{"id":50065,"date":"2022-10-19T13:04:53","date_gmt":"2022-10-19T11:04:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/libmod.de\/?p=50065"},"modified":"2022-10-24T21:54:52","modified_gmt":"2022-10-24T19:54:52","slug":"whither-russia-ralf-fuecks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libmod.de\/en\/whither-russia-ralf-fuecks\/","title":{"rendered":"Whither Russia? A defeat in Ukraine is a chance for renewal"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Putin-Poster opposite the Russian Embassy in Riga; IMAGO<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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It is time to think about a Russia after Putin. If defeated in Ukraine, condi\u00adtions 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 author\u00adi\u00adtarian rule.<\/h2>\n

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This year, Memorial, Russia\u2019s oldest and most important human rights organi\u00adzation, finally received the long overdue Nobel Peace Prize. The satis\u00adfaction is mixed with bitterness. The award comes at a time when Russia has turned into a sinister war dicta\u00adtorship at the speed of light. Memorial has been dissolved by court order, its buildings confis\u00adcated, its accounts frozen. What a collapse from the hopeful beginning of 1987, in the period of glasnost<\/em> and perestroika<\/em>. 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 dissi\u00addents and a new gener\u00adation of histo\u00adrians and human rights activists. The first chairman was the legendary Andrei Sakharov.<\/p>

\"Portrait<\/p>\n

Ralf F\u00fccks<\/a> is managing director of the Center for Liberal Modernity.<\/p><\/div>\n

I first came into contact with Memorial in 1997 through the Heinrich B\u00f6ll-Foundation, which I headed at the time. This turned into 25 years of cordial cooper\u00adation. We talked our heads off and made plans. There was one common expec\u00adtation above all: democracy in Russia is possible, the path to a common Europe is open. The contrast with today could hardly be greater.<\/p>\n

Putin\u2019s \u201cmanaged democracy\u201d was a ruse<\/h2>\n

Disil\u00adlu\u00adsionment did not come overnight. By 2005 at the latest, the beginning of Putin\u2019s second term, Russia\u2019s liberal spirits were once again on the defensive. Putin\u2019s \u201cmanaged democracy\u201d was only a cover for author\u00adi\u00adtarian 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 Khodor\u00adkovsky and the break-up of his Yukos corpo\u00adration in 2003. Anyone who was too independent was elimi\u00adnated or forced to kowtow.<\/p>\n

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 univer\u00adsities were curbed with measures like the \u201cforeign agents\u201d laws, internet censorship, the perse\u00adcution of the opposition, the treatment of criticism of the regime as a criminal offence and the abuse of the \u201cGreat Patriotic War\u201d as a key source of legit\u00adimacy for the Putin regime.<\/p>\n

The growing internal repression was followed by a turn to external aggression. The inter\u00advention 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 annex\u00adation of Crimea, the military inter\u00advention in Syria, in many ways a prelim\u00adinary 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 devel\u00adoping under Putin. Well-founded studies describe the \u201cPutin system\u201d as a combi\u00adnation of a mafia-style kleptocracy, whose elite enriches itself without limits, and a secret service regime that perceives the disin\u00adte\u00adgration of the Soviet Union as a moment of the worst humil\u00adi\u00adation. The goal is the empire\u2019s restoration.<\/p>\n

The uninhibited violence of Russian warfare, the hate propa\u00adganda 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 fright\u00adening lack of empathy with Ukraine come from, although eleven to twelve million Russian families have family ties with their supposedly \u201cbrotherly country\u201d? Was it only unfor\u00adtunate circum\u00adstances that caused the country to turn back towards author\u00adi\u00adtar\u00adi\u00adanism and imperial power politics after the collapse of the USSR? Or does a struc\u00adtural legacy stand in the way of all attempts at democratization?<\/p>\n

The answer to these questions is polit\u00adi\u00adcally relevant. In recent weeks, the scenario of a Russian defeat in Ukraine has become a possi\u00adbility \u2014 provided the West is not intim\u00adi\u00addated by Putin\u2019s threat\u00adening nuclear gestures. Most experts agree that Putin would not survive long after a humil\u00adi\u00adating withdrawal of Russian troops. But what then?<\/p>\n

Hardly anyone dares to make predic\u00adtions about a possible power change in Moscow. The internal balance of power is even less trans\u00adparent 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.<\/p>\n

The three basic scenarios are:<\/p>\n