A Social Network of Russian "Kompromat"

TL;DR

This study constructs and analyzes a social network of 11,000 individuals affected by kompromat in Russia from 1991 to 2020, revealing community structures and key central figures including Vladimir Putin.

Contribution

It introduces a large-scale social network analysis of kompromat, identifying community structures and central figures, including a community related to US interference and prominent individuals.

Findings

The network has 62 dense communities.

Vladimir Putin is the most central figure.

A community related to US interference in 2016 was identified.

Abstract

"Kompromat" (the Russian word for "compromising material") has been efficiently used to harass Russian political and business elites since the days of the USSR. Online crowdsourcing projects such as "RuCompromat" made it possible to catalog and analyze kompromat using quantitative techniques -- namely, social network analysis. In this paper, we constructed a social network of 11,000 Russian and foreign nationals affected by kompromat in Russia in 1991 -- 2020. The network has an excellent modular structure with 62 dense communities. One community contains prominent American officials, politicians, and entrepreneurs (including President Donald Trump) and appears to concern Russia's controversial interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections. Various network centrality measures identify seventeen most central kompromat figures, with President Vladimir Putin solidly at the top. We further reveal four types of communities dominated by entrepreneurs, politicians, bankers, and law enforcement officials ("siloviks"), the latter disjointed from the first three.