Putin Regime has Moved from Crisis to Catastrophe from Which There is No Exit, El Murid Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 12 – The Putin regime was in a state of systemic crisis between 2011 and 2019, Anatoly Nesmiyan who blogs under the screen name El Murid says. Since then, it has been in a catastrophe. The main difference is that a regime can recover from a systemic crisis but “there is no exit from a catastrophe” as regimes in that state have no “undo” button.

            As is now obvious, the regime passed from the first to the second state at the time of “the so-called ‘May decrees’” Putin issued, Nesmiyan says (rusmonitor.com/posle-zaversheniya-perioda-terrora-nas-zhdyot-libo-ochen-slaboe-vremennoe-pravitelstvo-pobedivshih-zagovorshhikov-libo-raspad-strany-na-promyshlenno-territorialnye-ulusy.html).

            Putin’s declarations were about “the optimization of the system and the redistribution of resources from those structures thought to be secondary for the survival of the system as a whole,” even if they performed important functions such as education and health care, the analyst continues.

            Such things have to happen in the life of every system and indeed every individual, but they are sometimes successful and sometimes not. In the case of Putin’s system, they weren’t because of the unbelievably low intellectual quality of the entire ruling elite. Once it lost its super profits from export of oil, its members simply didn’t know what to do.

            Putin and his colleagues flailed about when they had the resources to make a change, assuming that the prices would rebound and they could continue without change. And when it became obvious that prices weren’t going up, the crisis had become so deep that they weren’t in a position to adjust.

            According to Nesmiyan, “’the May decrees’ were a catastrophe as became obvious during ‘the pandemic’” but whose root causes had been put in place long before and only became obvious in 2020. Some of the parts of the Putin system are still in the crisis state; but they along with those already there are rapidly moving toward catastrophe.

            The regime’s decision to shift to terror only highlights this, Nesmiyian says. “Former methods of administration have ceased to work” because the balance of carrots and sticks on which they were based can no longer be maintained. Trying to keep it there was not only “impossible but senseless.”

            Indeed, we can say, the analyst argues, that “terror is the sharp phase of the catastrophe of administration. And like any sharp phase, it doesn’t last long.” Under Stalin, for example, the Yezhovshchina lasted only “a little more than a year,” although overcoming it was difficult and time consuming.

            If the Putin regime were filled with talented people, it might be able to reverse course and change its basic features in fundamental ways; but there is no indication either of the intelligence or the will to do that. As a result, the terror that has been started won’t end on its own; “it can only be stopped” because it will degenerate into the seizure of property.

            The current phase of the catastrophe, terror, will last “approximately a year or 18 months.” Then, in the absence of systemic change, those near the top will try to get control by staging a coup and blaming all the problems of the country on those they have ousted. But they may fail, and this could cost them their lives.

            If a coup is attempted and doesn’t succeed, that will trigger a civil war, perhaps “hot” in certain regions and “cold” in the form of a new parade of sovereignties which will tear the country apart.  And that in turn will lead to a weak Provisional Government that will begin to collapse as soon as it is formed.

            In short, Nesmiyan concludes, terror and civil war won’t conclude the catastrophic phase of national history; they will be only two more steps on a long and horrific path.