Russia is weaker than the USSR. Why is Putin’s empire doomed to defeat in the war with Ukraine?

HOW DAD? Yes, but there is a caveat.

Putin’s war with Ukraine (or the entire West, as he puts it) World War II. Like grandparents.

Why are we talking about this? Because I’m tired of reading some despondent and pessimistic texts about “here, Russia will be able to fight for at least 10 years” because now their factories will start working and will produce 10,000 tanks and 100,000 UAVs per hour per hour. And the Russians will go to the leader’s first call to die forever. Some will go, but the part that Putin needs will not. It was as if they had talked about it 100 times, but still – in a circle and in a circle.

For this reason. The initial – in some places disastrous – failures of the Russian army fed this system of comparison quite organically. Here – again we are “attacked”, again some “fascists and Nazis”, again “we are defending our homeland from the occupation of the West.” Admiration? Yes, but Putin loves him, his propagandists love him, and so do those who seek excuses for their bloodlust against the Ukrainians. But 16 months have passed, and during this time all Russia has achieved:

1. Carry out a not-so-successful campaign. And being in a position where the next large-scale wave poses unforeseen risks to the regime.
2. Slightly increase missile production. Increase UAV production and pull technology from Iran… This is distasteful, but the Ukrainian air defense has been disproportionately strengthened and will become stronger. For Russia, this will not be any child prodigy.
3. More or less offset the economic downturn (avoid a rapid slump) and hold on to some doomsday prospects.

Not much for a country that has been preparing for war for 20 years. NO. All this does not make Russia a weak enemy, because the economy is many times larger, the military budget is ten times larger in the last 20 years, there is no disarmament – all this has not disappeared. However, the support of the world’s leading economies and technology giants is now on our side. In addition, Russia is deprived of many important advantages that the USSR had in 1941. Both natural and structural.

Demography. The 1941 USSR is a young country in conditions of population explosion that has lasted for almost 50 years. Even famine, revolution, bloody civil war, collectivization and accelerated urbanization could do nothing about it. Modern Russia is a country that is disappearing at a rate of 1 million a year.

Society and the state system. The USSR of the 1930s was a society with a very specific system of values ​​and motivation. But the main difference from modern Russia was in the formula, which can be defined by the transformed Soviet slogan: “Drive humanity to happiness with an iron hand.”

It was a modernization project ready to invest in industrialization, mass education and science, if not a world revolution, to secure its own existence. Also, the 20s and 30s were filled with the belief that it was possible to create a “new man” who would abandon everything that belonged to the old regime. Even the series of genocides and socio-crimes perpetrated by the Soviet government against Ukrainians, Siberians and Cossacks were part of their class struggle for progress. Perverse, but still progress. Progress and social engineering are impossible without the mobilization of society.

Therefore, all Soviet propaganda, all pre-war cinema, education and upbringing were built on the principles “today we are working to build a happy country, and tomorrow we must all go to war for it.” Egalitarianism was the mainstay of propaganda, and against the background of the super elitist nature of the Russian Empire, the Soviet “system of equal opportunities” seemed attractive to many.

Therefore, when the war began, millions (without irony) rushed to join the ranks of the “Red Army”. Additionally, given access to a limited amount of information, many of those who sincerely hated the Soviet regime perceived the German attack as an attack on their home. And not as a war of two totalitarian regimes.

Putin’s Russia is different. This is a retrospective mod. He wants it in the glorious times of the Russian Empire in the early 20th century. And this is the period of maximum chauvinism and reaction to the reforms of the 60s of the 19th century. Ideologically, Putin imitates not the cheerful posters of the 1930s, but the formulas of Pobedonostsev, translated by the outspoken fascist Ilyin.

Respectively. Propaganda did everything to ensure that the Russians were maximally: a) atomized; b) socially inactive; c) began to run away from reality. Because an electoral-informational feudal autocracy like Putin’s can only exist in a passive and atomized society.

Such a society cannot be prepared for a long war when it is necessary to mobilize maximum forces and means. For people to be ready to rush to conscription stations or factories to build tanks or donate funds, society must either educate itself (under a democracy) or the state must educate it (under a modernizing dictatorship).

All these “Ready to Work and Defend”, films, socialist competitions are preparations for mobilization. The development of a reflex. Which – despite all the horror and suffering of Soviet society – worked. We received training on Protests and Squares. And it worked for us too. Russians of this generation do not have it.

This inability to mobilize society is reflected in the state system itself. It makes it weak, inefficient and unstable. Because without internal stimuli and competition, everything gradually deteriorates and becomes filled with conformity. Such a system will work as long as it is stable. It deteriorates rapidly when exposed to significant external or internal shocks. Quickly – this is not in a month, – in a few years.

Therefore, if we compare the Putin regime with Soviet history, then it is most appropriate to look at the 80s. When the regime is clearly in decline and just as weak and old. If you look around Putin and Putin himself, they really look more like the Politburo of that time.

In general, to come 1989 (when the USSR turned out to be everything), the CPSU went from a terrible (literally bloody) mobilization project to the most demoralizing regime. Because only under these conditions was it possible to maintain the existence of the Soviet dictatorship. Because for a very short time during industrialization and WWII you can run at the pace of the USSR. Any society gets tired. And then – either democratization (as with Park Chung Hee in Korea) or preservation and degradation. As in the USSR.

Putin followed the same path, not just in 60 years, but in 20. On the shoulders of the reforms of the 90s and thanks to favorable market conditions, his regime received a strong 00s. About a year before 2007. But the global crisis, in the face of society’s expectations, has put him and his environment before a choice – either follow the path of democratization and develop institutions, or shorten everything and build a dictatorship. They chose the open road. And now we come to the point where we see it. The limit of collapse and collapse. And the peak is already in the process.

Because a weak society that cares about almost nothing is loyal out of habit. Because a weak state supports itself by inertia. Because the impossibility of changing something without risking a catastrophic imbalance. Imperials are dying of intestinal obstruction. This is about Russia. 1917. 1991. And now.

While our pessimists say that Russia will be a threat almost forever, I have two arguments for that:

1. Sooner or later, all empires fall. Even Byzantium fell, though it seemed eternal.
2. Russia is too big to survive the demographic crisis. Its territorial fragmentation will not allow for reforms and immigration to depopulate and heal another regime of madness. It will inevitably be resolved. And even if some Russian national states remain, it will not be the same.

It will still be very difficult for us. But we can definitely close the problem with Russia. Not without his direct help.

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