Traitors: Russia’s Interrupted Opposition Reckoning with the 1990s

2024, Maria Pevchikh and Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation released Traitors, a provocative documentary series asking how Russia’s democratic opening of the 1990s ended in Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian regime. The film places much of the blame on the political and economic elites surrounding Boris Yeltsin, focusing on corruption, privatization and the rise of the oligarchs, the controversial 1996 presidential election, and ultimately the choice of Putin as Yeltsin’s successor. Drawing on the intense debate the documentary provoked within Russia’s opposition, Gulnaz Sharafutdinova will examine this attempted reckoning with the 1990s and why it matters for Russia’s future. She will explore competing interpretations of a decade remembered simultaneously as a period of democratic possibility and profound economic and social upheaval, and ask whether Russia’s opposition can develop a persuasive account of both what went wrong and what should be done differently should another opportunity for political transformation arise