Soviet Regime Collapsed in Third Generation; Putin One Won’t Survive Even into a Second, Kurilla Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 12 – Many Russians now in the West are increasingly identifying themselves not only as emigres but as emigres like the wave that left a century ago after the Bolshevik revolution and even are beginning to think that few if any of them will ever return, Ivan Kurilla says.

            But in fact, the Russian historian who now teaches in the US, says, it is important to remember that while the two emigrations  do bear a certain resemblance to one another, “Putin’s Russia and Soviet Russia differ fundamentally in their horizons and future prospects” (echofm.online/opinions/perezhivet-li-putinizm-putina).

            “A century ago, Soviet Russia was a young, ideologically driven state, led by young leaders and a party apparatus that was resolutely focused on the future. Putin’s Russia in contrast is a regime of aging leaders that relies neither on a political party or the military and has no vision for the future, let alone ideas that might prove appealing to anyone,” he says.

            The Soviet regime “collapsed during its third generation,” Kurilla points out; “the current one will not even manage to survive the transition to a second,” given the absence of any vision of the future other than a continuation of the present and opposition across the board not only in the population but among elites to such a prospect.

            “Consequently,” he concludes, he “fully expects to go back” and to a Russia very different than Putin’s. “I cannot predict how the current regime or the one that comes after will go about ending the war and normalization relations with Ukraine and with other countries around the world.”

            But the Russian historian says he is convinced that “Russia will not disintegrate” and the arguments of those who say “we need not concern ourselves with the future of a unified country” because it won’t exist “to be fundamentally mistaken.”