Peace in Eurasia Possible Only if Russia is Dismantled Because Otherwise It will Sooner or Later Seek as a Prison House of Peopless to Reconstitute the Empire, Panich Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 5 – Unless Russia is decolonized, Moscow will sooner or later seek to reconstitute its empire, Aleksey Panich says, because liberal democracy is impossible in the prison house of peoples which Russia will otherwise remain and thus will follow the imperial revaunchist policies of its predecessors.
    Unfortunately, the cultural historian says, these interconnections are not understood or accepted by the Russian opposition  and the West, because if they did, they would understand that no armistice between Russia and Ukraine will last unless Russia is dismantled (moscowtimes.ru/2024/12/05/buduschee-rossii-kak-otdelit-vozmozhnoe-ot-nevozmozhnogo-a149725).
    Given the history of Russia’s borders which have ebbed and flowed and allowed the center to assume that anything it has lost can be recovered, Panich continues, “any new attempt at the liberalization of Russian economic or political life … after Putin will inevitably lead to a new crisis of administration.”
    And in that crisis, he says, Russian leaders will face a fateful choice: “either to agree to a new collapse of this colonial empire or to space the integrity of the country by means of the latest restoration of militant authoritarianism.”
    “Both of these scenarios are real, although the second for obvious reasons is undesirable both for the neighbors of Russia and for the entire global community.” But what is “unrealistic” is the rise of “a successful liberalization of the Russian Federation as a single whole with the preservation of its current internationally recognized borders.”
    That can’t and won’t happen in the future, just as it couldn’t and didn’t in the past, Panich argues. Both the Russian opposition and the West must recognize that “a Free Russia is a Russia without colonies.” To think otherwise is to ignore history and deceive only oneself – and to face more Russian attacks sooner or later on its neighbors new or old.