West and Russian Opposition Must Identify and Promote Divisions within Putin Elite if Russia is to Be Changed in a Positive Direction, Inozemtsev Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 25 – The Russian opposition and the West have been making a fundamental mistake, Vladislav Inozemtsev says. They both treat the Putin elite as an undifferentiated whole that is totally evil. But if they want change, they need to seek to identify and promote divisions within that elite and then form alliances with it.

            That is because, the Russian commentator says, the Russian opposition and the West will succeed in changing Russia if and only if one or the other or both succeed in identifying groups within the current elite who are not happy with what Putin is doing and want changes in Russia like those the opposition and the West do (theins.ru/podkasty/269475).

            Only an alliance between those who want change in the population and those who want change but are now within the Putin administration have any chance of successfully changing a country that Inozemtsev says suffers from such serious problems that there is no other conceivable way for that to happen.

            Such an alliance is required, he continues, because the number of Russians in the population who want change and the number in the elite who also do are small. Only if they get together is there a chance for change. It isn’t a large one at present, Inozemtsev suggests; but pursuing that alliance represents the ony possibility for a move forward.

            And the first step in that direction, the commentator concludes, is for both the Russian opposition and the West acting as if the Putin elite is united. In acting that way, they are unwittingly serving the Kremlin leader’s purposes and making the achievement of the changes they seek even more difficult than they need to be.