By Janusz Bugajski
August 7, 2024
Washington Examiner
The recent exchange of several Russian political hostages for Moscow’s spies and assassins, facilitated by the Biden administration, has refocused attention on Russia’s future. Following their release, several of the political activists have been presented by some former Western officials as the best hope for a democratic Russia.
In reality, however, in terms of their influence and impact, democratic dissidents will not bring down the Putin regime or transform Russia. It will be angry citizens, rebel governors, and armed revolutionaries who can most effectively capitalize on Russia’s coming economic decline and the expected infighting among the power elites.
Western governments led by the United States have been hypnotized by grand illusions about Russia throughout the post-Cold War era. The idea of long-term, mutually beneficial relations between the West and Russia turned out to be a mirage, as Russia’s economic and informational integration with the West did not democratize Russia but corrupted and undermined the West.
And yet, wishful thinking still persists in the notion that a handful of democrats, either in prison or in exile, can transform the empire into a democracy. Similar hopes were on display when the Soviet Union collapsed and high expectations were pinned on Presidents Boris Yeltsin, Vladimir Putin, and Dmitry Medvedev to transform Russia into a normal state. In practice, the Muscovite drive for autocracy and imperialism prevailed, and these alleged democrats became dictators and military aggressors, whether in Chechnya, Georgia, or Ukraine.
The real threat to the autocratic Russian state does not come from a handful of persecuted dissidents but from a gathering storm within the Russian imperial state. Moscow’s incessant propaganda wants the West to believe that sanctions are not working and that the Russian economy is growing. But this Soviet-style deception is countered by hard facts.
Russia’s oil export revenues, a foundation of the budget, are dropping, and the longer-term trends are even more pessimistic as Russia has lost the European market and cannot compensate elsewhere in the longer term. Investment in the energy industry is collapsing, and foreign direct investment has evaporated. Gazprom, one of the main revenue streams, is basically bankrupt.
The defense sector will not be able to maintain its military-industrial output amid escalating financial pressures. Inflation is soaring in an overheated economy, and Moscow’s financial reserves are being depleted. Massive state investment in a war economy may temporarily enable the Kremlin to claim that its gross domestic product is growing, but in reality, such a policy stifles the civilian economy and leads to stagnation and eventual collapse.
In such volatile conditions, the potential for protests in Russia is escalating even among some local elites whose revenues will be increasingly squeezed by Moscow. The Kremlin will, of course, feverishly attempt to repress and disguise such disaffection.
As an indicator of Moscow’s fears, several new repressive laws have recently been passed and state-wide campaigns launched to combat “extremism and separatism.” In July, the Kremlin declared that 55 national liberation movements had formed an “Anti-Russian Separatist Movement” to dismember the country. Although such announcements are intended to rally support for the Kremlin, there is evidence that they are backfiring and actually encouraging the growth of a more radicalized resistance.
The kind of Russia that America and the West can coexist with is not another “promised democracy,” as espoused by Alexei Navalny and other murdered, imprisoned, or exiled dissidents, but a truncated Russia permanently weakened by a major military defeat in Ukraine. And the only hope for a “democratic Russia” is a small state shorn of the regions whose resources it exploits for its war economy and without the national republics it exploits for its military cannon fodder. Otherwise, alleged democrats, liberals, and pragmatists will again discover their imperial “Russian soul” and Europe will face another war against Muscovite aggression in the coming years.
Janusz Bugajski is a senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation in Washington, D.C. His recent book is Failed State: A Guide to Russia’s Rupture. His new book, published in the fall, is titled Pivotal Poland: Europe’s Rising Power.