Financial Sovereignty and Authoritarian Resilience in the Post-Soviet Space: Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan after 2014
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Abstract
This article examines how financial sovereignty functions as a mechanism of regime adaptation in Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan from the 1990s to 2024. Using the framework of sovereign circuits and temporal sovereignty, the study situates financial strategies within broader questions of post-Soviet democratization. Russia’s response to sanctions illustrates how authoritarian resilience can be reinforced through sovereign reserves, ruble-based circuits, and temporal design of industrial policy. Belarus exemplifies proxy-sovereignty, relying on Russian subsidies and dual-circuit mechanisms that sustain regime stability but deepen dependency. Kazakhstan demonstrates a hybrid strategy, oscillating between external anchors and national industrial ambitions. The findings suggest that financial sovereignty is not merely an economic condition but a political resource: regimes use it to reconfigure dependency, extend planning horizons, and buffer external coercion. The article contributes to debates on authoritarian durability by showing how post-Soviet states re-engineer financial time and circuits as instruments of governance under global systemic constraints.
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