Russia After Putin: Dictatorship, Democracy, or Chaos?
Russia has little historical experience with democracy but vivid memories of times when political uncertainty spawned turmoil and violence. Fears of chaos will influence Russia's post-Putin future.
Note added August 28 2024: This is a post the Natto Team published on April 14, 2023. It discussed possible scenarios for a post-Putin Russia— ranging from an orderly transition to chaos and civil war — and some collective memories of past traumas that may constrain outcomes. Events in the past year have made some scenarios less likely; for example, after the short-lived mutiny and death of mercenary leader Yevgeniy Prigozhin, would-be warlords will likely hesitate to challenge Putin.
A few specific updates appear in italics in the text. However, the basic analysis here remains relevant. Putin’s rule remains brittle, and Putin’s projected confidence sometimes resembles desperation. Sometimes a regime that seems eternal can crumble.Russian President Vladimir Putin will not remain in power forever. Although rumors of his imminent physical or political demise may be exaggerated, sooner or later the Putin era in Russia will end. Analysts have put forth numerous scenarios for a post-Putin Russia. These include identifying potential successors to Putin, as discussed in Part 1. Some scenarios envision the Russian Federation breaking up into multiple independent states or dissolving into chaos, as discussed in Part 2. Indeed, in the Russian collective memory, moments of freedom have often given way to traumatic disorder or harsh crackdown. Memories and fears of chaos will likely influence Russian citizens’ and global policymakers’ choices after Putin, as discussed in Part 3. World leaders seeking to promote peace with justice in the region can draw lessons from history.
Part 1: What Kind of Government Could Come After Putin?
One set of scenarios imagines that Russia remains within its current boundaries and has a more-or-less orderly transition, whether it moves toward more democracy or remains authoritarian. If Putin has lost power by the time of the presidential election scheduled for March 17, 2024, that might be the occasion for a transition to a new leader. (If he remains in power by then, he will likely take strenuous measures to ensure reelection). Update: Putin did declare victory in the March election.
Democratic
Russian opposition activists have outlined visions for a democratic renewal of their country. Exiled opposition leaders Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Garri Kasparov, for example, have proposed that a transitional state council oversee Russia’s conversion to a parliamentary republic, demilitarize Russia, hold war criminals accountable, and restore Russia’s place in the community of nations.
However, Russia’s democratic opposition is mostly in prison or in exile and struggles to maintain unity. The most prominent opposition figure in 2023, Alexey Navalny, currently languishes with failing health in a Russian prison. His followers likewise struggle to remain united; in March 2023 his top aide, Leonid Volkov, stepped down from leadership in Navalny’s international organization after a leak revealed that he and other opposition activists had called for easing sanctions on a reviled Russian oligarch.
Update August 28 2024: Navalny died in prison on February 16, 2024. The Russian government released and deported some of his colleagues, along with other imprisoned opposition activists, on August 1 2024 as part of a prisoner exchange. From exile, these activists will likely struggle to connect with the Russian people, particularly as the Russian government increasingly censors global social media.
New Generation
Some analysts rest their hopes for a renewed democratic Russia on the emergence of a new post-Soviet generation that wants to be integrated with the world and does not share Soviet political instincts. For example, analysts have suggested that Dmitriy Patrushev, who is Russia’s Agriculture Minister and the son of Russian Security Council chief Nikolay Patrushev, would likely avoid a suicidal nuclear escalation; at the same time, it would protect the tainted current leadership from retribution, as Nikolai Holmov of OdessaTalk has suggested.
It is unclear whether this new/old generation could make Russia more democratic.
Technocratic
Some of Russia’s governing bureaucrats project an image of competence rather than corruption, factional fighting, or active endorsement of the war on Ukraine. These include Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin and Central Bank chair Elvira Nabiullina.
Military junta
Some commentators have suggested that a military junta might come to power in Russia, at least temporarily. Participants in a conference entitled “Preparing for the Dissolution of the Russian Federation,” which the Hudson Institute, a conservative US think tank, organized in February 2023, brainstormed possible implications of such a scenario: would it hasten the breakup of Russia by showing the military’s incapacity to rule? Or would the Western military actually welcome a Russian junta because it would guarantee they could talk to a general at the other end of the phone line?
Other Security Forces
People from the security forces, known in Russian as “siloviki” (силовики=men of power) dominate the political culture of Putin’s Russia. Siloviki include the FSB, Russia’s domestic security service; the National Guard, headed by Putin’s trusted former bodyguard Viktor Zolotov; the military; the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR); the Interior Ministry (MVD); the Investigative Committee (SKR); and other groups that have access to physical force (Other semi-official armed groups, such as the Wagner mercenary militia, are discussed below.) These agencies have long jockeyed for political weight and access to lucrative formal and illicit financial flows. Until now, Putin has played these competing power centers off against each other to make sure none threatens him. However, when he is gone, they and their armed personnel could confront each other more openly. Politico’s roundup of 12 likely post-Putin scenarios assesses that the most likely outcome would be rule by a “troika” (trio) of top siloviki. Interestingly, Politico awards this scenario only a 2 out of 5 on their “scariness” index. It is difficult to judge Politico’s assessment without knowing the reasoning behind it.
Oligarchy?
Politico’s roundup of 12 scenarios does not envision an oligarch coming to power. Russia’s ultra-rich businessmen—many of whom gained their riches through sweetheart deals with the government—exerted political influence in the 1990s by controlling media outlets and campaign funding. However, Putin has thoroughly tamed them; their financial and personal well-being rely on expressing loyalty to him. Some oligarchs have expressed cautious criticism of wartime policies and sought to shrug off sanctions by selling stakes in businesses, denying ties to Putin, or convincing reputable Russian dissidents to vouch for them. These oligarchs seem to hope that the world community will forget their current complicity in Putin’s policies. On the other hand, analyst Alexander Gabuev has assessed that if Putin falls, these businessmen will also go to jail.
Part 2: Scenarios for a Breakup of Russia
Many commentators say the Russian Federation will never cease to threaten its neighbors unless it ceases to be a centralized empire, whether it breaks up into self-governing regions or becomes a truly decentralized federation.
At the Hudson Institute conference mentioned above, some participants claimed that Russian regions such as Tatarstan, the Volga Region, Idel-Ural, and some Siberian areas are ready to flourish as independent states. Putin himself reportedly fears such as scenario as a real possibility. In contrast, Natalia Arno, an ethnic Buryat working for the Free Russia Foundation, told the Hudson conference that among Russian regional lawmakers and even opposition figures, “there is no demand for a dissolution of the Russian federation.” Instead, many groups aspire to real federalism, with increased autonomy for the regions, and an end to what Arno described as a Nazi-like spirit of xenophobia within Russia.
In 1991 the world community recognized the breakup of the Soviet Union into its constituent republics—Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and so on--as being in accordance with international law; the Soviet Constitution had nominally granted those so-called Union Republics the right to secede. However, any further territorial reorganization of the Russian Federation could strike the international community as destabilizing. For example, countries did not formally recognize the independence of the Chechnya region from Russia in the 1990s. When Ukraine’s parliament voted in October 2022 to declare Chechnya “temporarily occupied territory” that deserved independence, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky responded cautiously, promising to study the issue in terms of international law. As of April 2023 he does not appear to have made a formal decision to recognize the opposition government-in-exile of the so-called “Chechen Republic of Ichkeria.”
Descent into Chaos
Whether or not Russia undergoes a formal geographic breakup, any loosening of central control could potentially unleash a free-for-all. The country could descend into chaos or civil war, with local strongmen using armed militias and gangs to fight over territory and resources. A series of defenestrations and other mysterious deaths of oil executives and other prominent Russians in 2022 and in 2023 evokes memories of the 1990s, when businessmen and ex-Soviet bureaucrats fought bloody “aluminum wars” and other conflicts for control over valuable natural resources and industrial assets. Ultranationalist hardliners in Russia, including mercenary chief Yevgeniy Prigozhin, Chechen region dictator Ramzan Kadyrov, and militaristic bloggers, have openly criticized Russia’s military leaders and squabbled with each other, foreshadowing the possibility of open armed conflict among them. The assassination of a Prigozhin-friendly military blogger in Saint Petersburg, Russia on 2 April 2023—whether carried out by pro-Ukrainian forces, Russian intelligence services, or a criminal or business rival—highlights the potential for violence within Russia.
Even formal declarations of independence by Russian ethnic and geographic regions declaring independence could also turn sour, as groups have already made claims on neighboring territories. An official in Russia’s Chechnya region, for example, has hinted at a claim to parts of neighboring Dagestan. Similarly, Ukrainian parliamentarian Oleksiy Honcharenko [who often uses the Russian version of his name: “Alexey Goncharenko”] has declared that the Kuban territory—a nickname for the Krasnodar region of Russia—rightfully belongs to Ukraine. This claim goes beyond President Zelensky’s official war aim of winning back territory Ukraine held after the Soviet breakup in 1991. Goncharenko’s implied wish for Ukraine to annex territory that is currently recognized as part of Russia could change Ukraine’s image from that of underdog to that of a potential aggressor. This could undermine western support for Ukraine’s effort in the current war. Furthermore, Goncharenko’s statements have met with the counter-argument that Kuban actually historically belongs to the Circassians, a Muslim nationality that both Tsarist and Soviet governments have tried to erase from history.
Update August 28 2024: Ukraine did in fact seize portions of Russian territory in an August 6 2024 offensive. Ukrainian and Western officials and observers have portrayed the incursion not as aggression but as a legitimate act of self-defense and a move to strengthen Ukraine’s hand in potential negotiations rather than to occupy Russian territory. Furthermore, the Substack newsletter of Kyiv-based war correspondent Tim Mak notes that Sudzha, one of the towns Ukraine seized, has historical ties to both Russia and Ukraine, showing the “absurdity of relying on historical ethnic [and] linguistic boundaries as justification for war.”
Men with Guns
Russian civilians held between 18 million and 25 million firearms as of 2017, most of them not legally registered. Since 2021 the Russian government has further restricted gun ownership but has also been teaching children to handle guns in school-based military training programs. The militarization of society, along with the flourishing of armed groups and the return of traumatized combat veterans to civilian life, could make 2023 “quite bumpy,” BBC Russian editor Steve Rosenberg said in a February 2023 interview. If order breaks down in Russia, rival strongmen could recruit cadres of armed men in battles over territory and resources.
Private Armies
The Wagner mercenary army of “Putin’s chef” Yevgeniy Prigozhin has won fame for recruiting Russian prisoners and throwing them inhuman-wave attacks against the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, as well as for years of involvement in political conflicts and natural resource exploitation in Africa and the Middle East. Researchers at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies (C4ADS), the New America Foundation, and other organizations have mapped and tracked Prigozhin’s “galaxy” of armed groups and information warriors, its ties to groups with names like Rusich and the Russian Imperial Movement, and its links to Russian state agencies and companies.
Update August 28 2024: After Prigozhin staged a brief mutiny on June 23-24, 2023, his Wagner militia and propaganda empire were nominally disbanded. Prigozhin’s subsequent death in a suspicious plane crash on August 24 2023 will likely make any other would-be warlords think twice about challenging Putin. The Natto Team has explored the political context of the Prigozhin phenomenon here and here, and several recent books [gift link] provide a deeper analysis.
Wagner is merely the best known of a series of quasi-state volunteer formations and private armies. Others include the following:
The “Kadyrovites,” (a.k.a. Kadyrovtsy=кадыровцы), units that Chechen regional dictator Ramzan Kadyrov controls, including the 141st Special Motorized Regiment and several “Akhmat” brigades named after Kadyrov’s father. Some of these units are technically part of the Russian National Guard.
The Union of Donbas Volunteers (SDD), led by a former prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic.
A private military company that Russian state-controlled gas company Gazprom has received permission to deploy. Gazprom and other strategic enterprises received the right to employ armed security units as early as 2007.
The Patriot (Патриот) private military company that Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu reportedly controls; since at least 2018 this group has been active in Syria and Africa, mainly providing physical protection for VIPs.
The Redut (Redoubt) unit that natural resources tycoon Gennady Timchenko has used to protect his assets and which has operated in Ukraine under Russian Defense Ministry oversight alongside the 45th Airborne Brigade.
Regional volunteer battalions such as the so-called Sobyanin Regiment, named after the Moscow mayor.
About 20 BARS (Military Army Reserve of the Country) battalions of reservists.
In addition, Russia has some 18000 private security guard companies (ChOP, ChOO), some of whose employees can carry weapons.
Guns are flooding back into Russia from the conflict in Ukraine. Russian media reported in late 2022 a doubling of armed crimes committed in Russia by comparison with 2021. “The possibility of guns flowing into Russia from Ukraine and the impending decay in public order are certainly fresh on the minds of the Russian authorities today,” analysts at the Jamestown Foundation, a US think tank, wrote in November 2022. Numerous Wagner prison recruits have deserted that group’s ranks, sometimes taking their guns with them. One of these shot a Russian police officer in December 2022. In addition, some 5000 convicts have reportedly completed their Wagner service, received formal pardons and returned to Russia. Along with combat experience and likely mental trauma, some of these may bring home weapons as well.
Brutalization of Society
Not only direct combat experience but also the official propaganda dehumanizing Ukrainians, with which Putin attempted to justify the war, have contributed to an atmosphere of what anthropologist Kristina Hook has called “cascading radicalism” in Russia.
This heightened normalization of violence will make it harder to reestablish peace even if Putin falls. Just as veterans of the 1980s Soviet war in Afghanistan featured prominently among criminal groups in the 1990s and among the troops spearheading the seizure of Crimea and the Donbass region from Ukraine in 2014, the current group of fighters could be psychologically primed for future violence. Funerals for convicts who fought and died in Ukraine as part of the Wagner mercenary group are have angered neighbors who remember those convicts’ crimes. Pardoned convicts returning alive from Wagner service have committed at least 20 recorded crimes as of late March 2023; more such crimes likely go unrecorded. (Update 10 May: On the broader risks of post-war weapons proliferation, see the report “The Russo-Ukrainian war and the illegal arms trade” by the Global Initiative on Transnational Organized Crime).
Part 3: Collective Memory and Fears of Chaos
Russian historical memory has few precedents for successful democratizing reforms. Indeed, some of Russia’s few periods of freedom are associated with traumatic periods of societal breakdown and have often given way to harsh repression.
Russia’s few moments of political pluralism include the following:
● The institution of the veche (вече), a town hall-style decision-making body in the medieval cities like Novgorod and Pskov that somewhat limited the power of the city’s prince. As Moscow took over neighboring princedoms in the 15th-century, Moscow’s more top-down leadership style eclipsed Novgorod’s veche tradition.
● The Great Reforms of the 1860s, when defeat in the Crimean War led Tsar Alexander II to abolish serfdom and introduce judicial, military and other modernizing reforms. After he fell to a terrorist’s bomb in 1881, Alexander’s successor unleashed a wave of repression.
● The limited popular representation and economic reform efforts that Tsarist-era Prime Minister Petr Stolypin introduced after Russia’s 1905 Revolution. However, the government also cracked down harshly on revolutionaries—executions were so frequent that the hangman’s noose was dubbed “Stolypin’s necktie.”
● Russia’s Provisional Government after the fall of the tsarist regime in 1917. Free elections were held for a Constituent Assembly to draw up a new constitution. However, the Provisional Government’s failure to address Russian economic and social problems, exacerbated by Russia’s continued participation in World War I, allowed the Bolsheviks to take power; they swiftly disbanded the Constituent Assembly. The civil war that followed is one of the traumatic events described below.
● The de-Stalinization of 1956, when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev denounced the brutal rule of his predecessor, Joseph Stalin. However, Khrushchev did not introduce democracy but sought to revitalize Communist rule. The “Khrushchev Thaw” included a loosening of political and cultural restrictions, heartening Soviet intellectuals. However, prison amnesties conducted in the late Stalin years and after Stalin’s death also released criminals into the general population, generating fears of social instability. The “Thaw” ended in 1964 with the accession to power of Leonid Brezhnev. Update August 28 2024: The Thaw era nevertheless inspired reformers such as Mikhail Gorbachev, who oversaw the breakup of the Soviet Union a generation later. This gives hope for Russia’s eventual democratization, as the Natto team discusses here.
● The 1990s, after Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev renounced the Communist Party’s monopoly on political power, the ethnic republics declared independence from the Soviet Union, and multiple political forces competed in the political landscape. Russian leaders and their global advisors sought to establish a democratic political system while also yanking Russia’s economy from socialist central planning into capitalism. The economic devastation, corruption and violence that marred this period, as mentioned below, also discredited the idea of democracy in popular minds.
Memories of Trauma
The collective memory of such moments of popular freedom intertwine with traumatic recollections of upheaval and chaos. Nineteenth-century Russian poet Alexander Pushkin, citing Russia’s periodic peasant revolts, famously wrote, “God save us from a Russian bunt [uprising], senseless and merciless.”
S.V. Ivanov, Time of Troubles. Moscow Region. Impostor’s Army (1908). (Source: Wikimedia Commons, public domain)
1610s: Time of Troubles
Russians remember the so-called Time of Troubles (Смута) of 1598-1613, after the Rurikid dynasty died out and the country endured civil strife, famine, impostors pretending to be the rightful ruler, and Polish incursions. Russia’s National Unity Day holiday on November 4 honors an uprising that ousted Polish occupiers in 1612. Since 2022 a Russian government fund has allocated some half a billion rubles for the development of a video game set in the Time of Troubles. The game developer said he chose that period because “the current geopolitical situation bears some resemblance to the events of the 17th century...the location of resources remains the same, and the East-West confrontation persists. .... During this period, there was a significant risk of losing our national identity.” In a rambling speech on 30 September 2022, President Putin mentioned the Western incursions during Time of Troubles and the Civil War era (discussed below), part of a litany of grievances allegedly justifying the illegal annexation of four Ukrainian territories.
Update August 28 2024: The Prigozhin mutiny of June 2023 also evoked comparisons to past traumas, whether the Time of Troubles or the Russian Civil War (discussed below). The Natto Team discussed this in the posting “Vocabulary of Mutiny, Mafia and Misery.” UK-based analyst Mark Galeotti has similarly compared the present day to the Time of Troubles, both in connection with changes in the Russian criminal underground and in podcast arguing that Russian civil society is not dead yet.
Isaak Babel’s Story Collection “Red Army” (1927) Evoked the Chaos and Brutality of the Russian Civil War (Source: Wikimedia Commons, public domain)
1918-1921: Russian Civil War
Commenting on the conflict between Prigozhin and Russia’s military leadership, Russia analyst Edward Lucas wrote in January 2022, “Russia’s Civil War has already begun.” These developments evoke memories of the civil war that ravaged the region after the Russian Empire dissolved in 1917-1918.
As empires crumbled all around and the Tsar’s family fell to assassins’ bullets, the Bolsheviks consolidated their power, withdrew from the war with Germany, and fought instead against Russian monarchists and other rivals. The Russian Civil War saw atrocities and anti-Jewish pogroms throughout large parts of the former Russian empire. In Ukraine, which had declared itself independent from the Russian Empire, Bolsheviks fought against monarchists, Ukrainian independence forces and a peasant anarchist movement under Nestor Makhno. American, British and other former World War I allies of Tsarist Russia even deployed troops in the country’s peripheries to protect allied military supplies. Wholesale seizures of grain from peasants culminated in a devastating famine in 1921-22. Memories of the Civil War remain fresh in 2023, especially as an ostensibly pro-Ukrainian and anti-Putin Russian vigilante group has claimed to have breached the Russian border multiple times. In an allegedly leaked phone call criticizing Russia’s current military and political leaders, Russian businessman-politician Farkhad Akhmedov expressed fears of what could come after the current Russian leadership: “They’ll start coming: Kadyrovites, Prigozhinites, oprichniks [referring to the brutal personal militia of 16th-century Tsar Ivan the Terrible]. It will be Makhnovshchina [referring to the Makhno uprising]. They’ll be swinging daggers, sledgehammers...” He was anticipating that the current conflict could devolve into a 1918-like free-for-all among a motley crew of armed men with a variety of agendas.
1990s Post-Soviet Disintegration
In the 1990s, when the Soviet Union broke up, Russia went through economic “shock therapy” to transform from a Communist-led planned economy to a free-market economy. The social safety net crumbled, and citizens who had worked all their lives found themselves living on bread and tea or selling trinkets and begging on the streets to survive. Former Soviet bureaucrats and ruthless businesspeople fought over lucrative assets and natural resources, sometimes with bloody street battles and contract killings, as mentioned above. In addition, the world community feared that terrorists or rogue states could gain access to Russian “suitcase nukes” or other weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or could hire the scientists who designed them. Western countries invested significant sums in safeguarding these and providing legitimate employment for ex-Soviet WMD scientists. Wagner mercenaries reportedly guard a uranium storage site in Libya, raising concerns about misappropriation when barrels of yellowcake, or partially processed uranium, went missing in March 2023. Miscreants could potentially use this substance in dirty bombs.
These fears of disorder help explain why the Russian people have allowed President Putin to stay in power so long and acquiesced in the war against Ukraine. For decades, poll results have shown Russians favor a “strong hand” at the helm of the state rather than uncontrolled democracy. Telling stories about chaos has allowed authoritarian leaders to claim justification for their harsh measures.
Fears of a Menace from the East
Fears of domestic disorder go hand-in-hand with existential fears of loss of Russian sovereignty and territorial integrity. A recent Chinese map giving the historical Chinese names for cities in Russian territory fueled suspicion that China could actually seize Russian Far Eastern territory, particularly the Manchurian territory that Russia obtained from China via one of the “unequal treaties” of the 19th century.
Russian emigre opposition figure Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who opposes the breakup of the Russian Federation, has warned that if Russia disintegrated its eastern regions would likely “become a satellite of China, its raw-materials and military appendage,” adding, “China would start to advance in the direction of Europe, all the way to the Urals at a minimum,” referring to the mountain range that separates European from Asian Russia. Realistically, China’s leaders would likely think twice before taking such a destabilizing step that would risk global censure. Indeed, China’s existing relationship with Russia provides it with Russian resources at bargain prices, without the responsibility of administering new territory. Update August 28 2024: For more on the fraught Russia-China relationship, see the Natto Thoughts postings “The Dragon and the Bear: Chinese-Russian Interaction in Africa” (Jan. 11 2024) and “The East Is Rising—Or Is It?” (Feb. 1 2024).
Damage Control
On April 5, 2023 Russia’s rubber-stamp parliament approved a legislative bill that would forgive businessmen and bankers for certain financial crimes as long as they pay compensation to both the victims and the Russian government. Putin will likely sign the bill into law; he too has called for decriminalizing certain economic infractions, replacing prison sentences with milder penalties.
If enacted, this legislation could entice oligarchs to bring their assets back from offshore to fill Russia’s dwindling coffers. It could also serve as damage control to defuse vertical and horizontal pressures on Russia’s elite. Putin’s leadership style has long resembled a mafia-like “protection racket,” in which he holds blackmail material against everyone to keep them in line, while business competition has often involved using corrupt prosecutors and judges to prosecute rivals for sometimes trumped-up crimes. By supporting the decriminalization initiative, businessmen are voluntarily giving up the option of exploiting the judicial system against competitors. This suggests that they have a greater fear of the chaos that could come from disunity.
Update August 28 2024: Some easing of penalties for economic crimes did occur in 2023 (https://www.advgazeta[.]ru/mneniya/obzor-izmeneniy-v-uk-i-upk-v-2023-godu/), though further research would be needed to understand the broader implications.
Conclusion: Hope and History
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it (George Santayana)
Potential scenarios for a post-Putin Russia present knotty questions for global decisionmakers who aspire to help establish peace with justice in Russia’s neighborhood. World leaders will likely seek to support movements for democratization and ethnic and regional self-determination in Russia but will also feel pressure to minimize chaos and instability in the region.
Analysts have formulated principles that may help policymakers plan for a post-Putin Russia. Luke Coffey of the Hudson Institute, for example, lists issues and policy suggestions ranging from safeguarding Russia’s WMD stockpiles to ensuring accountability for Russian atrocities in Ukraine. Coffey notes that Ukraine’s victory in the current war would offer a unique opportunity to “put Russia back into its geopolitical box for a generation.” Others have conversely stressed the need to extend carrots as well as sticks, to give the Russian people an incentive to do what it takes to rejoin the community of nations.
Examples from history--including the reconstruction of Germany and Japan after the Second World War and the Truth and Reconciliation processes in South Africa and Rwanda—offer guarded hope that at least partial healing can take place in societies scarred by war and dictatorship. In an April 9, 2023 editorial marking the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday accords that ended decades of fratricidal violence in Northern Ireland, former US President Bill Clinton cited lines from a Seamus Heaney poem:
…once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.
Clinton said the Good Friday agreement in Northern Ireland largely succeeded because of popular support, judicious compromises, positive US involvement, and a deal that was fair to all sides.
Drawing on past experience, analysts have extracted lessons for establishing “transitional justice” after dictatorship and restoring peace between small countries and their powerful neighbors. Legal scholars draw on the experience of past international tribunals as they plan a Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression to prosecute Russian leaders. Psychologists discuss how to help heal the psychological trauma and “moral injury” — the crushing guilt combatants feel after having viewed or participated in atrocities — that both Ukrainians and Russians have experienced.
History also shows the difficulty of establishing peace with justice and balancing popular democracy with stability, particularly in a multi-ethnic country. After ousting Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003, a US-led coalition purged members of his Baath political party from government and introduced a power-sharing arrangement among Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds that arguably worsened the corruption and clientelism in that country. After the civil wars in the former Yugoslavia, international efforts to ensure justice for ethnic and religious factions and accountability for wartime atrocities continue to face challenges in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo. Historical precedents provide a sobering reminder of both the possibility and the complexity of remaking a society after a time of turmoil.
To grapple with complex situations heavy with historical and emotional burdens, policymakers must deploy not only tools for political management but also an understanding of culture and history, social dynamics, and the emotional resonance of words and events. George Washington University (GWU)’s new Russia Program seeks to reemphasize the study of these intangible facets of Russian realities — a renewed version of the holistic Cold War-era “area studies” approach to understanding Russia — to help explain why in 2023 the Russian population willingly supports and participates in Russia’s nightmarish war on Ukraine. They note that Russian fighters’ motives include not just personal gain but also the collective memory of World War II and a yearning for esteem, respect and social equality.
Although history has sometimes served as a weapon in political battles, historical research done conscientiously in a spirit of honest inquiry can help understand the present and navigate the future. Not that past experience serves as a prescription or prediction, but it helps illustrate the range of possible outcomes, the ways human societies have faced challenges in the past, and the ingrained habits of mind and other intangible factors that could constrain the choices decisionmakers make. Western observers quick to make recommendations for Russia’s future would be well advised to remember that.
Update August 28 2024: The Natto Team subsequently considered these themes more deeply in the postings “History and Hope: Reflections on Timothy Snyder’s ‘Politics of Responsibility’” (January 18 2024) and “Soviet Echoes and the Ability to Change: Reflections on the Funeral of Russian Opposition Leader Alexei Navalny” (April 3 2024).