Paul Goble
Staunton, Dec. 20 – The West is counting on the appearance of a color revolution in Russia, Konstantin Sivkov says, a calculation that is not without foundation given deepening divisions within the Moscow elite and between the Kremlin and the people and given shortcomings in the Russian government’s capacity to resist.
In words that would be no surprise if they came from a self-proclaimed enemy of the Putin regime, Sivkov, vice president of the Russian Academy of Rocket and Artillery Sciences and longtime regime loyalist, paints a picture of a country that he suggests is only “two steps from a rising” that could threaten the country’s leadership (vpk-news.ru/articles/65189).
Viewed from a distance, Sivkov says, the Putin regime “looks both monolithic and powerful in military and spiritual terms, but an analysis of the country’s internal problems and contradictions suggests the presence of serious splits in society and a high level of internal conflict.”
The Russia elite is split, he continues. Putin is pursuing an anti-globalist agenda, but “a significant part of the Russian elite, especially among big business and the senior bureaucracy especially in the economic area are oriented toward institutionalizing ‘the New World Order’ system,” which is completely antithetical to what the Kremlin leader is trying to do.
This conflict has reached the point that “the victory of one of these sides will inevitably involve the destruction of the side which loses at a minimum politically and economically and at a maximum physically.” That means that the regime can’t continue to operate in the same way it has up to now.
At the same time, given the pandemic and the government’s measures of combatting it, the divide between the regime and the population has grown. The level of distrust is at unprecedented levels as shown by the unwillingness of the Russian people to get vaccinated or use the QR codes the government hoped to introduce.
Indeed, the government’s efforts to do so, especially at a time of economic hardship, not only has angered the population but sparked the spread of rumors that it plans truly repressive measures including the wholesale deportation of large groups of the population and even the creation of places for mass graves of those who die from covid or resist.
But even that is not the most worrisome thing, Sivkov says. The government’s means of countering such attitudes have become increasingly ineffective. Its media resources no longer ensure that the government’s messages will be transmitted to the entire population and accepted by it.
And Moscow’s increasing use of force around the country is not working either. “In a number of places there have been incidents where officers of the law enforcement organs have refused to take part in actions against protesters.” That is a clear sign that “the force component of the state is already far from as reliable as it should be.”
“In other words,” Sivkov says, “the powers to a significant degree have lost the levers of administering society in the case of the appearance of widespread social tensions,” something that means “the risk of the rise of a revolutionary situation in Russia” are rising. And the government itself is making the situation worse.
By making concessions on QR codes and other issues, the authorities have encouraged the population to make more demands. By holding elections, the powers have made promises that they haven’t delivered on. And by failing to counter both divisions within the elite and divisions between the powers and the people, they have opened the way to disaster.
Sivkov concludes his article by reminding his readers that “the real ‘fifth column’ is not the people protesting in the streets. This is above all the influential people among the powers, political, economic, informational and force” who have the ability to channel popular anger in a revolutionary direction.
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