Why you are waiting in vain for a revolution against Putin in Russia? Some explanations

Since February 24, 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine, there have been expectations of a hostile response from Russian society. Many have harbored hopes for this, yet the question remains after almost 1000 days of conflict: Why haven’t the Russians revolted?

• Florin Anghel is a university professor at the Faculty of History and Political Science at Ovidius University in Constanța. He specializes in the history of Central Europe and the history of international relations in the 20th and 21st centuries. He completed his PhD in 2002, focusing on Romanian-Polish relations, and received the Academy’s Premier Award in 2005 for his volume „Building the ‘Cordon Sanitaire’ System: Romanian-Polish Relations, 1919-1926” (2003).

  

The answer is straightforward: Russians have never historically chosen their leaders. This was the case before 1917, under the tsarist empire, during the Soviet Union, and remains true since 1991, when Russia became an independent republic.

Russian leaders have historically been appointed or have come to power through succession rather than elections. Thus, in a society that has never experienced the option of choosing among multiple candidates in free elections, expectations by the media and the public for an overthrow of President Vladimir Putin through popular revolt or elections are in vain.

He will not lose power through these means. A successor, appointed rather than elected, will replace him at the Kremlin. What remains unknown is whether the future leader will be more or less bellicose and what the extent of their territorial control over Russia will be.

How do Russian leaders gain power?

Until March 1917, Russia was an empire, ruled by the Romanov dynasty which ascended the throne in 1613. The tsarist regime was overthrown under severe historical circumstances, with a nation exhausted by World War I and riddled with corruption and incompetence among its officer corps, political class, and public officials. The Russian army’s inability to maintain its fronts from 1914 to 1917 was evident in Dobrogea, a province lost within just 10 weeks by the Romanian and Russian allies (August-October 1916) to German and Bulgarian forces.

The Romanov tsars ascended the throne through dynastic succession, without the checks and balances found in constitutional monarchies across Europe, including Romania post-1866. Russia’s first Parliament (the State Duma) only appeared in 1905, and its first Constitution was enacted a year later, in 1906. Neither institution curbed the tsar’s decisions, who maintained control over the most significant governmental tools, including the powers to declare war and peace. The defeat against Japan in 1904-1905 for control of Manchuria highlighted Russia’s steep decline.

After tsarism fell, there was a brief liberalization of political and social life in Russia from spring to autumn 1917. The most urgent national issues were escaping the autocracy’s grip and negotiating peace to exit the war. These goals remained unachieved until October 25 (old style)/November 7 (new style) 1917, when Vladimir Lenin overthrew the provisional government and established the communist regime, which lasted until December 1991.

In the Soviet Union, most leaders died in office (Lenin, Stalin, Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko), and only one was ousted (Nikita Khrushchev, in 1964). However, none were elected; all were designated by a select group of party officials who later expected even greater privileges. When Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the USSR, assumed power in March 1985, the Soviet empire was already faltering. Moscow had lost its economic, financial, and technological battles with the USA and was beginning to lose its vast ideological territories across Europe, Asia, Africa, and Central America. Gorbachev conceded to the withdrawal from Eastern Europe in 1989-1990 and then passively observed the disintegration of the USSR from 1990 to 1991. He appointed Boris Yeltsin as his successor in Russia in 1990, a prominent former communist who had become a leader of the country’s secession from the Soviet empire.

Boris Yeltsin won Russia’s presidential election in the summer of 1990, a few months after Mikhail Gorbachev had made him the head of the Soviet republican parliament. During Yeltsin’s decade at the Kremlin, the imperial Soviet structures were dismantled, and the foundations for the oligarchs’ rise to power were laid. Massive fortunes were accumulated through corruption, fraudulent privatizations, and influence networks, including those involving the president’s family.

In August 1999, Vladimir Putin was appointed by President Boris Yeltsin as the head of the government in Moscow, and later, on the last day of 1999, he was designated as the acting president of the Russian Federation. The arrangement seemed perfect: President Yeltsin retained his wealth and kept his family out of legal troubles, while Vladimir Putin won the 2000 presidential election after initially being appointed by his predecessor. Since December 31, 1999, Vladimir Putin has ruled Russia without any opposition, although he stepped back to the position of prime minister from 2008 to 2012, leaving a close associate, Dmitry Medvedev, in the Kremlin.

Thus, at any historical juncture in Russia (1613, the installation of the Romanov dynasty; 1917, the creation of the Soviet Union; 1991, the rise of the independent Russian Federation), leadership has never initially been achieved through popular election.

All of Russia’s current neighboring states, once part of the Russian Empire or the USSR, have experienced longer or shorter periods of electoral fervor, liberalization, or democratization of political or social life. This historical memory sets them apart and has helped shape them into robust societies with expectations for change.

Since gaining independence in August 1991, Ukraine had five presidents before Volodymyr Zelensky was elected in 2019, alongside numerous changes in government. Armenia, under Russian influence until recently, now has its sixth elected president. Even Belarus, Russia’s most loyal satellite, shows a more promising scenario: Alexander Lukashenko took power in 1994, after an elected president, Stanislav Shushkevich (1991-1994), and a politically promising early 1990s. Lesser known is that Belarus also hosts the longest-running government in exile in modern history, continuously operational since 1920, initially in Prague and later in Canada, including an exiled president of the Republic (since 1997, Ivonka Survilla), who maintains the traditions of the first independent state from 1918.

China, alone among global powers like Russia, shares a similar situation. Even after the disintegration of the Empire (1911) or the declaration of the People’s Republic (1949), no leader has been freely and democratically elected.

What comes next in Russia after the regime’s collapse?

President Vladimir Putin will leave the Kremlin either through death (natural or induced) or by a forceful overthrow (coup) from within the Kremlin. After 25 years of absolute power, it is harder to believe (though not impossible) that a group might form to implement the latter scenario.

Putin’s disappearance will not usher Russia toward democracy or a liberal regime with transparent institutions. Neither decision-makers nor the Russian public have any real understanding of the complex and dynamic operation of these institutions; they have never historically experienced a filter on the decision-making of the supreme leader (other than through rival groups). In Russia, there is no expertise in managing democracy, decision-making transparency, implementing alternative scenarios, or handling the potential failures of major projects decided by vote.

Never in Russia’s modern history has a head of state authentically accounted to anyone for any political, economic, social, or military actions. This is commonplace in European states, where presidents, prime ministers, or ministers are dismissed or resign, parliaments are dissolved, strikes and crises occur, free protest demonstrations are held, and governments change successively. Russia has never known or applied these scenarios historically and is unlikely to do so even after Putin’s departure.

Russian dissidents, the true heroes, are a minority among the more than 140 million inhabitants. Their ability to forge a new path for Russia, akin to European societies, is negligible, with opponents often viewed more as an exotic, foreign body lacking an understanding of the nation’s grand historical traditions.

The fact that the overwhelming majority of Russians align with the imperial perspective represented by President Vladimir Putin was also evidenced by the fact that, despite the hundreds of thousands of active Russians with professional skills and material means entering exile following the invasion of Ukraine, there has yet to be a single significant protest against the aggression and the killing of innocent civilians. The political regimes in Georgia, Serbia, Kazakhstan, or Armenia, where these Russians have taken refuge, may not be perfect models of democracy but do allow all forms of opposition, contestatory activities, and frequent changes of power or leaders.

What will happen to Russia after Putin? Expect less of a political transformation toward democracy. Russia lacks the traditions, institutions, and historical memory needed for such a transition; therefore, it cannot originate internally. Instead, expect a new geopolitical and military reality. The Russian Federation, in its administrative-territorial configuration since 1991, may cease to exist in the decades following Vladimir Putin.

After the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and then Poland proclaimed their independence. Although some were re-incorporated into the USSR in the 1920s, the memory of a free state already existed. When the Soviet Union dissolved in December 1991, the Russian Federation emerged in its most confined territorial form in the last three centuries.

Any collapse of a regime has led to significant territorial losses, and there is no reason to believe this pattern will not continue following Putin’s disappearance. Russia has never been a national state in its modern history but has operated on imperial foundations, incorporating territories and peoples that do not inherently belong to it. When favorable circumstances arise, these peoples have no reason not to seek independence from Russia.

The imperial tradition, rather than a national one, is why Russia, standing alone against the West, cannot achieve a military victory against a major power. Russia’s last military victory against a force not backed by Western states occurred in 1877-1878, when it defeated the Ottoman Empire in Bulgaria (with assistance from the small Romanian army led by Carol I).

World War II, glorified each May 9 at the Kremlin, was a victory for the USSR as part of a large coalition, primarily with the USA and Great Britain. Now, alone in an aggressive war against Ukraine, Russia should not be expected to win, according to historical tradition. It lacks the motivation, resources, and tradition to overcome the West. Meanwhile, Ukraine, though seemingly vulnerable, possesses not only material resources but also the historical potential to achieve victory.

Expectations for democratic and liberal developments in Russia, due to the authoritarian policies of President Vladimir Putin or the war of aggression against Ukraine, are in vain.

Changes will not emerge from within. Russian society will not detach from its historical memory nor act against the supreme power at the Kremlin. Structural changes in societies lacking transparency or democracy have occurred in the post-war era, in extreme cases, and only through significant American influence: West Germany after Hitler, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan. For Russia, such measures now seem impossible.

The continuity of political and institutional life in Russia is key to the success of autocracy and the lack of change over the last 400 years. At no point during this time has there been an alternative. Therefore, do not expect political changes in Moscow but stay alert and prepared for substantial territorial transformations.