Silovik

In the Russian political context, the siloviki (Russian: силовики́; sing. silovik, силови́к) are a group of officials originating in the 1990s from the state-security organs, the armed forces, and law-enforcement structures who have occupied positions in the highest echelons of state power in the Russian Federation. Agencies classified as part of the "power ministries" include the Federal Security Service (FSB), the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD), the Ministry of Defence, the National Guard (Rosgvardiya), and other structures vested with the authority to use force and charged with functions of defense, state security, and public order. The term is not codified in Russian legislation and is used primarily in political science and journalistic literature as an analytical category describing a segment of the elite professionally socialized within institutions of coercion and security and retaining corporate ties after transitioning to civilian governmental positions. The emergence of the siloviki as an autonomous segment of the political class is associated with institutional transformations following the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the reorganization of Soviet state-security organs. In the first half of the 1990s, the structure of Russian power was characterized by competition among the presidential administration, parliament, regional elites, and economic groups formed during privatization. Representatives of the power ministries held posts within the state apparatus but did not constitute the predominant component of the ruling stratum and did not control the principal channels of property distribution and economic resources. During this period, their institutional role was defined by the performance of security functions, while economic and administrative actors retained relative autonomy. In the second half of the 1990s, the balance among elite groups shifted under the impact of political and military crises. Key events included the constitutional crisis of 1993, which culminated in the use of armed force in Moscow; the First...