Paul
Goble
Staunton, October 13 – The
fundamental weakness of the current regime in Russia is that as long as
“’everything is in order,’ no one will overthrow it,” but “in the event of the
slightest mistake’” especially during any weakening or succession, “no one will
come to its defense,” Russian historian Sergey Volkov argues.
Many
of those opposed to the Putin regime now are suggesting that it is “very
rickety,” the Moscow historian says. “But what does that in fact mean? Clearly
not what they have in mind.” A
personalist dictatorship is stable as long as everything is all right with the
person on top, while regimes based on a party or professional corporation can
continue after his demise.
“Regimes
based on the army or real religious-political structures exist for decades even
if leaders change,” Volkov continues. “They can die only as a result of strong
external pressure or the decay of the foundation on which they operate.”(lo
“In
this sense,” he says, “the Russian Federation regime is a quite rare
phenomenon: it arose quite accidently only because in the country there were no
political forces or competitors” to block it from doing so. It doesn’t exist because it is supported by
80 percent of the population. That figure, for a dictatorship, is meaningless,
the historian says.
According
to Volkov, “the abstract ‘support of the population does not have any
significant if it is not expressed in the existence of corresponding (loyalist)
mass political organizations. Eighty percent may completely approve it, but a
few dozens or hundreds of thousands of organized opposition elements in the
capital are sufficient to overthrow it.”
Indeed,
he points out, “the majority of ‘revolutions’” which occur seldom have more
than five percent of the population either among their supporters or opponents.
The
big question “confronting any regime is who will defend it” should that be
necessary. Those can be “only either the force structures if they are
interested in the regime as real corporations … or a real political
organization,” and not a simulacrum like United Russia is in the Putin era.
At
the present time, Volkov continues, “the force structures of the Russian
Federation are not corporations in this sense.” Interior ministry forces may
work for bureaucratic interests “but not ideological and political” ones. The
FSB lacks these corporate characteristics entirely. And the Armed Forces in the
Russian tradition have never been “a self-conscious political force.”
At
the very least, one can conclude that “not one of them in any case will
independently come to the defense of the regime.” As long as the tsar is in
place, they will obey him; but if he weakens or leaves the scene, a struggle
will emerge to determine who will give orders and whom these institutions will
obey and defend.
If
at the time of succession, one in which no one is sure of the outcome, there
are multiple centers of political power, there is a danger that the defenders
of the regime will be divided as well, with some supporting one individual or
group and others supporting alternatives, the historian argues.
In
that event and because regimes like Putin’s do not have a succession mechanism,
“no one will come to the defense” of the new leaders if they make “the
slightest mistake.” That is the result
of “the political desert” that the current Kremlin leader has created by
eliminating all those who could oppose him.
In
the process, Volkov says, he has also eliminated all those who might otherwise
come to the defense of himself at a time of weakness or of others who will
succeed him.
