Whither Russia? A defeat in Ukraine is a chance for renewal

It is time to think about a Russia after Putin. If defeated in Ukraine, condi­tions in the country will also change. Whether for the better or the worse is an open question. Without a departure from the imperial delusion, Russia will remain in the eternal vicious circle of war politics and author­i­tarian rule.

This year, Memorial, Russia’s oldest and most important human rights organi­zation, finally received the long overdue Nobel Peace Prize. The satis­faction is mixed with bitterness. The award comes at a time when Russia has turned into a sinister war dicta­torship at the speed of light. Memorial has been dissolved by court order, its buildings confis­cated, its accounts frozen. What a collapse from the hopeful beginning of 1987, in the period of glasnost and perestroika. The Soviet Union still existed, but it was opening up to come to terms with the past and think about the future. Memorial built a bridge between the old Soviet dissi­dents and a new gener­ation of histo­rians and human rights activists. The first chairman was the legendary Andrei Sakharov.

I first came into contact with Memorial in 1997 through the Heinrich Böll-Foundation, which I headed at the time. This turned into 25 years of cordial cooper­ation. We talked our heads off and made plans. There was one common expec­tation above all: democracy in Russia is possible, the path to a common Europe is open. The contrast with today could hardly be greater.

Putin’s “managed democracy” was a ruse

Disil­lu­sionment did not come overnight. By 2005 at the latest, the beginning of Putin’s second term, Russia’s liberal spirits were once again on the defensive. Putin’s “managed democracy” was only a cover for author­i­tarian restoration. Members of the security services occupied key positions in the state and the economy, and the return to a state-controlled economy was in full swing. A key event was the arrest of Mikhail Khodor­kovsky and the break-up of his Yukos corpo­ration in 2003. Anyone who was too independent was elimi­nated or forced to kowtow.

Since then, it has been one blow after the other: power was centralized, the party system and parliament were brought into line, as were the media and the judiciary. The remaining freedoms in civil society, in culture and univer­sities were curbed with measures like the “foreign agents” laws, internet censorship, the perse­cution of the opposition, the treatment of criticism of the regime as a criminal offence and the abuse of the “Great Patriotic War” as a key source of legit­imacy for the Putin regime.

The growing internal repression was followed by a turn to external aggression. The inter­vention in Georgia of 2008 was a warning signal that the West did not want to hear. This was followed by the first Ukraine war in 2014, the annex­ation of Crimea, the military inter­vention in Syria, in many ways a prelim­inary exercise for the second Ukraine war. Only now does this open the eyes of those who did not want to see the direction in which Russia was devel­oping under Putin. Well-founded studies describe the “Putin system” as a combi­nation of a mafia-style kleptocracy, whose elite enriches itself without limits, and a secret service regime that perceives the disin­te­gration of the Soviet Union as a moment of the worst humil­i­ation. The goal is the empire’s restoration.

The uninhibited violence of Russian warfare, the hate propa­ganda in the state media and the ruthless suppression of all internal opposition raises unpleasant questions. What kind of Russia are we dealing with today and in the foreseeable future? Where does the fright­ening lack of empathy with Ukraine come from, although eleven to twelve million Russian families have family ties with their supposedly “brotherly country”? Was it only unfor­tunate circum­stances that caused the country to turn back towards author­i­tar­i­anism and imperial power politics after the collapse of the USSR? Or does a struc­tural legacy stand in the way of all attempts at democratization?

The answer to these questions is polit­i­cally relevant. In recent weeks, the scenario of a Russian defeat in Ukraine has become a possi­bility — provided the West is not intim­i­dated by Putin’s threat­ening nuclear gestures. Most experts agree that Putin would not survive long after a humil­i­ating withdrawal of Russian troops. But what then?

Hardly anyone dares to make predic­tions about a possible power change in Moscow. The internal balance of power is even less trans­parent to outsiders than it was in the final phase of the Soviet Union. The only thing that is clear is that Putin still has absolute power. How a change could take place and who could succeed the president remains speculative.

The three basic scenarios are:

• Putin is replaced by a figure from the current inner circle of power who promises conti­nuity and stability.
• The military and political “humil­i­ation” in Ukraine leads to a chauvinist radical­ization of the regime. This would mean even harsher repression inter­nally, tough confrontation with the West and increased aggres­siveness externally.
• After an unstable transition, new elections are held. The call for a new beginning brings a united opposition into government. As of today, Alexei Navalny would be their most attractive candidate.

Even this best-case scenario would by no means guarantee a rapid transition to a democ­ratic consti­tu­tional state. The democ­ratic opposition in Russia is too atomized, state insti­tu­tions are too rotten, the potential for violence is too great, and cynicism, indif­ference and author­i­tarian attitudes are too widespread in Russian society. Any new government will face the challenges of an economic model completely geared to the export of fossil fuels and endemic corruption. Market-based reforms have been discredited since the 1990s social crash. Russia is facing econom­i­cally difficult years ahead.

How much support would a new attempt at democracy have among the population? The current infor­mation reaching us from Russia is contra­dictory. Independent observers estimate that about 15 to 20 percent oppose the war against Ukraine, even if relatively few openly oppose it. This roughly corre­sponds to the size of the liberal-democ­ratic milieu that polls have identified. It is concen­trated above all in the big cities.

Opposed to it is a milieu at least as large that fully supports the war or even pushes for its inten­si­fi­cation. This section of society clings to Great Russian imperi­alist and stridently anti-liberal ideas. In between, there seems to be a broad spectrum of people who legit­imize the war or are indif­ferent. The majority of Russian society is depoliti­cized, passive and focused on somehow managing its own life.

Russia’s farewell to empire

Since the arbitrary forced recruitment of conscripted men, there are growing signs of disil­lu­sionment. Hundreds of thousands have fled to neigh­bouring countries to avoid conscription. This is not a sign of democ­ratic sentiment but shows that the jingoism in state media is not catching on in large sections of society.

Russia is at a historic cross­roads. What is at stake is nothing more and nothing less than a farewell to empire, a second phase of de-coloni­sation after the implosion of the Soviet Union. Why should Russia not be expected to accept what Germany, the Habsburg Empire, France and Britain had to put up with — in the end to their good fortune? The Kremlin must give up its claim to power over the post-Soviet space. Only then can Russia become a good neighbour. To what extent the process of de-coloni­sation will also encompass the country’s inner periphery – like the North Caucasus — is an open question.

The alter­native would be a slide into even shriller great power chauvinism, accom­panied by aggressive paranoia: all against us, us against all, especially the West. The invasion of Ukraine is along these lines. As long as Russia clings to the imperial delusion, there will be no stable peace in Europe — and no chance for internal democratization.

Russia’s defeat on Ukraine is a necessary but not suffi­cient condition for renewal. It also requires a painful confrontation with its own history of violence, both inter­nally and exter­nally, the devel­opment of a civic consciousness of rights and duties, respect for the law, and profound reforms of the prison system and the army as hotbeds of violence. This process will take time, and it can only be influ­enced from the outside to a limited extent.

What we can do is, first of all, provide decisive political, military and financial support to Ukraine in defending its indepen­dence and liber­ating its territory. Secondly, Russia’s democ­ratic forces need our solidarity in building exile struc­tures. This includes supporting Russian media in Europe, which form a democ­ratic counter-public to Putin’s propa­ganda apparatus.

The EU should promote media projects that also reach the Russian-speaking population in neigh­bouring countries. Third, as long as Russia continues its author­i­tarian and neo-imperial course, we cannot avoid a deter­mined policy of containment and deter­rence. This requires the strength­ening of common European defence within the framework of NATO — including Ukraine.

At present, the prospects for a political-moral renewal of Russia seem rather bleak. However, it is in the nature of autocratic systems that change is abrupt rather than linear. Military defeats have always been the mother of reforms and revolu­tions in Russia.

The German original of this text appeared as an Op-Ed in the weekly Der Spiegel on 12 October.