‘Wishful Thinking’ Dominates Discussions of Post-Russia Future in Dangerous Ways, Shtepa Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 2 – Most discussions about what will replace the Russian Federation are based on wishful thinking, including but not limited to the conviction that Putin will lose in Ukraine, that regions and republics will easily achieve independence, and that the diminished but surviving Muscovy will live in peace with this new reality, Vadim Shtepa says.

            But it is far from clear that Putin will in fact lose, however much he deserves to, that the regions and republics have anything like the resources the union republics did in 1991, or that a new Muscovy won’t do what the current Kremlin leader has done and try to retake the empire, the Russian regionalist says  (moscowtimes.ru/2025/07/02/moskoviya-kak-umenshennii-remeik-imperii-a167734).  

            And lying behind all these examples of dangerous wishful thinking is another than may prove to be even worse: the widespread belief among non-Russians and “good” Russians that the international community has the capacity and will to achieve such positive outcomes in what is now the Russian Federation, even if those most directly involved do not.

            Shtepa’s argument is a response to an article in The Moscow Times which displays all these examples of wishful thinking (moscowtimes.ru/2025/06/30/konfederatsiya-moskoviya-chto-ostanetsya-ot-rossii-a167382) although it could easily come as a reply to suggestions by Russians, non-Russians and many in the West.

            And he has advanced it not because he opposes the outcomes of those who engage in such thinking but rather because he obviously fears that such arguments will lead to passivity and to the assumption among people both on the territory of the current Russian Federation and in the West as well.

            Such passivity will give Putin and Putinism victories they don’t deserve and mean that the Russian empire with its repression at home and aggression abroad will continue well into the future – exactly the opposite outcomes that those who engage in such wishful thinking say they want.

            What is needed, Shtepa says, is to recognize just how difficult achieving their desired goals will be, how much they need to work toward intermediate steps like genuine elections in the various parts of the Russian Federation, the kind that made the collapse of the USSR possible, and stop engaging in such wishful thinking.

            Perhaps his most important warning is that non-Russians and the West must stop believing in the notion that if Russia is reduced in size to that of Muscovy that all the problems will go away. In fact, as Putinism has proved, a reduction in the size of Russia may lead to exactly the opposite outcomes.

            As history has shown, Shtepa points out, “the geographic reduction in size of this country often on the contrary has made it” more repressive at home and aggressive abroad because such r contractions have “sharply intensified imperial resentment.”  The Putin era should have taught everyone this but clearly has not.

            This does not mean that republics and regions of the current Russian Federation should not have the right to pursue independence, the Russian regionalist says; but they and their supporters in the West must recognize that achieving such status is only the first step in making it permanent: any remaining Russian state must be transformed as well.

            And that, history suggests, is a far greater challenge, one that will require the combined efforts of the non-Russians, Russian regionalists, their supporters abroad and most critically the Russians who remain in that state if declarations of independence are going to be permanent and the region is to live in peace.