Russia has shown its vulnerability — both to the whole world and to itself
Russia has rapidly approached the very edge of the abyss and moved away from it no less rapidly. Thank you, thank you very much Alexander Lukashenko! Thanks to his mediation, it was possible to avoid the most terrible scenario of the development of events — with an armed internal conflict, a full-fledged split in power structures, and fighting on the streets of cities, including Moscow. But the «sediment» from two days in June (or, rather, one with a tail) still remained — and what! Russia and its political system have shown their vulnerability — to the delight of enemies and to the amazement of friends and neutrals.
There are probably a lot of reasons for what happened, as it always happens. But here is the most important and obvious of them. The highest power in the country forgot about the fundamental incompatibility of the letters «h» and «v», the concepts of «private» and «military». Monopoly is almost always bad. But there is one good, even necessary monopoly — the monopoly of the state on legalized violence. If there is no such monopoly, then, as we have all just seen, the very existence of the state is threatened. Max Weber — a German political scientist, the author of this concept — rules! Everything that happened in Russia in June 2023 proves the absolute justice and universality of what he formulated more than a century ago.
Vladimir Putin began his reign in Russia with the introduction of the concept of a vertical of power into our lives. This explains the phenomenal political success of the GDP and its ability to dominate Russian public life for more than twenty years. And this is how Prigozhin's putsch is explained. Next to one large vertical of power, another one was actually built — albeit an incomparably more modest size. The size in this case is not important. Passionarity, inner cohesion, efficiency are important. And in this regard, Prigozhin's small vertical of power «gave a light» to the entire large all-Russian vertical.
To the extent that this lesson can be learned, it must be learned. John Reed once wrote a book about another coup in Russia (it was a success and is therefore remembered as the revolution of October 1917) «Ten Days That Shook the World». In this case, the world — or at least Russia — was shaken by just one day. Of course, the negative energy began to accumulate long before the evening of June 23, 2023. The activity of Yevgeny Prigozhin has been raising perplexed questions for many years now. And in recent months and weeks, these questions have begun to sound like thunder: why could a person with a not very clear status be able to run into the Minister of Defense and the Chief of the General Staff in the most public way with impunity? There were no clear answers. This created an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty and trampled down the reputation of the authorities. The control system in manual mode slipped for a long time and worked only at the very last moment.
And this «at the very last moment» has and will have its consequences for a long time to come. «Thirst is everything, image is nothing» — this is how the old advertising slogan remained in my memory. However, in politics, an image is much more than just an image. «The weak are beaten,» Vladimir Putin rightly remarked at the time. But how do those who beat choose those who, from their point of view, can be beaten? By their image. During the long, painful, almost unbearable hours of the Prigozhin coup, Russia broadcast to the whole world, if not its weakness, then certainly its vulnerability (I deliberately repeat this concept). The fact that there are no coup attempts in developed countries is a myth. In France, the last successful coup d'état took place as recently as 1958. And in the United States, a moment of great vulnerability (the storming of the Capitol by a crowd, an attempt by the incumbent president to remain in power despite the disappointing election results for him) happened quite recently — in January 2021.
But the fact that «they also sometimes do this» is a weak excuse and little consolation. The geopolitical sparring partners of the Kremlin (and their name is now legion) very clearly «accepted the broadcast.» Here is the conclusion that was made in Washington, Kyiv, Warsaw and other similar capitals: you need to put pressure on the Russians, it works! Yevgeny Prigozhin will go to Belarus, but the problems created by him (to be fair: not only by him) will remain. And it will be oh so difficult to solve them.