There will not be another Russian revolution

Revolutions are a lot like geometry. Euclidean geometry tells us that the shortest distance between any two points is a straight line. In this sense, revolutions are the shortest route to political and social change. The Russian mathematician and geometer, Nikolai Lobachevsky, changed our understanding of this relationship. Time and space are far larger than we initially thought – and history extremely multidimensional. Yes, revolutions quickly force change, but the path there is never perfectly linear. The line zigs and zags. The Russian revolutions of 1917 were both remarkably spontaneous and the product of deep historical forces. Poor working conditions and bread riots in Petrograd sparked the February Revolution, but years of strain from the First World War, autocratic rule, state repression, and an outdated socio-economic class system had already pushed Russian society to its breaking point.

Russia’s exiled liberal opposition, whose entire personality is hating Vladimir Putin, feel giddy that Venezuela, Iran and Cuba are a sign of things to come. Putin, they hope, is losing allies, becoming isolated and desperate. The economy, they argue, is crumbling alongside the frontline. They believe society is desperately waiting, licking its lips, for the regime to be over. When that day comes, they reckon that the population, tired and weary, will whisk them to power, bringing Russia in from the darkness to create “a beautiful future”. Yet an actual uprising in Russia is extremely unlikely. Three things show us why Russia is far from such an eventuality. First, we should explore the five conditions that are often needed for a revolution. The second is a theory devised by Russia’s most famous sociologist, Natalia Zubarevich, known as the “Four Russias”. This shows us where ordinary Russians actually are. The third has to do with the nature of revolutions themselves. 

Five conditions

Karim Sadjadpour recently outlined five conditions that are often necessary for a revolution: a fiscal crisis, divisions among elites, a broad and diverse opposition, a compelling narrative of resistance, and a favourable international environment. Iran today appears to meet nearly all of these conditions. When such factors converge, the usual social and political mechanisms that restore order during crises tend to break down. The Iranian regime now seems to rely primarily on fear to maintain control, though how long that strategy can endure remains uncertain.

A fiscal crisis prompted Iran’s mass protests late last year, resulting in thousands being killed. Its elites cannot just escape to the West as the Shah’s family and old elites did. Their backgrounds are more provincial and their list of international friends is limited. The collapse of the regime is being openly willed outside of Iran. The alternative, democracy, is promoted by Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, the eldest son of the last Shah of Iran. Yet, revolutions require inspirational leaders and millions of Iranians look at him with a patriotic nostalgia for bygone days.   

Belarus, meanwhile, met one of these conditions in 2020: a convincing narrative of resistance. The mass protests were the result of stolen elections. The opposition was not diverse enough, as they merely all came together under an anti-Lukashenka banner. The Belarusian elites and security services remained on side and the international community was extremely reluctant to promote a toppling of Alyaksandr Lukashenka. A civil war with Russian involvement was too risky an outcome. The economy showed no signs of danger, either, meaning enough of the population, potentially, had much to lose.

As for Russia, it indeed has a diverse opposition, but an extremely fragmented one often at odds with itself. Though not without very real problems, the economy is far from the basket case people have hoped for over the past few years. It is still growing, has overcome some serious challenges as a result of the sanctions, and only experiencing problems in the areas one might expect for a war economy. Although internet outages have caused major disruption, there are no signs of splits in the security services, business elites or technocrats – most of whom fell in line after the war broke out and whose survival is dependent on the regime. Palace coups in Russian history are rare and mostly unsuccessful and a foreign attempt to depose Putin is not a serious discussion being had among adults in national governments.

The international environment is not wholly unfavourable to the Kremlin. While Russia has become increasingly isolated from the West, it still retains powerful partners in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Meanwhile, support for Ukraine appears to be gradually eroding among some allied governments and western populations. It is therefore more likely than not that many western companies will eventually return to Russia after the war. As data from the Kyiv School of Economics Institute’s project “Leave Russia” indicate, most firms have suspended or frozen operations rather than exited completely. The Russian market remains too large and lucrative to abandon permanently. I will return to the absence of a convincing alternative narrative at the end. As we shall see below, extending such a narrative beyond Moscow’s ring road is an immense challenge.

The Four Russias

Natalia Zubarevich’s Four Russias theory explains the socio-economic position of the country’s society. “Russia One” includes those in the big cities and white-collar middle-class urbanites. Russia One is around 35 per cent of the population, although just 20 per cent are in those with a population over one million. They have almost exclusively been driving the protest agenda. Here, there is a huge level of economic development, massive spending power, highly educated people and a diverse labour market. All of these cities are different. Yekaterinburg, where I live, is known for its high quality higher education, luxury goods and contemporary culture, whereas Krasnodar has great leisure facilities.

“Russia Two” is the Russia of smaller cities, big towns and semi-urban villages, totalling about 25 per cent of the population. They might be a one company town, or an industrial settlement with a lot of blue-collar workers. They have retained the Soviet ethos and way of life. Consumer spending is lower, but jobs are more stable and life predictable. Those close to the big population centres do well, and those further away have a precarious future, particularly if the populations drop below 250,000. The limited protests here tend to reflect local issues, like factory closures, poor public services and low wages.

Russias “Three” and “Four” are rural Russia – or semi-urban. These villages and small towns are home to 34 per cent of Russia’s population. They are the kind of places you see between train stations or sitting in the far flung parts of the country. Three and Four are indifferent to and unaffected by what happens in Moscow. Many earn a living by gathering mushrooms, berries and pine cones, and by fishing. This shadow economy teaches people to be independent from the state. The chances of protests here are minimal. They are older and depopulating, ethnically diverse but often loyal to the state and more socially conservative.

A mass scale uprising would need to occur across Russias One and Two. Most of the protests since 2011 have occurred in Moscow. Russia Two is indifferent to the issues that rally the city-dwelling middle classes. For any protest to spread, it would have to revolve around a sharp decline in living standards. The Russian state, however, is always happy to pump money into these small towns, who regularly vote for Putin and United Russia.

One of the reasons westerners greatly misunderstand Russia (including renowned experts), is down to the fact that their entire conceptions are based on 30 per cent of it – the educated and modernized citizens in big cities (that they have never been to) demanding change. That image is more than balanced out by the 34 per cent of Russians living in rural areas and small towns. The smaller cities and medium-sized industrial towns of Russia Two were sometimes capable of protest if incited by losing their jobs and wages, but few in Russia One (or the liberal opposition) care about these regional struggles, let alone the plight of ethnic minorities and indigenous peoples.

The unhappy event of revolution

Revolutions are the final act of desperation from a population. Revolution is, at best, an unhappy event. People do not rise up in anger and risk their well-being and lives until they have been pushed to their final limits of desperation. In countries like Russia and Iran, one does not protest unless they are willing to shed blood.

Revolutions upset old institutions and tear societies apart. They do so in the name of the noblest goal: the ultimate happiness of humankind. They are led by dreamers, motivated by compassion and a desire for a better world. They never start out as power hungry monsters, but that is often how they end up. In that sense, we could argue that most revolutions fail.

Russia’s 1917 revolutions promised to go far further than those seen in France and America. This would be done by creating a society with no “have nots”, where the ruled would rule, and where greed and wealth had no place. Of course, it did not quite work out that way. Those who led it ended up forcing their views down the throats of an entire empire. Russia’s liberal opposition promotes their “beautiful Russia of the future”. They see a nation where corruption is not endemic, but ends. Where people can live with dignity, have opportunity in an open world, and express their views without fearing prison. Laws will not be used to abuse people, but protect them. It is, as I wrote above, the noblest of goals.

Yet, it is also a goal with no obvious straight line, no road map for how to navigate that multidimensional space of history, and no inspirational leader. Russia today is not the country the liberal opposition wishes it was or sees it as. The Russian people are not in their final moments of desperation. Instead, those beyond Moscow are preoccupied with other things and do not want to be lectured to by the likes of Ilya Yashin, Vladimir Kara Murza and Garry Kasparov. Discussions at the Jean-Jacques pub in Moscow never had much to say about the wishes and dreams of the other three Russias. Is it really any wonder why they do not want to listen?

There is a naïve assumption that the advent of free elections would naturally end the current regime. That if given the choice, people would want self-professed democrats in charge. Boris Yeltsin learned this the hard way. Communists and nationalists dominated Russian elections when they were free, not liberals and social democrats. Lenin and the Bolsheviks lost elections before cancelling them. Even today, the ruling party is capable of losing elections. Elections mean nothing unless people have a viable alternative they want to vote for.

Just two Russian leaders in modern history have stepped down voluntarily – Mikhail Gorbachev and Dmitry Medvedev. Most died in office. Some became incapacitated due to ill health. Only two were forced out, and one by a revolution. Putin will almost certainly handpick his successor towards the end of his tenure. That person will have to be someone capable of holding the elites, state apparatus and polarized society together. They must be capable of talking to the world. True, regimes are often most vulnerable during moments of succession and transition. Alexis de Tocqueville famously wrote that dictatorships become fragile the moment they start reforming themselves. But history’s record on revolutions occurring during a transition is weak.

Those who plough the sea

The Latin American independence fighter Simón Bolívar’s final words are supposed to have been “Those who serve the revolution plough the sea.” Is ploughing the sea really the noblest goal? Or is it an act of futility? Democracy does not just plan itself. It requires enormous organization, favourable circumstances (beyond our control) and enlightened leadership. It also requires nurturing, like a garden. Democracy can only survive if its ideals live in the hearts and minds of its citizens, who elect people to advance it. The Russian Federation is not there yet, and it arguably never was. Perhaps one day it will be. But we have to deal with countries the way they are, not how outsiders and the politically-motivated wish them to be.

Russia is not China – but neither is it Sweden. Though not always obvious, Russia has come a long way since the Soviet collapse. It has the political, cultural and economic maturity to be a successful country, a market-driven democracy, at peace with itself and the world. It has a growing civil society that is highly educated and desperate for normality. But they are not pining for revolution. That is a dream reserved for those who plough the sea.

 

James C. Pearce is a historian and author of The Use of History in Putin’s Russia (Wilmington, DE: Vernon Press, 2020). He is currently writing a history of Russia’s Golden Ring Cities.