Wednesday, October 16, 2019

Danger Point for Russian Regime: No One Likely to Overthrow It, but No One will Come to Its Defense, Volkov Says


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.

            In a LiveJournal commentary that has been reposted by Novyye izvestiya (salery.livejournal.com/173942.html and newizv.ru/article/general/12-10-2019/sergey-volkov-slabost-rezhima-v-tom-chto-u-nego-net-mehanizma-preemstvennosti), he says that those who talk about the weaknesses of the Putin regime often miss this important nuance.

            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.

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