Thus, as a tandem of the temporary government and the State Council, the system of governance should operate for a long enough period to call a Constituent Assembly; determine its functions; introduce a new Constitution and electoral laws; and also run free and fair elections for the new institutions as defined by the Constitution. This should take no longer than two years. If not, then Russian history will simply enter yet another round of totalitarianism.
Chapter 6. How to Bring an End to the War:
Fight to a Victorious Outcome, Capitulate or Seek a Compromise?
This chapter was written almost a year before Russia unleashed the greatest geopolitical disaster in the last hundred years: the war against Ukraine. It may seem like a paradox, but the chapter hardly needed editing.
The temporary government that will have to dismantle the regime will be faced by a mountain of problems. But it’s already clear that the greatest of these will be to bring an end to the war with Ukraine. In reality, Putin’s regime has also dragged Russia into a war with the West.
The war with Ukraine is simply the tip of the iceberg. Beneath it and at its core is the global confrontation with the West, conducted anywhere the regime can do so. Militarism is the very essence of Putin’s regime. The only way in which it can stabilise itself is to conduct constant wars against imaginary enemies, both internal and external. War is the price to be paid for corruption. This gang of corrupt opportunists who seized and usurped power in Russia at the start of the century cannot hold onto their positions without a war, and they’re now carrying out their final one to try to defend the narrow interests of their clans.
Russia was back in a cold war situation with the West from the moment that Putin delivered his speech at Munich in 2007. And in February 2022 this war became a hot war. For now it’s being waged on the territory of Ukraine. But let’s not deceive ourselves. The assault on Ukraine is simply the first of a number of predetermined goals. This war that the Kremlin desperately needs in order to stabilise and maintain its fascist regime is imperialist, criminal and, of course, unjust. But as well as all the grief and suffering that it’s bringing to the Ukrainian people; as well all the grief that it’s bringing to the families of the Russian soldiers who are dying and being wounded in this criminal war that no one needs; as well as all this, it’s draining Russia of the resources that are essential for its development. This war is destroying the future of Russia itself. The war is the principal obstacle preventing the formation of an alternative strategy for the country’s development. Unless this crazy and exhausting war is brought to an end, there is no hope of moving to a constructive, creative and socially-oriented agenda. The problem is that bringing an end to this war is going to be far more difficult than launching it was. So for any temporary government, this will be a very serious challenge in the transitional period. This is also because ending the war in a careless and stupid way is no less dangerous politically than continuing it.
In theory there are only three ways in which the war could be brought to an end: victory; surrender; or some kind of compromise. Trying to win the current war with Ukraine would be a criminal and immoral act. Furthermore, if we understand that the real nature of this war and its ultimate goal is the defeat of the West, then we can see that it’s also a utopian ideal. If the regime could not achieve this at the peak of its powers, then it would be even more impossible for the temporary government to achieve this in the conditions of economic downturn and political instability that will follow in the transitional period. So in reality there are just two options that can be considered: unconditional surrender, or a search for more or less acceptable conditions for peace. But the problem is that after all that the Putin regime has done, finding any such conditions will be extremely difficult.
Having unleashed the war, Putin has effectively taken off the table any question about “the Russian world” [the so-called russky mir – Tr.]. The whole concept of “the Russian world” is now simply mired in aggression. What’s more, Moscow cannot play the role of being at its heart. We have to recognise clearly and decisively the consequences of what has happened, and not hide our heads in the sand like ostriches. Putin has taken Russian culture and Russian civilisation from the global level and turned it into something merely regional. What may have seemed just like a phase is likely to prove decisive, and history won’t revise that opinion. Against this general background, a separate issue is that Russian Orthodoxy has been turned into a regional, even a local, religion, that can have no pretensions about universal moralising or being “the Third Rome”. This is the world in which we will be living, and that won’t depend on whether Putin is there or not. Even if Putin departs the scene, none of this grandeur will return.
But there are even more serious consequences. Having witnessed Putin’s aggression, very many countries – notably nearly all of Russia’s immediate neighbours – will reckon that their safety can be guaranteed only by the dismemberment of Russia. The threat of the collapse of Russia is the principal result of Putin’s war that the temporary government will have to deal with. And this government is going to have very little time at its disposal. The only way that Russia can be maintained as a single, sovereign state is for the government to be proactive in all directions. The first thing it will have to do is make peace with all sides that have been drawn into this conflict; and then carry out a programme of federalisation. Federalisation is a subject for a separate discussion; but the question of peace has to be discussed here and now.
There’s a very simplistic view of this problem that’s popular among the liberal opposition. This is merely to cancel everything that Putin’s done. So: Putin started the war in Ukraine, therefore we must stop it immediately. Putin put his medium-range missiles on high alert in violation of a treaty: they must be destroyed. Putin built military bases in Africa: so they have to be closed down and the troops sent back to Russia. And so on.
I wrote the first draft of this book before the war. In it, I considered at this point the possibility of making decisions using as an example the problem of Crimea. But the war has changed all that. Today the confrontation has so deeply pierced Russian society, and the propaganda and mobilisation have had such a profound effect upon people’s consciousness, that it’s now impossible to imagine any gradual, long-drawn-out solutions. In the present, specific case, this makes the situation very straightforward: a genuine change of regime is now possible only in the event of a military defeat. This means that the Crimea problem, just as the wider problem of ending the war, can be solved only by way of a peace treaty. For now, I find it very difficult to imagine that Ukraine would be prepared to sign such a treaty without it being granted the full restoration of its sovereignty over the territories that were within its internationally-recognised borders in 1991. Of course, anything is possible, but unless Putin’s regime suffers a military defeat, it won’t be replaced in the near future.
A military defeat would signal the end of the war and one way or another it would resolve the issue of the annexed territories. But the peace treaty itself would not mean that everything would return to the way it was before the war. The division between Russians and Ukrainians and between Russia and Europe is now vast, and no single government is going to be able to heal this rift in the short term. Even less a temporary government that doesn’t enjoy great legitimacy or sufficient reserves of time or trust. The inevitable economic and political crisis that will result from a military defeat and the dramatic collapse of the economy will leave the temporary government in a position whereby it will have to solve the many ongoing problems using all the resources at its disposal; or else it will simply collapse, leaving the way clear for radical nationalist groups and other populists. At the same time, the Ukrainian government will have to demand just as firmly the resources to rebuild their country; and there will be no obvious solution for them to choose how to do this. Unfortunately, yet totally justifiably, today we can say with certainty that all the assets that have been seized – some 300 billion dollars, including the foreign assets of Putin’s oligarchs – should go to repair the damage caused as a result of the war. But I shall be extremely surprised if this satisfies Ukraine. At the same time, the inhabitants of Tatarstan and the Russian Far East, of Voronezh and the Baikal Region, are hardly likely to vote for increasing their own impoverishment, and not that of Putin’s oligarchs.