Paul
Goble
Staunton, July 21 – A century ago,
Russians cheered the entrance of their country into World War I, but the country
wasn’t prepared and as a result, it suffered military defeat, social and
political revolutions, and a brutal civil war.
Tragically, Maksim Kalashnikov says, the parallels between 1914 and now
are all too obvious.
The Russian Federation, the Russian
nationalist commentator says in a post today, itself “a parody of the Russian
Empire is again being drawn into a world war,” and just as in the case of World
War I, it is not ready and is “condemned to defeat because a collapse of the
economy and an explosion in the rear” (forum-msk.org/material/economic/10434073.html).
As a century ago, he continues,
those countries which are drawn into the war will be “blown up from the inside
and dismembered by a new slave-holding civilization.” Russia will be one of
them because just like in 1914, Russia now is “absolutely unprepared for war,”
especially a modern one.
“Its rear is eaten away by
corruption, its economy is collapsing, and within its borders are millions of
people who are angry at the authorities and the existing social order.” And it
is not “and not a mythical hot war of the combined West against the Russian
Federation which is the first order danger.”
The Putin regime’s propaganda is
working overtime to distract attention “from the dawning economic collapse of
the Russian Federation and the ever increasing inadequacy of the state
apparatus of the country.” That propaganda is working, and “the majority in the
Russian Federation simply do not understand what is happening or what the chief
danger is.”
But “the Kremlin does not understand”
either, Kalashnikov says. “It is
reacting to the growing economic collapse in the worst way possible. Sometime
in the fall, political repression will begin,” with anyone who doesn’t “recognize
the ‘divinity’ of the authorities” or who “criticizes the first person of the
state” facing repressive measures.
But this won’t save the system. It
will only accelerate its demise just as such actions by the tsarist government
during the first world war did to it. There simply isn’t a cadres reserve of
people who could built an effective totalitarian dictatorship, and efforts to
do so without them will lead to collapse.
Some near the Kremlin like the
members of the Izborsky Club are hoping for a miracle, but that isn’t going to
happen either. The current authorities “can only IMAGINE ‘a strong hand,’ but
they can’t become one.” Tightening the screws isn’t a substitute as some
understand and others will find out.
There are of course things that
could be done to prevent the collapse, but they are very numerous and likely
beyond the capacity of the current regime. Among them are using the Central
Bank, the finance ministry and the economics ministry to re-inflate the economy
so that it has a chance to grow, an end to wasteful spending on sports
extravaganzas, refusing to implement the demands of the World Trade
Organization, genuinely fighting corruption, “and much, much more.”
Kalashnikov says he doesn’t think
the current Russian government is any more capable of doing what is necessary
than were its tsarist predecessors. He adds that he would like to be proved
wrong. But that will only happen if Moscow recognizes that the main threats to
it are inside the borders of the Russian Federation and not from abroad.
“Just like a century ago,” he
concludes, “the main threat is an explosion of the rear and the collapse of a
weak, unmobilized economy, an outbreak of thievery and the incompetence of the
state apparatus.” When it has needed to
be, Russia hasn’t been prepared. “The parallels with the tsarist regime of the
last monarch are simply shocking.”
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