Paul Goble
Staunton, February 23 – Having successfully
mobilized Russians to support him by his Crimean Anschluss after the mass
demonstrations against the Kremlin in 2011-2012, Arkady Babchenko says,
Vladimir Putin will in the future always turn to war whenever he feels that his
position has been weakened.
“The only means Putin has to
influence domestic policy [in Russia] is war,” the Russian commentator now in
exile in Kyiv says; “and when his position is threatened, when centrifugal
processes begin, he will try to stop them by some sort of new war: escalation
in the Donbass, in Syria, or somewhere else” (afterempire.info/2018/02/23/babchenko/).
According to Babchenkko, “Russia now
is an extremely unstable situation and therefore it is extremely difficult to
predict what will happen.” Over the past five years, one could count on Moscow
choosing the worst of all options. “Now, this kind of unpredictability is
spreading to many other countries.”
“Their regimes also are moving away
from liberal democratic values and shifting to the side of some kind of
authoritarianism and ‘greatness.’ One can see that in Poland, the Czech
Republic, Hungary, Trumpist America, and in Turkey.” That all feeds back into
Russia and gives Putin the chance to behave even worse at home and abroad.
Babchenko observes that “the world
is changing and not entirely in the direction that many of us would like. The
European Union unfortunately has not been able to do what its founders dreamed.
In many countries, isolationist attitudes are growing.” And many are again
talking about dividing up the world into spheres of influence.
As far as Russia is concerned, the Kyiv-based
commentator says that he “already simply does not believe in any united ‘democratic
Russia.’” Now, he suggests, “we are living in the era of the collapse of
empires,” in Russia’s case, the third phase, the first being in 1917-1918 and
the second in 1991. But how long that will last depends on many things,
including the price of oil.
If oil price
remain where they are now, in the 70 US dollars a barrel range, he suggests, the
current regime could continue to exist “for decades.” But if they fall
significantly, Russia could become like Venezuela; and in that case, “quite
interesting processes will begin,” although they may lead in a bad direction
instead of toward a democratic one.
Babchenko says that he does not
think that Russia will succeed in building a democracy. Instead, he argues,
there will be some kind of neo-Pugachevshchina, “’senseless and pitiless,” and that
will end with the rise of a new authoritarianism just as it has so often in the
history of Russia.
On the other hand, if Russia disintegrates,
and the core is reduced to something like Muscovy, then it is possible that
portions of what is now the Russian Federation might be able to articulate
democracies.
That depends also on the role of
other countries. In 1991, Russia was “in
fact” under external rule, and it was that rule by Western institutions that
prevented “the final collapse of Russia” at the time. Whether the West will play the same role in
the future is very much an open question, Babchenko says.
The Russian opposition has been
gelded, he continues, elections no longer really exist, and there are now
powerful regionalist movements. As a
result, the domestic opposition, rightist and imperialist, on the one hand, and
democratic, on the other, does not have significant influence on the Kremlin.
And then Babchenko concludes with the
following observation: “When I heard that ‘the people in Russia have never
lived as well as they do under Putin,’ this is close to the truth. Many depend
too much on the budget and it depends on oil. Although propaganda is gradually
ceasing to work.”
“The Donbass theme, for example, has
practically disappeared from the information agenda. It doesn’t tie Russians
together. They don’t talk or think about it. Therefore, the war in Ukraine now
does not influence domestic politics in Russia.” Only a much larger war there
or somewhere else might.
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