Chicago University Professor: Civil War Is Inevitable In Russia
- 14.11.2022, 11:25
The first, so far verbal, shots have already been heard.
The war with Ukraine is not just taking the lives of thousands of people, burning up huge material resources, destroying ties between Russia and the world and ruining the moral values of Russians. The way Putin and his government are waging this war is laying - and has already laid - the foundations for a future civil war. Whether it starts in a year or two is not so important. The important thing is that it's becoming more and more inevitable with each passing day, Konstantin Sonin, professor at the University of Chicago, writes for Novaya Gazeta.
First of all, though, is a civil war possible in Russia? Not possible, if you imagine something like the civil war of 1918-1922, when the Russian empire disintegrated into dozens of state or quasi-state formations. Russia is now ethnically and linguistically sparsely united. Minorities make up a small percentage of the population. Only the Chechen Republic has a chance of independent existence. But even a separation of Chechnya - or a war for such a separation - would not constitute a full-fledged civil war. Simply because the whole of Chechnya is one per cent of Russia's population.
Yes, a civil war "region against region" is virtually impossible in today's Russia. However, a civil war of another type is possible, such as the one that took place in the 1990s in Krasnoyarsk and Yekaterinburg, Kemerovo and Nefteyugansk. Between different kinds of gangs and private and state law enforcement structures. For access to financial flows of industrial and resource assets. Only this time, the war will involve many more people with military experience, in contrast to the 1990s. And they will be much better armed.
However, the sharp increase in the number of people with military experience and in the number of military weapons possessed by citizens is not the only factor pushing for war. Even more important is the collapse of state institutions which can already be observed: the appearance of private armies, withdrawn from the system of the Ministry of Defence; the involvement of the FSB, the police and the courts in political repressions - including those illegal even under current Russian law; the creation of armed units, formally and actually subordinated to regional authorities, and so on.
All this will be combined with a spread of unsatisfied promises - both material and "moral". Armed people will try to take over Gazprom's offices not only because they have weapons and experience, but also because they will not receive early pensions, disability allowances, or even simple respect and honour. The economic crisis that replaced a decade of stagnation is just beginning, but surely the generous pensions and benefits for former military personnel will stop at some point. And it is dangerous not to pay armed men.
The first shots, so far verbal, have already been fired in this war. Last week many media outlets quoted answers from Evgeny Prigozhin, the founder and head of the Wagner PMC now waging hostilities in Donbass. The question posed by the producer of the state-owned RT company was, "In your opinion, what is the reason why the richest people in the country ignore the military situation and sometimes help the opposite side?" Prigozhin's answer: "The reason is impunity. The levers and mechanisms of total "destruction" of these people as businessmen should be turned on. Stalinist repression is urgently needed towards them" (Prigozhin himself is already giving an example: a telegram channel affiliated with Wagner PMC has recently published a video of cruel execution of prisoner Evgeny Nuzhin with a sledgehammer - editor's note).
Russia's richest people are not just a few oligarchs left over from the 1990s. They are also Putin's cronies, the management of the largest state corporations - Gazprom, Rosneft, Rostekh, Sberbank. Of course, Prigozhin's words are just words for now. But when the war is over and the budget money financing military operations is over, Wagner and other PMCs will be quite natural contenders to control the financial flows.
It would seem, what should be the government's response to the claims of former military personnel to control the financial and industrial flows or assets? A man with a gun in his hand who takes someone else's property, whether private or state, is a criminal. He should be dealt with by law enforcement agencies.
Yet this is another consequence of the war - there will be no law enforcement agencies capable of dealing with alliances of aggrieved military and private armies. The Rosgvardiya is partly defeated, partly demoralised. The FSB's reputation is damaged in the eyes of both the elite and citizens - worse than the reputation of the Soviet KGB in 1991. And a lot worse. No secret service can rely on force for long - when there is no money for high salaries, it will cease to work as it did in the 1980s. Just as in the 1990s, police officers, Russian State Security Guards and special services will simply become participants in the redistribution of property along with the military and criminals.
The future civil war will have three components - unfulfilled promises, private armies and a breakdown of the law enforcement agencies. And all three have already been prepared by Putin.