Death often comes with pangs and recessions. That’s true for individuals and societies alike. A wonder drug buys terminally ill patients some time, and so do oil revenues for societies. Cultures die. That notion is anathema to nation-states which pose themselves as eternal, but even Rome proved not eternal. Modern Iranians, Italians, and Greeks have nothing in common with their ancient cultures. The West largely accepted the death of Islamic culture, but academics resist that notion about Russia. The case of Russia is too personal for Western leftists: from Dostoevsky to Stalin, scores of ugly Russian characters inspired them. But the Russian culture is doomed. Masochistically soul-searching, inefficiently communal, leader-oriented to the point of totalitarianism, xenophobic, cruel, criminal and corrupt culture cannot survive economic competition. Economically efficient Russians move abroad; those who stay in Russia abandon the famed Russian culture of gilded church domes and barbarous government. Totalitarian societies are different, but economically efficient societies are very similar: affluent people want freedom, resist communalism and usurpation of power, and are not eager to fight. Paupers need ideology to sustain self-respect; insignificant and unable to achieve on their own, they cling to masses. Economically efficient societies are always individualist; their members just don’t need the masses of their compatriots.
Oil revenues gave Russia a respite from the death agony which started in the late nineteenth century. The communist experiment in Russia was not about progress. It was a desperate effort by nostalgic intelligentsia to turn the clock back, to return Russia to communalism. The October 1917 revolution was actually a restoration of communalism, despotism, and militancy. The communist rule was reactionary; it sought to reverse the liberal economic policies of 1870s-1910s. Tsar Alexander released Russian serfs, and communists turned the peasants back into serfs. Collective farms were similar to feudal servitude. The masses of arbitrarily convicted Russian people who built the major Soviet channels and dams would look familiar to feudal industrialists like Demidovs who operated their vast factories with serf labor. Russia heavily employed forced labor, both serfs and convicts, from the time immemorial. Communists returned to the fundamental Russian policy of keeping the state rich by pauperizing the population. Even by the late Soviet estimates, only 29% of the GDP was disbursed to the people. Even of that portion, the state expropriated the major part through latent inflation and forced savings. The figure was still less during the Stalinist years. The communist state, as tsarist Russia before it, depended on the almost free labor of the society of serfs.
In order to reverse the clock of history, Russian government needed to keep its subjects in dark. That isolation failed in the late nineteenth century when Russian intelligentsia started traveling a lot to Europe and encountered the wonderful freedom. The communists immediately closed Russian society. The second shock came in the 1956 when Khrushchev invited scores of young foreigners for a sport competition in Moscow. The show of their unimaginable freedom and affluence broke the Russian hubris. Communists could no more sell their lies about the achievements of Russian proletariat; now the Russians knew how much better the life in the West is. With the isolation broken, the Russian clock moved fast forward. The Soviet regime was dead in the 1956.
And here is the answer why Putin cannot re-create Russia into the threatening monster: he cannot close the society. Government propaganda can make some Russians skeptical of the Western achievements they see on the Internet and satellite TV but, “you cannot fool everyone forever.” The abundance of information in modern society makes it impossible to close Russian society, and short of closing nothing would return it to communalism.
Then there is the economy. Russian economy is miserable. Oil revenues, concentrated in the state’s purse, look significant, but no developed country can finance its ambitions by selling raw materials only. Russian oil revenues are negligible compared to GDP of developed countries such as the United States or Great Britain. Even in the best-case scenario, it takes centuries to build a modern economy, but Russian case is far from being the best. America pulled the most enterprising people from around the world. England is the cradle of modern liberalism and entrepreneurship. Russia retains its communal mentality which precludes the economic endeavors, efficient on large scale. Russian people produced many geniuses but none of the brilliant managers and CEOs like Ford. Russian state can only thrive by robbing its subjects, whether entrepreneurs or workers. But in the open society, subjects won’t submit to robbery, and Russian government, therefore, cannot attain the prosperity of the communist times.
Russian efforts at flexing its muscles are lame. Putin is quintessentially a minor KGB functionary, one of those officers implanted as agents of influence into various government bodies shortly before the USSR collapsed. He is corrupt at least from his years as an export licensing official in St. Petersburg. Before becoming a president, Putin was subservient to the superiors such as Yeltsin and Berezovsky. Putin tries presenting himself as tsar, but managed only to project an image of a petty KGB official who licked his way from dregs to riches. The stability of Putin’s regime is superficial. A billion dollars pumped into the opposition would buy massive protests in Moscow and Petersburg, publicized over the international media. Totalitarian governments are notoriously fragile; Putin’s Russia, like Gorbachev’s Russia or tsarist Russia would succumb to a coup which need not even extend beyond the two capitals. Russian province won’t notice the changes in Moscow.
Putin’s plot to establish himself as prime minister under amenable president after his own presidential term ends is doomed. Russians are not likely to elect a no-one even if Putin endorses him. Russians want leaders with charismatic potential, not the dull figures Putin promotes for nominal presidency. A dull presidential candidate won’t win Russian elections if conducted with the least transparency – assuming, of course, that the opposition fields a popular candidate rather than some liberal marginal. Even if Putin succeeds at installing a weak president, such weakling would soon become strong and arrogant, a center of gravity for Putin’s opponents. Putin himself was weak at first. New president won’t tolerate the all-powerful Prime Minister Putin.
Russian military threat is exaggerated. The Soviets built a huge army, just like they built a huge economy, on the nearly free labor. For decades, military research offered the best conditions to the brilliant minds of Russia. Not anymore. Russian military cannot compete with private employers for the best minds. Creative people resist discipline, particularly the discipline of government or military jobs. Russian military doesn’t pay competitive salaries, provides unattractive work environment, and no fame, such as research papers. Russian military R&D facilities are staffed by people of respectable age with very few young people joining. As the Internet and migration extend employment opportunities to young scientists in faraway regions of Russia, they too abandon the military jobs. Russian military R&D budget is lower than Israel’s, and the procurement of new military systems is comparable between the two countries. Putin’s Russia attempts the Soviet imperial policy but lacks financial capabilities. Russia can no more buy the allegiance of barbarous regimes with massive aid. In the absence of communist threat, Russian political weight worldwide has dwindled. Russia only thrives now on its past glories. Locked in our minuscule state, Israelis are snobbishly respectful of Russia, but no deference is due. Russian weapons sales to Israel’s enemies are irritating, but in the end the truly ingenuous Russian-made weapons never work as advertized; the samples are great while production quality is abysmal.
The Russian Empire, whether tsarist or communist, is over. Huge totalitarian societies never survive affluence. Just like in China, economic development will cause the Dark Age and internal breakdown in Russia. It’s a matter of guesswork, for how long will the KGB manage to hold the crumbling Russia together, but surely not for long. Russia won’t lose much territory in the breakdown: an independent Siberia is an unlikely prospect. The Russian state would probably become a chaotic conglomerate with quasi-independent regions and huge inequality between the developed cities, resource-rich areas, and the utterly impoverished 95% of the country. Russian nukes will go on the black market, and the world must be prepared to buy them off from dealers.
The dying body of Russian communalism need not be feared. Containment is the proper policy against contagious diseases and ideologies.
