The specter of succession looms over Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin, 73, has built a powerful personalist regime, but one that has no real plan for what comes next. Putin will eventually leave the presidency — whether through death, illness, or, contrary to all previous trends, by voluntarily stepping down. What happens after that remains unclear. It could be a hasty handover, a chaotic power struggle among elites long denied access to the highest political posts, or the country could continue to sink under the rule of the gerontocracy that currently runs Russia alongside its dictator, writes Julian G. Waller for Foreign Affairs.
"The question of succession in Russia, then, is not just about Putin himself. It is also about the inevitable retirement of an entire generation of elites who surround the Russian autocrat and still occupy most of the top state posts. Many of the figures close enough to power to influence the choice of the next leader are the same age as Putin. Their own withdrawal from the political scene is crucial because they still exercise disproportionate control over the institutions that will determine who matters when the time comes for a change of power.
Putin’s tight-knit network has helped him consolidate power and maintain regime stability. But the system that keeps these trusted allies in place has excluded future generations from participating in high politics, from gaining the trust of other influential figures, and from acquiring the leadership skills they will need to govern effectively in the future. By preventing natural generational renewal, Putin’s system has created such a deadlock that many younger generations—including relatives of current members of Putin’s inner circle—can leapfrog officials who are now in their 50s and 60s and are seen as the autocrat’s natural heirs. As Russia’s top elite ages alongside Putin, there is no guarantee that they will be able to manage the transition of power or prevent the long-suppressed ambitions of their younger colleagues from spiraling into internal conflict.
The succession process in Russia will take place within the country’s formally democratic constitutional system, which requires interim elections to be held within three months of the president’s departure. But the constitution does not specify who can position themselves to win those elections, nor who will ultimately become Russia’s next leader. Instead, as in the political transition in the Soviet Union after the death of Joseph Stalin, decisions and deals among a small group of inner circle members will determine who takes power.
The difference now is that many of today’s analogous influential figures and contenders for leadership are considerably older than the candidates who fought to succeed Stalin. This suggests that they may not have the energy or clarity to manage a contested transition of power. If Putin’s graying allies are still in office when he leaves the presidency, they will have missed an opportunity to groom a new generation of elites and ensure a peaceful transition—just as Putin has missed an opportunity to groom his own successor.
A recipe for succession
Putin has consistently refused to name a successor or to institutionalize a clear process for choosing one. United Russia, the country’s ruling party, was never built with the goal of naming a successor. Rather, its mission has been to ensure that elections produce a credible pro-government fillip to institutions like parliament. Russia’s constitution also does not provide for a vice president, which would obviate the need for the leader to nominate a successor of his choosing.
Under the constitution, if the presidency is vacated, the prime minister becomes acting president until elections are held. But Putin has been careful to choose prime ministers who do not have a strong power base of their own and cannot overshadow him. This also means that they are not obvious successors. Current Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, for example, does not have his own network of loyal supporters, which means that if he were to become acting president, he would have difficulty converting that position into a presidential victory.
Putin’s only experiment with a potential transfer of power—when he endorsed Dmitry Medvedev for president—also ended up cementing Putin’s unchallenged power. In 2008, after reaching the constitutional limit of two consecutive presidential terms, Putin endorsed Medvedev as a presidential candidate, while he himself would have been prime minister. This could have been a trial run for a more permanent transfer of power. During Medvedev's term, however, Putin retained considerable power, and in 2011 he announced his return to the top job before Medvedev's four-year term was up. Putin's move became known in Russia as "castling" - a reference to the chess move in which the king and rook are moved relative to each other - and the Kremlin has since gradually pushed Medvedev to the periphery.
Putin is surrounded by aging allies.
Putin's attempt to avoid clear succession plans at all costs is not an inevitable pattern. Many other personalist post-Soviet states have created institutional mechanisms for selecting new rulers or have given clear signals about who will take over after the current leader steps down. In Azerbaijan, for example, former President Heydar Aliyev chose a system of de facto hereditary succession: in 2003, his son Ilham Aliyev succeeded him, and since then Ilham has placed his wife Mehriban in important positions, including as first vice president, making her the immediate heir to the presidency. He has also made their three children potential heirs to the highest office of state by removing the age requirement for the presidency and giving them visible public roles in politics, charity, and culture. In Kazakhstan, in 2019, former President Nursultan Nazarbayev orchestrated a controlled transition by handing over the presidency to the speaker of the Senate while retaining the chairmanship of the country’s Security Council.
Putin, however, has sent no such signals. Instead, he has chosen to stay on the throne for as long as possible, surrounded by aging allies who are also firmly entrenched in their positions. Putin’s elite group of seventy-year-olds includes the head of the security service, Alexander Bortnikov, 74; the director of the foreign intelligence service, Sergei Naryshkin, 71; the head of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, 72; the head of the National Guard, Viktor Zolotov, 72; the secretary of the Security Council, Sergei Shoigu, 71; and the chief of the General Staff of the Russian army, Valery Gerasimov, 70. Other advisers and close oligarchs in his entourage are of a similar age.
Putin does this because he relies on these close personal ties to maintain control over the political system. He trusts his allies to deal with problems in ways that are familiar to him—including using hard power to remove anyone who might challenge his authority. When the head of the mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, rebelled against Putin in 2023, the Wall Street Journal reported that then-Secretary of the Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, 75, orchestrated the plane crash that killed the rebel leader. Putin also protected his immediate cronies without providing the same protection to his younger subordinates. Even when Putin purged the Russian Defense Ministry of corruption, which affected much of Shoigu’s personal network, he moved Shoigu himself to a key position on the Security Council rather than stripping him of influence.
Stalin’s “Selectorate”
This is not the first time Russia has faced a succession crisis. In the 1950s, the Soviet Union struggled after Stalin died, leaving no clear successor. While today's Russia is far from the all-encompassing Soviet party-state system of the Stalin era, there are important parallels to that earlier period that can provide a glimpse of what lies ahead. As then, a central role will likely be played by the regime's so-called "selectorate" - the small inner circle holding key state positions whose members can vie for power and influence the choice of the next leader.
The dynamics by which these elites emerge, coordinate, and clash remain crucial to today’s questions of succession. And while there is a formal constitutional path for an immediate, temporary transfer of power, these rules only regulate the transition; they do not decide who will take over. What matters is the people who are part of the selectorate.
When Stalin died in 1953, Georgy Malenkov—then Chairman of the Council of Ministers, the equivalent of today’s prime minister—was the formally designated successor. Malenkov, however, had a weak power base. His period as the undisputed master of the Soviet Union was brief, and he soon found himself in a de facto triumvirate with intelligence chief and interior minister Lavrenty Beria and foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov. Three other important figures - Communist Party Secretary Nikita Khrushchev, the Chairman of the Presidium, the Soviet Union's equivalent of head of state, Kliment Voroshilov, and Deputy Defense Minister and war hero Georgy Zhukov - were included in the Selectorate because their control of key institutions made them impossible to ignore. Internal infighting was rife. Just four months later, the remaining Selectorate members, concerned that Beria posed a threat, arrested him during a committee meeting, and he was subsequently executed.
Khrushchev gradually amassed power through his control of the party's membership rolls, which allowed him to fill party councils with loyalists and ultimately control the political agenda and prevail over his rivals in the Soviet Union's vast bureaucratic party apparatus. However, since the consolidation of power took time, Khrushchev had to share power with Molotov, Malenkov, and others for years. It was not until 1957 that Khrushchev was able to use his control over subordinate committees and councils to seize full power and take over the leadership of the Soviet Union. Khrushchev's victory guaranteed the superiority of the party leaders over other figures in the state, solidified his own power, and gave him control of the regime.
Therefore, after Stalin's death, a power struggle between figures in high positions unfolded for years. These figures possessed informal power through their networks within the Stalinist regime and their closeness to Stalin himself, as well as formal power and authority through their positions at the head of institutions with constitutionally privileged positions. While many people want to rise during the uncertain years of succession, only a limited circle of high-ranking political elites have the necessary informal connections and formal authority to be part of the selection committee.
Blocked development
In the post-Stalin power struggle, Russia’s formal constitutional order served as the framework within which the informal political struggle for influence played out. The same is likely to happen in the post-Putin succession. Similar figures to those who fought for power after Stalin’s death are likely to be the key players in the period between Putin’s withdrawal from the political scene and the formal election of a new top executive. These are people who possess both institutional authority and strong personal networks, not just one or the other.
The list of political figures who have both the power and authority to be part of the post-Putin selection committee is short. It includes the speakers of the lower and upper houses of parliament; the prime minister; the head of the presidential administration, equivalent to Putin’s chief of staff; the secretaries of the State Council and the Security Council; the head of the security service, known as the FSB; the defense minister; and, less likely, other figures, including the finance minister and the head of the Constitutional Court.
Negotiations to find Putin’s successor will be determined by who holds these key institutional positions at the moment when the succession question becomes a real one. It is difficult to predict who exactly will enter the fray and who will remain on the sidelines until Putin leaves office, but personnel decisions made much earlier will determine who even has a chance of entering the race. Because Putin’s elderly allies still hold these positions, they are already shaping the succession process, crowding out future contenders, and they themselves may remain in power as the transition unfolds.
However, relatively young figures who are more motivated by the prospect of becoming the next leader than simply preserving their current privileges will have an advantage. A rumor is currently circulating among Russian journalists that the 53-year-old Secretary of the State Council and Putin’s former bodyguard Alexei Dyumin could be a potential successor. So could the Speaker of Parliament Vyacheslav Volodin, 62, and Mishustin, 60. It is also possible that it could be the 64-year-old First Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration, Sergei Kiriyenko, who is one of Putin’s domestic policy advisers and is believed to have a wide personal network.
But then the selectorate is aging considerably. The ongoing stagnation at the top of Putin’s regime has distorted the natural patterns of growth at its lower levels. Lacking advancement opportunities, a generation of potential leaders in their 50s and 60s has been relegated to deputy posts, pushed into less influential gubernatorial positions, or stuck in ministries far from the centers of power. A similar pattern exists in the Russian military: the General Staff officers who direct the war effort are elderly and protected from retirement, even though many of the field commanders are considerably younger.
The slowdown in natural growth is so severe that the children of the aging Russian elite are being appointed to their own bureaucratic positions, skipping an intervening generation. The son of presidential adviser Nikolai Patrushev, the son of billionaire banker Yuri Kovalchuk, and a younger cousin of Putin, for example, have become ministers or deputy heads, rocketing to influential positions with little prior training. This creates tension among members of the Russian political class and can fuel internal discontent as established officials are passed over for promotion. Every year that Putin maintains a tight gerontocracy at the helm of Russia’s most powerful institutions increases the likelihood of generational conflict.
The Young and the Impatient
The way a country allows rising generations to climb the political ladder is crucial to maintaining regime stability. Gradual renewal of the top jobs gives the most ambitious members of the emerging elite a reason to invest in the regime, build friendships and alliances with long-time insiders, and earn the trust of those who influence decision-making. But if younger officials are consistently sidelined, the system can become unsustainable. The old elite will become increasingly weak, which will sooner or later lead to a series of vacancies.
When these unplanned and relatively sudden transitions occur, they will elevate people who have never interacted with the existing power holders, have little mutual trust among themselves, and have a tenuous grip on the institutions they are supposed to lead. Underlings, long stunted in their development and lacking managerial experience, will be suddenly thrust into these roles—or the suddenly vacant position will trigger a struggle between disgruntled members of the elite who will try to push each other out of the way. This is a recipe for potential chaos and could lead to dangerous mistakes during the delicate process of coordinating the transfer of power.
In other words, the longer Russia’s gerontocratic elite sits at the helm of institutions that have political legitimacy, constitutional significance, and access to resources and loyal supporters, the less likely an orderly transition to the next president will be. Those who believe they are best placed to run Russia after Putin will be squeezed out by others who have waited too long in the background but never acquired the skills to run a country.
Even if Putin remains healthy, any potential reshuffle in his inner circle will become a target for a multitude of people vying for a single coveted spot on the eventual selection panel. In a generation marked by disillusionment and dissatisfaction, the pressure to seize every opportunity is mounting. Instead of clarity and stability, the future of Russian politics will reflect the consequences of the seemingly immortal regime that Putin has built.