Russia is weaker than the USSR. Why the Putin Empire is doomed to defeat in the war with Ukraine
Why are we talking about it at all? Because I am tired of reading a bit full of despair and pessimism texts on "Here Russia will be able to fight for at least 10 years", because now their factories will work and produce 10,000 tanks a year and 100,000 UAVs per hour. And the Russians will go to die endlessly at the first call of the leader. Some part will go, but not the one that Putin needs. As if they talked about it 100 times, but still in a circle and in a circle. So.
The first - catastrophic in places - the failures of the Russian army quite organically even fueled this system of comparisons. Here - again we were "attacked", again some "fascists and Nazis", again "we protect the homeland from the invasion from the west. " Machine? Yes, but she likes Putin, he likes his propagandists and likes those who seek justification for their bloodthirsty for Ukrainians.
But 16 months have passed and everything that has succeeded in Russia is not a lot for a country that has been preparing for war for 20 years. No. All this does not make Russia a weak enemy, because at times a larger economy, in the last 20 years - dozens of times the larger military budget, no disarmament - it has not happened anywhere. However, the support of the world's leading economies and technological giants is now on our side.
In addition, Russia is devoid of several key advantages that the USSR had in 1941. Both natural and structural nature. Demography. The USSR 1941 is a young country in a demographic explosion that lasted for almost 50 years. Even the famine, the revolution, the bloody civil war, collectivization and accelerated urbanization could not do anything. Modern Russia is a country that dies at a rate of 1 million a year. Society and public system.
The USSR was a society with a very specific system of values and motivations. But the main difference from modern Russia was in the formula that can be described by the transformed Soviet slogan: "Iron hand to drive humanity into happiness. " It was a modernization project, which was ready to go to industrialization, to invest in mass education and science for the sake of not the world revolution, to ensure its own existence.
In addition, the 20's and 30s were still filled with belief that you can create a "new person" that will give up everything old. And even a series of genocides and sociocides, which the Soviet authorities introduced against Ukrainians, Siberians, Kazakhs were part of their class struggle for progress. Perverted, but still progress. And progress and social engineering are impossible without mobilizing society.
Therefore, all Soviet propaganda, all the pre -war cinema, education and upbringing were built on the principles "Today we work to build a happy country, and tomorrow we all have to go for it. " Egalitarianism was the main pillar of propaganda, and on the background of the conflict structure of the Russian Empire, the Soviet "equal opportunity" system looked to many attractive. Therefore, when the war began, millions (without irony) ran to the ranks of the Red Army.
In addition, given the access to a limited amount of information, many of those who have sincerely hated the Soviet regime, perceived Germany's attack as an attack on their home. Not as a war of two totalitarian regimes. Putin's Russia is different. This is a mode that has been returned to the past. He wants in the glorious times of the Russian Empire of the early 20th century. And this is the period of maximum chauvinism and reaction to reforms of the 60's of the 19th century.
Ideologically, Putin does not imitate the cheerful cry of the 30's, but the formulas of Viconostztsev in the translation of the frank fascist Ilyin. In accordance. Propaganda did everything to make the Russians as much as possible: a) atomized; b) socially inactive; c) immersed in escapism. Because such a system, like Putin, is an electoral and information feudal autocracy-can exist exclusively in a passive and atomized society.
Until a long war, when it is necessary to mobilize the maximum forces and means, such society cannot be ready. For people to be ready to run to conscription or factories to make tanks or to get on funds - society has either to train itself (in democracy), or the state has to train it (with modernization dictatorship). All these "ready for work and defense", films, socialist competitions - elements of preparation for mobilization. Production of reflex.
Which - despite all the horror and suffering of Soviet society - worked. We trained on protests and squares. And we also worked. The Russians do not have this generation. This inability to mobilize society is transferred to the state system itself. Makes it with weak, ineffective and unstable. Because without internal stimuli and competition, everything gradually degrades and is filled with conformism. Such a system works as long as it is stable.
As soon as it experiences significant external or internal blows, it quickly degrades. Quickly - it is not in a month, but in a few years. So, if you compare the Putin regime with Soviet history, it is most appropriate to look in the 1980s. When the regime apparently degraded and became so weak and old. If you look at Putin's environment and Putin himself, then they are more and more like the political bureau of those times.
By and large, to come in 1989 (when it became clear that the USSR is everything), the CPSU has gone from the terrible (literally - bloody) mobilization project to the maximum demotivational regime. Because only in these circumstances it was possible to preserve the existence of a Soviet dictatorship. Because it is possible to run in the pace of the USSR of industrialization and World War II for a very long time. Any society gets tired.
And further - either democratization (as it was with Korea Pak Jong XI), or conservation and degradation. As it happened with the USSR. Putin passed the same path, not in 60 years, but for 20. On the shoulders of the reforms of the 90's and thanks to the favorable situation, his regime received cheerful 00-I. Somewhere in 2007.
But the global crisis on the background of society's expectations put him and the environment before the choice - either to go through the democratization and development of institutions, or to curtail and build a dictatorship. They chose a clear way. And we came to the point we see now. The line of collapse and collapse. And the peak is already in the process. Because the fragile society, which is almost loyal to all. Because the weak state supports itself by inertia.