zastoy<\/em>) \u2013 making it a much less repressive era than the 1950s and 1960s. The two attempts of restoring more hardline policies \u2013 the Andropov-Chernenko era of 1983\u20131984 and the August 1991 coup attempt by Communist party hardliners (both episodes probably resemble Putin\u2019s conser\u00adv\u00adative restoration) both failed due to a visible lack of resources to sustain repressive policies.<\/p>\nThe August 1991 coup is remarkable in this regard. This was a clear attempt to scrap the perestroika policy of liber\u00adal\u00adization and to sharply radicalize the regime exactly in the same way that many pundits fear a possible post-Putin scenario. The coup failed miserably, to a large extent because most actors \u2013 including most members of the elite \u2013 simply did not believe that the self-declared State Committee on the State of Emergency could sustain the troubled social and economic situation in deep inter\u00adna\u00adtional isolation, and chose not to back it (to do nothing often is a very effective way to assist regime collapse).<\/p>\n
Essen\u00adtially, the period of relative tight\u00adening 1983\u20131984 was followed by liber\u00adal\u00adization and perestroika for similar reasons \u2013 the Communist party rulers under\u00adstood that they simply had no suffi\u00adcient resources to sustain the hardline policies, while changing course offered signif\u00adicant benefits. The burden of protracted war in Afghanistan also played a role: it forced even hardliners like Andropov to seek a way out as early as 1982, when the then freshly elected Communist Party leader sought talks with Pakistani leader Zia-ul-Haq during Brezh\u00adnev\u2019s funeral. Gorbachev\u2019s liber\u00adal\u00adization course, which began in 1985, was not an impromptu decision but had been brewing within the ruling circles for some time.<\/p>\n
However imperi\u00adal\u00adistic some Russian political leaders may seem at this moment, they are capable of under\u00adstanding the cost-benefit analysis of hardline policies vs. liber\u00adal\u00adization. The rational choice is clear. The only thing which holds back the softening of policies is Putin\u2019s personal worldview and his preju\u00addices after nearly a quarter of a century in power. Removing this constraint will be a signif\u00adicant factor stimu\u00adlating liber\u00adal\u00adization, not further radicalization.<\/p>\n
Second<\/strong>, there is almost no popular demand for radical\u00adization in Russian society. Parties with radical agendas never fared well in Russian politics during the past three decades. Even the ruling United Russia party, which dominates politics, presents itself as the \u201cmoderate\u201d alter\u00adnative to others. Public support for Vladimir Putin was always based on the notion of resisting the prospects of more radical forces coming to power. Even in the current environment, with all the anti-Western public attitude, the majority of Russians would say that they prefer normal\u00adization of relations with the West over protracted confrontation \u2013 and such a majority has been solid over many years. While a majority of Russians say in the polls that they support Putin\u2019s war against Ukraine (\u201cspecial operation\u201d in official phrase\u00adology), about 80 per cent of \u201csupporters\u201d use defensive, not offensive, narra\u00adtives to justify their stance: either they claim that Ukraine was committing genocide against the Russian-speaking population in Donbas, or that \u201cUkraine\u2019s potential NATO accession was a military threat to Russia\u201d. Both narra\u00adtives are untrue, but state propa\u00adganda was quite successful in promoting them.<\/p>\nEven at the height of imperi\u00adalist fever in society, openly imperi\u00adalist parties like Nikolai Starikov\u2019s Fatherland or Yevgeny Fyodorov\u2019s National Liber\u00adation Movement (known by its Russian acronym NOD) are neither visible in the polls, nor are they gathering signif\u00adicant grassroot support \u2013 their rallies attract no more than hundreds of people \u2013 nothing compared to the six-digit turnout at opposition rallies of recent years. Well-known imperi\u00adalist pundit Alexander Dugin has tried for over 30 years to build a political party or movement, but never succeeded; his rallies never gathered more than 1,000\u20132,000 partic\u00adi\u00adpants, which can be easily tracked on Youtube.<\/p>\n
Third<\/strong>, as said above, Putin\u2019s elites are overwhelm\u00adingly oppor\u00adtunistic, and hardline \u201cayatollahs\u201d like Security Council Secretary Patrushev are a minority.<\/p>\nSo, neither history, society nor the elites offer any serious indication that Russia is headed towards radical\u00adization in the future.<\/p>\n
The Russian post-imperial syndrome is greatly overvalued and bloated by pundits. Of course, it exists to some extent, but in the early 2000s, Russians were visibly happy with their position in the world, public views of the West were predom\u00adi\u00adnantly positive, people were busy with enjoying unprece\u00addented economic growth and integration with the outside world. Some post-imperial resentment did exist, but arguably to a much lesser extent than in, say, post-imperial Britain or France. For until 2014 and the annex\u00adation of Crimea, restoration of empire was never a factor in public politics \u2013 even the moderate success of nation\u00adalist Rodina party at the 2003 State Duma elections, where it received 9 per cent of the vote, was largely driven by its anti-oligarchic social agenda rather than by nation\u00adalist slogans. The far-right \u201cRussian marches\u201d, usually held on November 4th<\/sup>, attracted signif\u00adi\u00adcantly smaller crowds than pro-democracy rallies \u2013 not to mention that maybe half of all Russian nation\u00adalists are anti-imperi\u00adalist and many of them have been fighting in Ukraine against Russia since 2014.<\/p>\nThe current post-imperial sentiment is mainly due to 20 years of massive propa\u00adganda and while it has resulted in Russians being ready to repeat TV narra\u00adtives, they are not likely to do anything to help \u201crestore the empire\u201d. Efforts to mobilize signif\u00adicant volunteer manpower to fight against Ukraine since 2014 failed miserably; the \u201cpartial mobilization\u201d announced by Putin in September 2022 was the de-facto admission that attempts to recruit large numbers of volun\u00adteers for the war had failed.<\/p>\n
When speaking about potential future radical\u00adization of Russia, commen\u00adtators often mention the paramil\u00aditary units under the command of thugs like Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner mercenary group, or Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov. But these people have no weight in the Russian decision-making system; the combined manpower of their armed personnel barely exceeds 20,000, which is not nearly suffi\u00adcient to seize power, because it is nothing compared to the state security apparatus.<\/p>\n
As a matter of fact, the emergence of this type of non-government ultra-conser\u00adv\u00adative paramil\u00aditary units \u2013 so-called Black Hundreds (\u0447\u0435\u0440\u043d\u043e\u0441\u043e\u0442\u0435\u043d\u0446\u044b<\/em>) \u2013 is usually the sign of a faltering empire, when the central government feels that it is no longer capable of maintaining control without the assis\u00adtance of non-state paramil\u00aditary units terror\u00adizing the domestic population and outsiders. Both in the early 20th<\/sup> century and in the late 1980s, Russian paramil\u00aditary groups proved unable to save the crumbling empire. The ultra\u00adna\u00adtion\u00adalist Russian National Unity movement (known by its Russian acronym RNE) and its forerunner Pamyat<\/em> (Memory) never managed to establish themselves as popular political forces. The conser\u00adv\u00adative restoration in Russia under Putin happened as a top-down exercise pushed from the rulers, not as a grassroot bottom-up movement.<\/p>\nTo sum up \u2013 while radical forces do exist in the modern Russian political spectrum, it will be extremely hard for them to (1) get a grip on power, given limited armed personnel and lack of incli\u00adnation of the society to support radicals; and (2) lead Russia towards any kind of political, social and economic success \u2014 their headwinds will be enormous, while their resources for maintaining a radical regime are very limited. Even if they somehow manage to declare themselves rulers of Russia, they will fall into an August-1991 style putsch trap \u2013 society will not believe in their success, and they will lack active support.<\/p>\n
Scenario II \u2013 Democ\u00adratic Change<\/h3>\n Most of the analysis suggesting that lasting democ\u00adratic change will be impos\u00adsible in Russia is based on wrong assump\u00adtions and actually ignores basic facts on the ground.<\/p>\n
First<\/strong>, there are the refer\u00adences to the flawed democ\u00adratic exper\u00adiment of the 1990s. It is very strange to assume that if a nation was unable to build a functioning democracy after just one attempt, it will never be able to do this again. Just one attempt is obviously not enough to draw fatal\u00adistic conclu\u00adsions. Moreover, on closer inspection, Russia\u2019s democ\u00adratic exper\u00adiment of the 1990s was not at all that unsuc\u00adcessful as widely perceived by critics. By historical standards, it was relatively successful because Russia remained a partially free country for about 15 years (it was ranked \u201cpartly free\u201d by Freedom House until 2005). Such a lasting period of democracy has never happened in modern Russian history. Russian democracy was built under extremely difficult condi\u00adtions \u2013 the collapse of the Soviet economy was arguably the worst economic failure since the beginning of the indus\u00adtrial age, and the price of oil, Russia\u2019s main export commodity, was just $16,70 per barrel on average during the years of Boris Yeltsin\u2019s presidency.<\/p>\nThe current dicta\u00adtorship in Russia was estab\u00adlished as a swift and coordi\u00adnated power grab on the background of strong economic growth in the early 2000s, not as a result of delib\u00aderate un-democ\u00adratic choice by the Russian people. Russians have always resisted the restoration of autocracy, and the pro-democracy movement has over the past years been visibly far stronger in terms of street protest potential than all the country\u2019s other political forces. The 1990s created spaces of freedom that were never fully elimi\u00adnated by Putin even after two decades of repres\u00adsions. Pro-democracy politi\u00adcians, intel\u00adlec\u00adtuals, and ordinary citizens remain in the country in signif\u00adicant numbers, and their hour will come. Without the 1990s, the estab\u00adlishment of a signif\u00adicant pro-democracy movement in Putin\u2019s Russia would not have been possible.<\/p>\n
It is funda\u00admen\u00adtally wrong to make deter\u00administ conclu\u00adsions about Russian society based on the diffi\u00adculties of the 1990s and the subse\u00adquent imposition of authoritarianism.<\/p>\n
Second<\/strong>, from a historic stand\u00adpoint, Russian society has always sought democracy, only to be quelled by brutally oppressive dicta\u00adtor\u00adships. The last decades of Tsarist Russia were dominated by demands for political liber\u00adal\u00adization, for a consti\u00adtution that limits the powers of monarchy, and for a transition to a parlia\u00admentary republic (brilliantly summa\u00adrized by historian Orlando Figes in his book \u201cA People\u2019s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891\u20131924\u201d). After the monarchy fell, Russians enthu\u00adsi\u00adas\u00adti\u00adcally elected the Constituent Assembly with a non-Bolshevik majority, only to see it force\u00adfully quashed by the losing Bolsheviks, who subse\u00adquently estab\u00adlished the Soviet Union on the basis of terri\u00adtories seized by the Red Army by force, not according to the free will of its peoples. When the Soviet system gradually moderated after Stalin\u2019s death, signs of popular demand for democ\u00adratic change were obvious, from Khrushchev\u2019s thaw to Gorbachev\u2019s perestroika, ultimately culmi\u00adnating in the majority of Russians voting for the pro-democracy forces in 1990\u20131991 and accepting the peaceful disso\u00adlution of the Soviet Union in 1991 without any meaningful protests.<\/p>\nThere is consid\u00aderable evidence that Russians in general are in strong favor of a much more democ\u00adratic gover\u00adnance system than Putin\u2019s<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Third<\/strong>, from a more modern perspective, the genuine bottom-up demand for democracy from Russian society has never gone away. While the majority of Russians currently say that they do not favor Western-style democracy as a role model for their country (disclaimer: 20 years of propa\u00adganda also has something to do with this), there is consid\u00aderable evidence that Russians in general are in strong favor of a much more democ\u00adratic gover\u00adnance system than Putin\u2019s. For the past 18 years since Putin abolished direct guber\u00adna\u00adtorial elections, about two thirds of Russians consis\u00adtently supported the restoration of direct popular elections of regional governors, city mayors, heads of local districts without any admin\u00adis\u00adtrative \u201cfilters\u201d. That is a strong public rebuttal of the very founda\u00adtions of the system of gover\u00adnance that Putin has built.<\/p>\nWhenever regional or local politics resulted in (rare) real electoral compe\u00adtition with unpre\u00addictable outcome, voter turnout in those regions greatly surged \u2013 meaning that there is a strong unsat\u00adisfied demand for compet\u00aditive politics. Otherwise, with little or zero electoral compe\u00adtition, voter turnout at all elections plunged to historic lows in recent years \u2013 indicating that Russians do not approve of the totally admin\u00adis\u00adtra\u00adtively managed political system created by Putin.<\/p>\n
In 2020, people all over the far eastern Khabarovsk region protested in large numbers against the dismissal and arrest of the recently elected opposition governor Sergey Furgal. Although Furgal had partic\u00adi\u00adpated in many elections before without ever becoming a particular local hero, people in Khabarovsk voted for him in order to dismantle the dominance of Putin\u2019s United Russia party in the region. Inter\u00adest\u00adingly, the mass protests in Khabarovsk displayed zero imperial and anti-Western slogans, but there was a sizable presence of pro-Belarus (where mass protests erupted at the same time) and even pro-Ukraine slogans \u2014 so much for Russians\u2019 \u201chopeless nationwide imperialism\u201d.<\/p>\nAnti-government protest in Khabarovsk, July 2020; @teamnavalnykhv, Wikicommons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nVarious polls asking Russians on whether they are satisfied or not with the current political order suggest that the majority of people are deeply dissat\u00adisfied with the fact that they have no say on how political decisions are made and that they long for basic rule of law, which was totally destroyed by Putin. In other words, they want democracy.<\/p>\n
Despite brain\u00adwashing and repression, Russians have not lost their basic democ\u00adratic instincts<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The widespread regional protests of recent years on various topics \u2013 often about environ\u00admental issues \u2013 have shown a great ability of Russians to self-organize and defend their rights in defiance of tough pressure from the author\u00adities. Despite brain\u00adwashing and repression, Russians have not lost
There are no notable political forces in Russia that advocate abolishing democracy. Some of those who do \u2013 like Starikov\u2019s Fatherland or Fyodorov\u2019s NOD \u2013 are not visible in the polls, and their rallies gather hundreds of people at best, as said above. The Kremlin pays great attention to maintain the facade of \u201cinclusive democracy\u201d on all levels. The ruling United Russia party holds (absolutely unnec\u00adessary) primaries just to make sure their voters don\u2019t feel like the choice was already made for them. The Commu\u00adnists, who openly sympa\u00adthize for the total\u00adi\u00adtarian Soviet system and often run around with portraits of Stalin, are one of the most active partic\u00adi\u00adpants of campaigns and rallies for free and fair elections and against voter fraud. Direct regional governors\u2019 elections were restored in 2012 as a result of the 2011\u20132012 protests and were never formally canceled again despite permanent rumors. The Putin system doesn\u2019t look like it is capable of totally disman\u00adtling the remains of democ\u00adratic insti\u00adtu\u00adtions \u2013 Putin knows that the population is not going to welcome this. People want to have their say \u2013 they\u2019re not \u201cslaves\u201d and \u201cserfs\u201d as some of the hawks in the West want to portray them.<\/p>\n
Of course, it is a long road from having just basic democ\u00adratic instincts to building a functioning democracy. Partic\u00adu\u00adlarly given Russia\u2019s very limited experience in democ\u00adratic gover\u00adnance, its predatory elites and hard legacy of consec\u00adutive oppressive regimes. But the material to build upon \u2013 basic demand for democracy and clear rejection of the usurpation of power \u2013 is there. It is also worth saying that, generally, the majority of future-oriented Russians \u2013 those hoping to open a business, making a career, getting better education, improving living standards for their families and children \u2013 overwhelm\u00adingly support democ\u00adratic form of gover\u00adnance (more details can be provided). Those who are indif\u00adferent or happy with the centralized rule are quite passive polit\u00adi\u00adcally, tend to drift along with the rulers\u2019 opinions, and are not inclined to independent behavior. In this regard, the position of the active minority can be critical to success \u2013 as was the case many times in other countries.<\/p>\n
As was shown in the recent past, a dysfunc\u00adtional state and economic diffi\u00adculties tend to create a major oppor\u00adtunity for political change. That happened with Russia in the 1980s; the 1990s were another example, when a weak state produced yet another demand for a major reshuf\u00adfling of the political system \u2013 although Putin used the public disap\u00adpointment with the 1990s to strengthen author\u00adi\u00adtarian rule, something the Russian public never demanded and that was a clear overreach. But for the second time in the past 40 years, domestic turmoil produced a major change of the Russian political system.<\/p>\n
As unlikely as it may look in today\u2019s circum\u00adstances, any shift in top power circles will immedi\u00adately produce an opening within society for another democ\u00adratic exper\u00adiment. There is no guarantee for success; moreover, as said above, the ruling elite will contain democ\u00adratic changes for as long as it can. However, several factors can make the next democ\u00adratic exper\u00adiment a success:<\/p>\n
\nThere is signif\u00adicant bottom-up demand for democracy (and recon\u00adcil\u00adi\u00adation with the West) from society, partic\u00adu\u00adlarly from its active, future-oriented part.<\/li>\n It takes enormous resources to contain pro-democracy aspira\u00adtions in society with isolation and repression.<\/li>\n There is vast experience from the 1990s democ\u00adratic exper\u00adiment available, which will be very helpful in avoiding more fatal mistakes, and in correcting the wrongs.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nAgain, success is not guaranteed, but the ground for another attempt to build functioning democracy in Russia is clearly present. Moreover, if Russia remains isolated and deprived of the chance of re-integrating with the democ\u00adratic world, it will most definitely try to regroup, replenish forces, and strike the free world again.<\/p>\n
Most likely, as mentioned above, democ\u00adratic change in Russia will come in two stages, like in Romania after Ceausescu or South Korea after Chun Doo-hwan \u2013 first, the post-Putin elite will try to retain control, but after\u00adwards, a larger pro-democracy movement will emerge, which the new government will find impos\u00adsible to control.<\/p>\n
Why Russia Won\u2019t Disin\u00adte\u00adgrate like the Soviet Union<\/h3>\n There is a lot of specu\u00adlation about the possi\u00adbility of a future break-up of Russia into a number of smaller independent states, similar to what happened with the Soviet Union. However, such assump\u00adtions are largely baseless for several reasons.<\/p>\n
First, the situation is funda\u00admen\u00adtally different between the collapse of the USSR and present-day Russia. The national republics, whose demands for indepen\u00addence acted like a driving force for the Soviet disso\u00adlution, were dominated by their own unique non-Russian ethnic\u00adities, and most of them had experi\u00adenced their own independent statehood in the past, which they simply wanted to restore (the Baltic States, Moldova and Georgia). It is a very different case in Russia, where no region has had independent statehood in the recent past \u2013 and it will be an obvious challenge to establish one.<\/p>\n
Most of Russia\u2019s ethnic republics are dominated by the titular ethnic\u00adities in name only. For instance, in Buryatia, less than 30 per cent of the population are ethnic Buryats \u2013 the largest population group are Russians. In Yakutia, less than 50 per cent of the population are Yakuts, with Russians comprising 40 per cent. In Bashko\u00adr\u00adtostan, ethnic Bashkirs only very recently have slightly overtaken Tatars to move from being the 3rd largest ethnic group to 2nd position, with slightly less than 30 per cent of the local population (Russians remain the largest ethnic group with 36 per cent); in the capital city Ufa, about half of the population are ethnic Russians, while Bashkirs make up just 17 per cent.<\/p>\n
That situation is very different from the breakaway aspira\u00adtions of Soviet republics in the late 1980s.<\/p>\n
When the emergence of independent states on the basis of Russian regions is discussed, one potential breakaway region often mentioned is Tatarstan. Indeed, in the early 1990s, Tatarstan was flirting with the idea of estab\u00adlishing its own statehood. However, if one travels to modern-day Tatarstan, it is very easy to see that the republic has managed to establish a signif\u00adicant degree of autonomy and self-gover\u00adnance under Russian rule \u2013 ranging from economic policy to even substan\u00adtially autonomous foreign relations. The living standards in Tatarstan are signif\u00adi\u00adcantly higher than in neigh\u00adboring regions dominated by ethnic Russians. There are simply not enough motives for Tatarstan to desper\u00adately seek indepen\u00addence \u2013 the republic has managed to establish contractual relations with Russia that let it enjoy a signif\u00adicant degree of autonomy. But should it try to break away, it will immedi\u00adately learn about the diffi\u00adculties of sustaining indepen\u00addence as a landlocked territory within Russia, totally dependent on a many times larger surrounding country for transit and logistics.<\/p>\n
That is the key argument that is often overlooked by those specu\u00adlating about a potential break-up of Russia. Most of the country\u2019s regions are landlocked and have no access to the sea (or at least to developed inter\u00adna\u00adtional marine routes \u2013 the Arctic Ocean is techni\u00adcally a sea, but it is a huge challenge navigating through it, there are hardly any major ports and transport routes). This will be an enormous obstacle to sustaining an independent economy. If Russia remains partly intact, it will create enormous logis\u00adtical and transit diffi\u00adculties for new independent economies.<\/p>\n
If Russia completely breaks apart, without free trade and transit treaties, the situation may spiral into complete protec\u00adtionist chaos. Not to mention that regional borders inside Russia were artifi\u00adcially drawn and are not inter\u00adna\u00adtionally recog\u00adnized (as opposed to the borders of the former Soviet republics), which may add political and conflict chaos and wrangling about which village belongs to whom. There are countless locations where a vital transport or infra\u00adstructure corridor between towns\/\u200bvillages of one region passes through another region; not to mention power infra\u00adstructure, where some power stations supply a number of regions without independent power gener\u00adation and so forth.<\/p>\n
light\u00adweight specu\u00adlation about \u2018saving Russia from collapse in the late 1990s\u2019 has been a corner\u00adstone of baseless Kremlin mythology about Putin\u2019s \u201cunique role in Russian history<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
In fact, there is surpris\u00adingly little detailed analysis both in the West and in Russia about the actual prospects of Russia disin\u00adte\u00adgrating into independent states beyond just pure hollow specu\u00adlation and light\u00adweight compar\u00adisons to the collapse of the USSR. Actually, such light\u00adweight specu\u00adlation about \u201csaving Russia from collapse in the late 1990s\u201d has been a corner\u00adstone of baseless Kremlin mythology about Putin\u2019s \u201cunique role in Russian history\u201d.<\/p>\n
One of the few sober analyses in this regard is an article by US scholar Thomas Graham published in 1999 in \u201cEuropean Security\u201d called \u201cThe prospect of Russian disin\u00adte\u00adgration is low\u201d. The title speaks for itself: Graham correctly argues, among other things, that the landlocked nature of most Russian regions and their lack of access to sea is the key obstacle for sustaining indepen\u00addence. His conclusion is that there is very little risk of separation of most regions from Russia in the future, except probably for the North Caucasus and the Kalin\u00adingrad region.<\/p>\n
Whether this actually may happen or not, the North Caucasus and Kalin\u00adingrad comprise only about one per cent of Russia\u2019s territory, which means that even their separation can hardly be qualified as the country\u2019s \u201cbreak-up and disintegration\u201d.<\/p>\n
Speaking about the North Caucasus, it is worth noting that gener\u00adal\u00adizing the prospect of separation of local republics from Russia with just a reference to the experience of Chechnya in the 1990s is an exagger\u00adation. The North Caucasian republics other than Chechnya have always demon\u00adstrated different attitudes to relations with Russia. That is a lengthy topic, but in general, the popula\u00adtions of these republics do not believe that they will be able to sustain indepen\u00addence without economic support from Moscow, which is why they have always been among the staunchest supporters of centralized power. Both at the Soviet Union refer\u00adendum in March 1991 and in various elections that took place since, the North Caucasian republics have demon\u00adstrated dominating solidarity with the central government in Moscow (Chechnya was the only North Caucasus republic which did not partic\u00adipate in the 1991 referendum).<\/p>\n
There are various reasons for different North Caucasus republics to prefer remaining part of Russia: Ingushetia is afraid of being swallowed by Chechnya; North Ossetia is actually a predom\u00adi\u00adnantly Christian, non-Muslim republic; Dagestan, Karachay-Cherkessia and Kabardino-Balkaria have complex ethnic make-ups and tensions, which risks major conflicts and wars once Russia ceases to be the connecting tissue holding the multi-ethnic balance together.<\/p>\n
Efforts to extrap\u00adolate the 1990s Chechnya breakaway attempt onto the whole Russian North Caucasus seem overblown and ignore the actual context. Despite all cultural differ\u00adences with the rest of Russia, there are no viable separatist movements in these republics. Chechnya is also a very compli\u00adcated case: there was signif\u00adicant opposition to indepen\u00addence in the republic before June 1993, when Dzhokhar Dudayev chose to crush those groups by force; many people in Chechnya would clearly not favor another attempt to turn the republic into a Sharia dicta\u00adtorship (but that is a separate complex topic).<\/p>\n
Another important factor is that, according to the author\u2019s personal experience from traveling across various Russian terri\u00adtories and inter\u00adviewing their residents, the regions east of the Urals are very worried about the prospect of becoming independent states, because they believe that they will not have suffi\u00adcient political and economic power to counter Chinese dominance and will inevitably become vassals of Beijing. This prospect looks horri\u00adfying for residents of these regions, which is why they see remaining part of Russia as the only option. If this is taken into account, specu\u00adlation about a breakaway of Russia\u2019s eastern regions seems totally implausible.<\/p>\n
There are some current trends among non-Russian ethnic\u00adities to publicly speak up against the war in Ukraine and lean towards larger self-deter\u00admi\u00adnation and autonomy \u2013 which are good trends as far as the future goal of real feder\u00adal\u00adization is concerned. None of the influ\u00adential ethnic groups and NGOs, however, are seriously talking about anything beyond feder\u00adal\u00adization, more autonomy and more self-gover\u00adnance \u2013 except few individuals who do not have broad popular support.<\/p>\n
Conclusion<\/h3>\n To sum up: extreme scenarios like the radical\u00adization of the post-Putin regime, Putin\u2019s successors maintaining a similar hardline regime indef\u00adi\u00adnitely and a break-up of Russia do not seem plausible. There are simply not enough political resources nor popular support to make them sustainable.<\/p>\n
Another attempt for democ\u00adratic change appears to be the most likely scenario of Russia\u2019s evolution<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
A fast and successful democ\u00adra\u00adti\u00adzation of Russia also does not appear realistic: the post-Putin elites would want to maintain their ongoing grip on power Central-Asian style, while society is too weak and scared to speak up (and even under\u00adstand what they really want). But they will have a hard time and will lack the resources to maintain Putin\u2019s current course, which effec\u00adtively leads to self-attrition. Once they make policy U\u2011turns, it is realistic to expect popular discontent and demands for more signif\u00adicant political changes.<\/p>\n
In this regard, it appears that the most relevant examples for comparison are post-Ceausescu Romania or post-Chun South Korea. Iran and North Korea, which are frequently mentioned, are probably not too relevant examples for two reasons:<\/p>\n
\nIran and North Korea are extremely repressive regimes to a degree unknown in Russia since the Stalin era. As a matter of fact, North Korea was founded in 1945 by Stalin\u2019s generals, and remains the only living dinosaur of the Stalinist Jurassic Park in the modern world. Russia is very different from that. The Iranian regime faces constant mass protests, which are harder and harder to contain every year, and with dimin\u00adishing power of Russia as Iran\u2019s key supporter, it will be harder to sustain the regime further \u2013 which means that we haven\u2019t seen the end of the Iranian story yet.<\/li>\n Iran and North Korea were always relatively poor countries, and never experi\u00adenced such a major downshifting that Russia is experi\u00adencing now due to sanctions and the withdrawal of Western businesses. In this regard, the most relevant inter\u00adna\u00adtional example of a despotic regime cracking from the pressure of sanctions is probably not Iran or North Korea, but apartheid-era South Africa, where sanctions, despite having less economic effect than the current measures against Russia, had a strong negative psycho\u00adlogical impact of inter\u00adna\u00adtional isolation on the minority white population that helped to accel\u00aderate change (see, for instance, \u201cSanctions on South Africa: What Did They Do?\u201d, Philip Levy, Yale University, 1999).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nOverall, another attempt for democ\u00adratic change, following some years of transi\u00adtionary post-Putin author\u00adi\u00adtarian limbo, appears to be the most likely scenario of Russia\u2019s evolution. But it is essential that the democ\u00adratic West learns from past failures and supports Russia\u2019s next attempt for democ\u00adratic change instead of snubbing it. Ignorance and isolation will only reinvig\u00adorate the most extremist imperi\u00adal\u00adistic forces and demotivate those seeking democ\u00adratic transition \u2013 which will make Russia persist as a dark imperi\u00adal\u00adistic power. The Free World simply cannot afford that to happen.<\/p>\n
<\/i><\/p>\n
This paper is published in the framework of the project \u201eRussia and the West: Europe\u2019s Post War Order and the Future of Relations with Russia\u201c, which is supported by the German Foreign Ministry. Any opinions in this paper are the author\u2019s own.<\/em><\/p>\n
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