How to Read the Network

A short, plain-English guide to what you're seeing — power, connections, and the people at the centre of it all.

This isn't a sociology paper or a code manual. If you read Russian politics news, you already know most of the people here — Putin, Sechin, Kovalchuk, the security services, the big state companies. The network just puts all of that into one map, and the maths behind it answers a simple question: who is genuinely at the centre of things, and who is really on the edge looking in?

The two ingredients

Every map is made of just two things:

Nodes — the dots. Each one is a person, a government body, a company, or a party. Colours tell you which is which:
- Person — an individual, past or present.
- Government / Ministry — an institution of the state: the Presidential Administration, the Security Council, a ministry.
- Company — a firm, a bank, a holding.
- Party — United Russia and its kin.
Edges — the lines. Each line is a relationship: is a son of, was Minister under, owns, sat on the same board as, attended the same meeting as.

The rule of thumb: the more lines converge on a dot, the more routes lead through it — and in a system like this one, routes through you usually mean leverage over others.

What “centrality” really means

The map's headline number — centrality — is a way of turning “who seems well-connected” into an exact figure. Think of it as everyone else's shortest path. If you are a single point that most people pass through to reach anyone else, your centrality is high. If you float off at the edge with few connections, it is low.

Imagine the network as a load-bearing structure. Centrality measures how much of the building's weight rests on each pillar. A pillar under the roof's centre carries enormous load; a strut near the door carries almost none — even if both are visible.

What it tells you about Russia specifically

This map is not random, and the shapes it makes are signatures of how the system is organised:

One dominant centre. A handful of nodes — the President, key state companies, the top security bodies — sit at the middle. Links of all types funnel into them. That is the classic shape of a hub-and-spoke system: a few points hold the system together, and most else connects through them rather than around them.
Family as structure. Some of the strongest ties here are blood. The children, spouses, and siblings of the inner circle are nodes in their own right. The network treats a son as exactly what he often is: a bridge into the same pool of money and favour.
Companies as the mechanism. Russian state power rarely stops at office walls. Oil, gas, banking, and rail giants sit at or near the centre because that is where the money, the jobs, and the political debts actually move. An edge from a minister to a CEO can say more than an edge from a minister to a ministry.
One event can light up the whole map. In the full graph, a single large meeting node can sit near the centre because the whole business elite attended it — making everyone there a few steps closer together. (The centrality table shows only individuals, but this shared-room effect is exactly why so many people in it rank high.) That is a real signal: shared rooms, shared company.

How to use the table and search

Top Centrality on the toolbar opens a ranked list of individuals (the blue-circle nodes) only. The number in the % of top node column is that person's score as a share of the most-central individual — currently Vladimir Putin — so you can see at a glance whether someone is at 80% or at 2% of the top.

Type a name in the search box and the list narrows to matching people, with their rank shown against the top of the list. Type “Sechin”, “Kudrin”, or “Lavrov” and you'll land on them instantly.

Worked examples

Vladimir Putin — the national centre of gravity. Nearly every institution, official, and appointment route traces back to him, so his centrality is among the highest in the map on any measure.

Sergei Shoigu / Sergei Lavrov — sitting members of the Security Council. Their lines to the Council, the Government, and the President pull them close to the centre without them being the centre themselves.

A board seat vs. a family tie — look at how strength of tie is drawn: a “son of” line usually out-ranks a “sat on a board with” line. That is the map's way of saying blood carries more load than a corporate seat.

What it does not tell you

Be honest about the limits. Centrality measures network position, not actual power, friendship, or money. A node can be central because it is genuinely decisive, or because we happen to document its connections better. And this is a model built from open sources — some ties are public knowledge, some are not, and the invisible ones don't appear. Read it as a well-informed map, not as final truth.

Glossary

Node: A single dot — a person, body, company, or party.
Edge: A single relationship between two nodes.
Centrality: How much of the network's traffic passes through a node — a measure of how “in the middle” it is.
Hub-and-spoke: A shaped system where a few central points connect many others.
Closeness: A tie's stated strength (1–5) — how load-bearing that relationship is drawn.

A human-readable guide · Part of the Russia Politics Analysis network project.