West Repeating Error of 1980s and Overrating Moscow’s Strength and Survivability, Zashev Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov.  12 – In the 1980s, Western governments and experts overrated both the strength and likely longevity of the Soviet Union, with many assuming it would survive and perhaps even prosper over at least several decades. Now, Peter Zashev says, their successors are making a similar mistake about Putin’s Russia.
    In fact, the Russian scholar now at the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga says, “Putin’s Russia is weak, even very weak,” despite the bluffing Moscow has once again used with such success to convince the West otherwise (moscowtimes.ru/2024/11/12/sploshnoi-blef-i-bravada-rossiya-putina-slaba-ochen-slaba-a147419).
    Now just as at the end of Soviet times, Zashev says, many in the West are failing to see this and making miscalculations as a result. In reality, he continues, “the Putin regime has many weak points, and they are not some Achilles’ heel but rather other parts of the body politic, much larger” and therefore much for likely to kick in sooner than most expect.
    To make his point, Zashev lists four such weak points: the absence of an ideology, Putin’s inability to gain support unless he pays for it, Putin’s constant need to display his strength which in the nature of things ultimately leads to overreaching and defeat, and an economy that looks superficially strong but in fact is riven with problems.
    First of all, he argues, Putin’s Russia “simply doesn’t have an ideology. Instead, it offers a strange, unnatural and rather perverse mixture of Orthodoxy, Stalinism, anti-Americanism, militarism, Sovietism” and much else besides. What is on offer is intended to cover but in fact calls attention to the fact that “no one loves Putin unless they are paid to do so.”
    To conceal that reality, Zashev continues, Putin must constantly show himself to be powerful enough to win everything he gets involved with; but at present, he can’t even defend Kursk Oblast let alone take Kyiv, he can’t defend Russia’s airports or oil dumps and everyone can see that. He will try to create situations in which he can win, but he won’t be able to.
    The reason is the fourth weak point of the Putin system, the economy. It is just treading water now but is falling ever further behind the rest of the world in terms of innovation and modernization.  And that creates a situation in which the entire system can become unbalanced and then collapse.
    Zashev concludes: “The system appears to be working so far, but the example of the USSR should remind us how easily such a system can become unbalanced and what its suddent and rapid destruction this will lead to: – and more than that, that “the end will come much faster than we can imagine.”