Putin Regime Repeating Step by Step Mistakes of Nicholas II Before 1917, Gallyamov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 31 – Historical parallels are rarely exact, but they are suggestive, Abbas Gallyamov says; and one of the most obvious cases concerns the actions of Vladimir Putin over the last 15 years and those of Tsar Nicholas II over the last years of his reign and of Imperial Russia as a whole.

            The former Putin speechwriter says that “the logic of the domestic political process now ever more recalls the logic of events of a century ago,” raising questions about Vladimir Putin’s decision making and about what may lie ahead for him and for the Russian Federation (publizist.ru/blogs/112974/42559/-).

            The 1905 revolution and the tsar’s reaction to it “by its nature was similar” to the Bolotnoye protests and the Putin regime’s response, Gallyamov begins. In both cases, after a period of economic growth, the country ran into trouble and people lost confidence in the ability of their rulers to set things right.

            In both cases, the rulers tried to calm the protesters by making concessions, on the one hand, and by mobilizing radicals to suppress those taking part in the demonstrations, on the other. Initially, both were able to quiet the situation but only for a time as popular dissatisfaction continued to grow.

            Again, in both cases, Russia’s rulers concluded that a short victorious war would mobilize the people around them. That didn’t work for Nicholas II when his war with Japan failed, and, after a burst of support in 1914, it ended his reign and his country when Russia got involved in World War I, a conflict for which it was not at all prepared.

            Putin thought he had escaped this pattern with his Anschluss of Crimea, but that only encouraged him to launch an even larger war against Ukraine, one that it is increasingly obvious his government was not prepared for the resistance it faced or for the opposition to the conflict that it has sparked within the Russian population.

            Today everything looks like it did at the end of 1914, Gallyamov says. There is still some enthusiasm but it is waning. And “ahead looms 1917” or something like it.