “based on procedures: competitive elections, separation of powers, and the illusion of public oversight.” “Illiberal systems,” Kuznetsov argues, “offer an alternative source [of legitimacy]: technical efficiency.”
In his view, “illiberal” states outperform their “liberal” counterparts. In such systems, he writes, power is legitimate “not because it’s reelected every four years by promising everything to everyone amid real political competition, but because it works for voters on a daily basis.” Digital services, Kuznetsov argues, make that work “visible and measurable.” They are so convenient for citizens, he says, that they become an “argument in favor of the system” — one that, for most people, carries more weight than “abstract discussions of procedural democracy.”
One of the key advantages of “illiberal” Russia and China, Kuznetsov continues, lies not in control itself but in “converting that control into legitimacy by providing high-quality services in a convenient form.” In other words, people accept state oversight because the state supplies digital tools that make everyday life easier. “Illiberal systems succeed at what matters to most citizens,” Kuznetsov writes. They don’t need to “manipulate public opinion,” he argues, adding that this is “thanks to, rather than in spite of, the concentration of power.”
Kuznetsov goes on to describe what he calls “digital efficiency” in two megacities: Moscow and Shenzhen. In Moscow, he writes, a system of urban services has emerged that surpasses those of most Western megacities in terms of convenience. “Digitalization allows [the state] to present political decisions as technical ones,” Kuznetsov argues. “The mayor appears as the city’s ‘CEO,’ redefining the very nature of power.” In this model, he adds, “the boundary between service and surveillance is indistinguishable.”
Muscovites are fine with state oversight, Kuznetsov argues. According to him, residents of the Russian capital do not care if they are being monitored as long as the system is convenient. If that control were to disappear, people would see it “not as liberation, but as a loss of convenience and a return to the dangers of uncertainty,” he writes.
China draws similar admiration from Kuznetsov. “In forty years, Shenzhen went from a village to a tech capital,” he notes — “all without the elements the West considers essential: competitive elections, independent media, or a separation of powers.” One of the most closely monitored cities in the world, he adds, operates with an effectiveness Western megacities can only envy.
Digitalization and technological oversight allow “illiberal” regimes to respond to urban problems more quickly, Kuznetsov continues. By contrast, he argues, in “liberal” systems the time between identifying a problem and resolving it can stretch on for years. As examples, he points to the pace of street construction in Moscow and an unspecified hospital in Shenzhen.
Another advantage of illiberal governance, in his view, is its independence from electoral cycles. Regular elections, Kuznetsov writes, lead to “shifting priorities” and the “curtailment of long-term projects,” whereas illiberal systems “implement strategies over decades.” He acknowledges that in such regimes “politics is an invisible struggle among elites,” but contends that citizens are comfortable with this so long as they are quickly presented with “working services.”
“Illiberal systems operate on business logic: the citizen is a client, satisfaction is the KPI,” Kuznetsov tells readers. “There is no visible political choice, but there is fast and high-quality service. For everyday life, that is preferable to a liberal model that offers the right to ‘raise one’s voice’ with no visible result.”
The separation of powers — still formally enshrined in Russia’s Constitution — figures in Kuznetsov’s framework as an obstacle to delivering “quality services,” because it “slows the state down,” though he does not explain how. Nor does the article clearly spell out why illiberal leadership supposedly acts in citizens’ interests while liberal governments do not. Kuznetsov offers only a vague explanation: lower-level officials, he suggests, care about public welfare out of a “daily fear” of the authority above them. In liberal states, where “citizens can replace [that higher authority] every five years,” he argues, such fear — and thus discipline — does not exist.
“Modern illiberal systems know how to create institutional stability without liberal procedures — through elite rotation, meritocratic selection, and built-in feedback mechanisms,” Kuznetsov concludes. “The Moscow and Shenzhen models represent a new type of political order, in which traditional liberal procedures are replaced by technocratic governance legitimized by effectiveness.”
Taken as a whole, Kuznetsov’s arguments closely mirror the views of Sergey Kiriyenko, who oversees the Kremlin’s domestic policy team. Since taking over the team in 2016, Kiriyenko has branded newly appointed governors as “young technocrats” and steered the country’s personnel-selection processes away from open electoral competition and toward internal “competitions.”
Since 2025, his team has championed a concept called “social architecture,” which has effectively replaced public politics with the organization of social projects. Kiriyenko has said that what people want now “is not so much political technologies as social technologies” that can “genuinely improve lives.”
Story by Andrey Pertsev