The Putin system today looks more invulnerable than ever. The first defeats at the front and the shock of Western sanctions are in the past. Now the troops are moving forward, oil is being sold to the East, and generous government spending on the war ensures both economic growth and the loyalty of the population. It seems that everything in Russia – from the military-industrial complex to secondary schools – has successfully adapted to the new military reality. Now the Kremlin can afford to fight with Ukraine and the West for as long as necessary. Even a tragedy on the scale of the recent terrorist attack in Crocus will not make it stop and think about its chosen course.
Russia’s success in adapting to war has indeed exceeded expectations. However, there is one element in the Russian state machine that works worse further, and no attempts at adaptation are visible there. We are talking about a decision-making system. In this matter, the regime did not draw any conclusions from the failures of the beginning of the war, but, on the contrary, drew even more power into the hands of one person, leaving the rest of the state apparatus to only carry out, or even better, predict his wishes. Such a design does not need any enemies to reset any achievements at some point.
Gorbachev mechanics
One of the best experts on Russia, Stephen Kotkin, once noted that the West at one time was unable to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union in advance, simply because it did not begin to fall apart in advance. Therefore, even by the end of the 1980s, no objective processes were going on in the country that would make collapse inevitable. On the contrary, almost until the very end, the USSR remained a completely stable structure but at some point, it collapsed, because suicidal decisions rained down from the very top, which the obedient state apparatus blindly implemented without the slightest filtering and quality control.
This description is largely true for today’s Russia. Comparing people as different as Putin and Gorbachev may seem blasphemous, but in certain respects, it is not without merit. Yes, they are very different in their aspirations, character, and value systems. But they have two important similarities. The first is the ability to impose your personal priorities on the entire inert colossus of the state apparatus, which it does not particularly share. The second is the tendency to fall into procrastination when the events they trigger get out of control.
The conservative Soviet nomenklatura would never have agreed to perestroika, glasnost and democratization if Gorbachev had not imposed all of this on them, using his Stalinist powers. So the apparatchiks, accustomed to unquestioningly carrying out everything that the person in the post of General Secretary orders, obediently began to implement perestroika until it destroyed the Soviet system so convenient for them.
Putin, of course, is not going to lead Russia either to democracy or to glasnost. But from a mechanical point of view, he similarly used his gigantic powers to force Russia into a war that even the majority of those sitting in the Security Council, not to mention the broader strata of the Russian elite, did not want. And then the logic of events began to work independently.
With the help of the war, Putin forced both the state apparatus and business to sacrifice their pre-war privileges, achievements and plans, and begin to build a new Russia that would correspond to his personal ideas about beauty. In general, this has become the main task of all participants in public life in Russia – to predict and fulfill the wishes of the president as accurately as possible.
Such a system of priorities cannot but lead to the degradation of the state apparatus, and there is already plenty of evidence of this. Russian intelligence services have been accumulating experience in the fight against Islamic extremism for decades, but with the outbreak of war, no one needed this. Why catch Islamic terrorists when awards and titles are given to Ukrainian saboteurs?
Even the recent terrorist attack in Crocus, despite its unprecedented scale, is unlikely to make the Russian security forces come to their senses. Quite the contrary – when Putin demands in advance that what happened is explained by Ukrainian machinations, what madman would object to him, regardless of the real facts? It is quite natural that all efforts will be devoted to catching terrorists not from ISIS, but from the Ukrainian-American Burisma, even if this will harm both the investigation of the terrorist attack that has already occurred and the prevention of possible future ones.
In other areas, things are similar. Certain parts of the economic government bloc have long concentrated on producing beautiful numbers to the president’s delight, giving up on any coordination. As a result, interest rate increases to combat inflation come at the same time as a generous flow of subsidized loans and increased government spending. Export embargoes are either introduced, lifted, then introduced again – depending on what needs to be reported to the president: a decrease in prices on the domestic market or an increase in budget revenues from export duties.
Temporary administrative decisions are quietly turning into permanent and even more non-market ones – just to put off unpopular steps that could upset the president. All this against the backdrop of a chaotic redistribution of property, when the courts blindly stamp the transfer of assets from one hand to another due to violations in privatization transactions in the early 1990s. The former competence of the economic authorities is gradually drowning in this parade of servility and at any moment may completely disappear. Who would dare say no to the president if he suddenly decides that wartime circumstances require a tighter administration of the economy?
Procrastination again
However, Putin’s indecisiveness sometimes turns out to be even more destructive than his decisions. And in this way, Putin is also similar to Gorbachev. At some point, he was so dumbfounded by the scale of the changes he initiated that he fell into procrastination and over the last two years in power could not offer the country at least some programme of further action.
Having gone on endless oratory and international tours, Gorbachev left the Soviet Union to independently adapt to the new reality. Left without instructions from the centre, the USSR spent some time in agonizing anticipation and then was unable to come up with anything better than falling apart in the hope that this would help to somehow resolve the hanging issues and ambiguities.
Modern Russia also has enough problems adapting to the new military reality, and Putin, who created this reality, is in no hurry to provide everyone interested with detailed instructions. As a result, different parts of the system either fall into a stupor or begin to independently figure out how to live further, sometimes with dire consequences.
For example, the most massive armed uprising against the Putin regime—the rebellion of Yevgeny Prigozhin—was just such an attempt to survive in the new reality. For many years, Wagner mercenaries coexisted happily with the regular army, without particularly interfering with each other. However, the outbreak of war raised the stakes and inflamed ambitions, pushing the parties into direct conflict.
Putin did not deign to personally look into their dispute, so Prigozhin had no choice but to try to attract the president’s attention through an insurrection. The rebels’ goals were very limited and had nothing to do with the fight against the Putin regime. Yet they almost brought it down simply because they were trying to adapt to the new warring Russia.
Similarly, no one in the Kremlin bothered to explain how to live in military realities to the authorities of Dagestan. Therefore, they did not know what to do and simply did nothing when last October a crowd smashed Makhachkala International Airport in search of Jews. Just a couple of years ago this would have been unimaginable, but now there is war, Iran is our closest ally, and Israel, it turns out, is the enemy. Therefore, understand how local authorities need to deal with the anti-Israeli pogrom – disperse it or, conversely, support it. It is safer to wait for instructions from the centre, even if during this time the crowd manages to break into the planes.
The recent terrorist attack in Crocus is largely from the same series. The United States is sharing information with Russian intelligence services about a possible terrorist attack. But can they take advantage of it now, when there is a war and the president publicly calls this information “blackmail”? In such conditions, showing suspicious zeal for cooperation with the Americans can be much more dangerous than simply inaction, albeit at the cost of dozens of human lives.
As a result, it turns out the Russian government does not need a powerful opposition at all to be under threat. Yes, anti-Putin forces in Russia are weak and disorganized, but this does not make the regime stronger. The three biggest shocks to power over the past year came not from the strength of anti-Putin sentiment, but from a war that Putin himself started. In this, today’s Russia is also similar to the late USSR, where anti-Soviet dissidents did not pose a serious threat and remained under the tight control of the KGB almost until the very end of the Union, while the Soviet system was dismantled by leaders from the CPSU, whom one would not suspect of being anti-systemic.
Make it before the deadline
Today’s Russia, like the late USSR, has to hastily and chaotically adapt to the new reality, which the Kremlin suddenly brought down on it, without bothering to explain how to live now. But if the logic of the transformation, initiated by Gorbachev, led through shocks to the creation of new institutions, then the logic of Putin’s transformation only drives the system into an ever-increasing concentration of power into the hands of the leader. As a result, approaches, assessments, and even just the state of one person turn into almost the only factor in decision-making.
A system organized in this way cannot, in principle, be stable – regardless of who exactly this single person turns out to be. What can we say about the situation when the only source of decisions lives for many years in a dense environment of obsequious courtiers who only nurture his biases, resentments and manias? Here the risks of incorrect priorities, distorted perception, outbursts of emotions and concentration on one solution as a panacea for all ills increase many times over.
Then there are no filters on their path – everything immediately turns into public policy. The invasion of Ukraine two years ago was just such a wrong and destructive decision by one person. Why should it be the last, if the previous time it was easier for the rest of the system to adapt to it than to stop it in time or try to rewind it?
Moreover, in today’s Russia, the only source of solutions is already at an advanced age, which imposes his personal time frame on the course of development of the entire country. And it’s not about Putin’s mythical illnesses – given his access to modern medicine, why should he live less than Mugabe (lived to 95) or Fidel Castro (to 90)?
But Putin, with his obsession with history, cannot help but realize that he has already been in power longer than the vast majority of Russian rulers. He has already outlasted Brezhnev and many emperors with plenty of reserve. In a matter of years, he will overtake both Stalin and Nicholas I, and in nine years he will leave even Catherine II behind, becoming the longest-serving ruler since the time of Ivan the Terrible.
Moreover, at 71, Putin is undoubtedly aware that he is approaching the age when most of his predecessors died: Yeltsin at 76, Brezhnev at 75, Khrushchev at 77, Stalin at 74. The only exception is Gorbachev, who lived for more than 90 but spent relatively little time in power.
All this paints a horizon for Putin of five to six years of active rule, during which he must manage to complete everything he planned. This period of five or six years can sit in his head, predetermining decisions, but remaining invisible to everyone else. This could create dangerous divergences in perception, with Russia suddenly acting unpredictably and irrationally from the perspective of the rest of the world, simply because Putin is late to his internal deadlines.
In the 1970s, the Shah of Iran thoughtlessly flooded the country with oil money because he was in a rush to see Iran modernized before he died of cancer. But instead of accelerated modernization, oil generosity so exacerbated socio-economic imbalances that at the end of his life the Shah looked not to Iran in the club of developed countries, but to the Islamic Revolution. Similarly, Hitler in the late 1930s believed that since war with England was inevitable, it would be better to start it now, while he was still only 50, rather than wait until age and failing health clouded his strategic genius.
We can only guess how Putin’s internal clock works. But the unexpected invasion of Ukraine after more than 20 years in power suggests that he definitely has them, and time for them is not endless.
As a result, today’s Russia in its stability turns out to be similar to the late USSR. Objectively, everything is reliably secured, there are no serious threats, and the authorities are in control of the situation. But at any moment everything can start to crumble because the main source of threats to the system is rooted in the way it is structured. It is designed in such a way that it can engage in self-destruction without causing serious problems.
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