After Putin, Russia Must Either Modernize Quickly or Face Disintegration, ‘Nezavisimaya Gazeta’ Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 21 – The editors of Moscow’s Nezavisimaya Gazeta warn that “every prolonged historical period over the last century and a half has ended in a state of stupor and paralysis of central authority and has been accompanied by the disintegration of the country.”

            “Often,” the editors say in a lead article, these two developments “have been attended by military defeats or the absence of a clear military victory;” but there have been exceptions – and Russians can avoid disaster if they recognize the threat and work to counter it (ng.ru/editorial/2026-05-21/2_9500_21052026.html).

            When Russians have not done so -- and that has been more often than not, the editors suggest -- “fragments of the disintegrating Russia have instigated wars among themselves or against the remaining central core of the country, a pattern observed in both the 20th and 21st centuries).”

            The most obvious example in recent Russian history where the leadership at least recognized the threat and acted expeditiously came after Stalin’s death in 1953. Then, “the ossifying Stalinist regime rapidly transformed into a system of collective leadership exercised by members of the Politburo.”

            That was possible because Moscow had a powerful army and was making “rapid social and technological progress, the kind of developments many around the world at the time viewed as a model worthy of emulation.” As a result, “Russia weathered a succession crisis … without suffering territorial disintegration.”

            What this means, the paper’s editors say, is that “Russian history offers only two possible scenarios: It may navigate its current historical situation by following the pattern of disintegration or by pursuing the pattern of rapid transformation.” There are no other alternatives, they write.

            And they conclude by pointing out that “These same history textbooks also suggest that, to avoid territorial disintegration, Russians must now avoid a military defeat or even a contentious stalemat in the war [they say] currently being waged by NATO nations against Russia” via a Ukrainian proxy.

            “Any attempt to obscure this historical choice from contemporary Russian society is a poor strategy in the ongoing conflict with the West,” they conclude, given the risk of stagnation of the country and then its disintegration as in 1918 and again in 1991.