Good Czar, bad boyars: the political economy of Russian war propaganda

Abstract Fall 2022 was marked by a dramatic change in Russian information space. After months of boasting about the military campaign in Ukraine, Kremlin propagandists admitted certain military defeats and began to blame senior military command. I explain the change by reference to propaganda, asymmetric information, and informational autocrats. The propagandists could not conceal the defeats because war bloggers and military barons were disseminating information while mobilization was signaling lack of military progress, both of which reduced information asymmetries. Meanwhile, mobilization imposed costs on the public and incentivized increased monitoring of the war, threatening to undermine support of Putin, Russia’s informational autocrat. In response, Putin’s regime successfully shifted blame to military command, enabled by information asymmetries regarding the actions and structure of the military, which prevented the public from holding Putin accountable.