Our New Option in Post-Coup Russia
Ira Straus
The coup failed, but it
opened up a new option for Russians to end the war.
Prigozhin opened this
question ambiguously, yet open it he did. He did it by making withering
comments on the war -- the utter falsity of the reasons for it, the way it has
itself created the problems it was pretended to cure, the huge actual Russian
casualties from it, the fatal consequences it could have for Russia, how it could
plunge Russia into another civil
war and break up.
And then he himself proceeded
to show in practice how it could plunge Russia into civil war. After that, everyone
had to notice the point.
This created a new
option in Russia: to discuss ending the war, not as soft peace-lovers,
but as hardheaded nationalist patriots, activated by the fact that it has become too dangerous for Russia.
The option cannot be
closed easily. The only way to close it would be for everyone in tandem to fall
silent about it.
This would be hard to
achieve in Russia. The awareness has already gone too far.
It ought to be even harder
to kill discussion in the world at large.
The West has an
important part to play in making sure this continues to get treated as a live
option and not fall back into getting the silence treatment. The Western media in
fact talked a lot for couple days about the sudden venting by Prigozhin of the
reality that the war was wrong all along. It was important that it did this. Regrettably,
it fell almost silent about this barely a day later, when the coup stopped.
How would the Western
media and governments have been able to keep it up? By discussing the
comments professionally sintead of polemically. That would mean, simply, engaging
with the substance of the comments, not just mentioning them as a retort to the
regime’s lying.
They could still do so. It
would be well worth it. It is no less a matter than ensuring that there is a
conscious awareness of a new realm of choice for Russians as to what to think
and do.
Steven Sestanovich, an
analyst never given to overstatement, has observed that the Western governments
and media should make more of the comments by Prigozhin. Our interest requires
doing so. Biden’s words of caution about meddling in Russian domestic politics were
wise as a matter of not taking sides in the coup -- he told the Atlantic
Council -- but our leaders should be less bashful about ‘interfering’ in the
discussion of the facts. An important Russian hardliner has acknowledged that
their accusations against the West were lies and the war is a fraud and is
itself the main danger to Russia. It’s not as if we don’t have a right to push
back against the massive official lying against ourselves. We have every right
to use it when Russian hardliners blurt out the truth. Western leaders and
media can easily find skillful ways to do this. They simply need to realize
that they should be doing it.
Prigozhin’s outburst was
itself much more than just a venting of his personal frustration. It was
something he and the rest of the elite in some way knew deep down all along,
but until that moment felt to be unmentionable.
Prigozhin’s habitual
unfiltered openness in venting his resentments finally led him to vent the
truth. It is important to not let it get shoved back into the memory hole.
The easy way out for
Prigozhin himself was to sweep this truth back under the rug and revert to his
old persona. Putin encouraged him to do so, and he’s done it. Yet it remains
the case that Prigozhin said these things and everyone knows it. It gives Russians
new space to talk about them.
Western media could do much
more to keep the matter under discussion. They could discuss it but as an
indicator that much of the Russian hardline elite knows it is talking nonsense
in its official rationales for the war. They could discuss the implications of
this. This would inevitably help, unimposingly, in keeping it a live matter for
discussion within the Russian elite.
A bit of space has in
any case opened up among Russian elites for talking about ending the war, on
two grounds: the one Prigozhin raised about its false pretexts and
self-defeating consequences, and the evidence from the coup itself that the war
has too great a cost to Russian state stability.
The question we should
be asking is: Should we find ways to widen this opening, or should we just leave
it to wither?
Russian oppositionists
and democrats had warned of the war’s damage to state stability long ago. They
pointed to the regime’s growing undermining of the state’s monopoly on force,
as it relied more and more on warlords, mercenaries, and criminals. They
pointed to how the regime’s propagandists were inculcating Russians with both a
genocidal mentality and a suicidal mentality. Genocidal: that Ukrainians are
all Nazis and can be disposed of accordingly (Simonyan). Suicidal: that life
isn’t worth much and the best thing to do with it is sacrifice it for your
country (Solovyov). That the world is worthless if Russia dies, Russia will die
unless it takes Ukraine, and nuclear weapons can be used. (Putin) The language
was one of a suicide cult, raised to the national level and talking of taking
the whole world down with them. Further: The oppositionists pointed to the
training of hundreds of thousands of Russians in practicing this nihilism in
war, a war in which they were being made to commit every form of war crime
against civilians. The experience would leave them deformed morally. The
survivors would bring their dark arts home with them.
Now everyone has seen
this blowback in real life. Prigozhin just brought his dark arts home with him.
It is only the beginning. It has left Russia reeling.
It is an indicator that
Simonyan herself has suddenly talked of the war maybe not being worth it. She
wondered why Russia needs places whose people do not want to be a part of
Russia.
Veteran Russia analyst
Mark Galeotti has discerned “a quiet consensus growing [in the Russian elite]
that the Ukrainian invasion was a mistake, and that the price of victory —
escalation, militarizing the economy, essentially following Prigozhin’s
prescription of “North Koreanization” — is too high…. Actively working to
topple Putin may well not be wise — from Iraq onwards, we have proven better at
regime change than managing what follows — but at the very least we should welcome
whatever hastens the end of his reign.” ( “What comes after Putin?”, The
Spectator, June 30, 2023)
The crucial battle
today, barely visible, is over which line speech will slide into: between
falling back into the mode of saying that Russia must escalate the war further
in order to save its essence, or else moving into a new mode of saying that
Russia must put aside the war in order to save the Russian state. It is a
choice between the intoxicated line and the sober line – between taking another
drink and sobering up. It is a nodal choice: the kind of moment when the scale
can tip to either side.
It is not hard to
envisage how Putin himself could announce a course correction along the sober
line. There are many lines he could choose from; here’s a menu of a few of them:
“We have just been confronted with the reality of a threat to the
stability of the Russian state that grew out of the Special Military Operation
in Ukraine. The brave Russian people united to stop the threat this time, but every
patriot must make the stability of the Russian state the top priority and put
aside everything that endangers the unity of our country. The threats keep threats growing from this conflict, and we cannot
allow that to continue.
The mutineers threatened that the Operation could lead us to another
civil war and proceeded to prove the point by their own behavior. They suggested
the catastrophic solution that we should all share the suffering like North
Koreans as the only way to make the Operation OK. And if not? They threatened a
revolution that destroys everything.
Realities have not all developed the way we wanted. Too many
Ukrainians were against being liberated by us, and NATO beefed them up too
much. We must not turn against each other because of this. All Russians must
stay united as we overcome the new danger.
Now that the consequences of the Operation have grown to endanger the
very stability of the Russian state, those who would insist on continuing it
are actually serving the interests of the Americans, who have been trying to
break our country into pieces for decades. The stability of our country was
hard won over the last two decades. It is something that must be preserved at
all costs. It must take precedence over everything else.
We must draw a conclusion just as serious as the problem itself,
and end this war. Better to cut our losses than let them keep growing.
Fortunately we have prepared our economy well over these decades,
well enough that we can afford to cut our losses in Ukraine. The only thing we
could not afford is to escalate the losses to a higher level.”
Some people will say
that anything like this is impossible and Putin will inevitably just slide back
into his old line instead. But realities are changing. The massive default line
of the Russian media is to repeat the old line, but Prigozhin blasted a big
hole in this line. It now has the symptoms of a dying legacy line. The wiser
line, though still only faintly heard, is gaining life.
It matters for all
Russians which line their country slides into saying. And not only
for Russians. In light of the global nihilism that Putin has expressed
when talking up the hard line, everyone has a stake in this matter.
Russians often say, out
of fear and out of habit, that “there is nothing I can do about it”. Yet when
something formerly marginalized becomes a live option in discussion, they
suddenly see the reality that they all have a voice in determining what gets
voiced, and everything shifts to the opposite side.
Everyone has a part in
determining what is seen as a live option, not just Russians. And everyone has
a legitimate voice in it: in face of the nuclear threats, everyone has skin in
this game. We should give proper voice to our skin.
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