Thread by @polidemitolog

Why did democracy fail in Russia, and was there ever democracy in Russia? A 🧵 on politics, not history.

Why discuss Russian democracy? Firstly, a democratic Russia would not pose a threat to its neighbors or the international order, an autocratic Russia does. Secondly, a democratic Russia would devote itself to prosperity of its own citizens and not use them in futile conflicts.

Russia had two relatively democratic periods (by this I mean that developed democracy was never achieved) in its modern history: the first one spanned from 1905 to 1917 and the second is the Yeltsin period from 1991 to 1999.

Both of these failed in different ways. The first period of relative democracy led to even more democracy (February Revolution), but ended with the establishment of the Soviet totalitarian political system (after the October Revolution).

Yeltsin already corroded the nascent Russian democracy with widespread corruption and nepotism up to 1996 (democracy in the eyes of the Russian citizens began to be equated with theft on a mass scale), and afterwards picked Putin as his successor.

Yeltsin chose Putin mainly because he felt that he was loyal enough not to turn on the Yeltsin family (which proved to be true) and that he will be easily controlled (which proved to be false). Many Russian oligarchs, such as Berezovsky (killed in 2013), shared Yeltsin's opinion.

There is one general rule in modern Russian history - each revolution (coming from the elites or the populace) is a product of two factors: a) Russia actually being tied to the West and not some separate civilization; b) not reforming on time to hold the same pace with the West.

Russia not reforming means economical, political, societal and technological progress being intentionally strangled because of the fear to let go some of the accumulated power in the center of rule (be it Moscow or Saint Petersburg).

The fear of freeing the serfs after the Napoleonic Wars stymied the growth of Russian economy (first the trade and then the industrial development) it also slowed down the process of urbanization and societal maturity (the bourgeoisie class was demographically limited).

Whether the tzar was benevolent or ruthless made no difference, the structural factors of delaying necessary reforms caused the fall of the Russian Empire (not the liberal Cadets, not the fanatical Bolsheviks, not "the British spies", not "the Jewish internationalists").

The context which predated Yeltsin's rise was more akin to reforms of Peter the Great, than any other more recent example. Gorbachev tried too make a great leap forward to catch up to the West, without introducing a new political system. It was about efficiency, not democracy.

Gorbachev introduced more civil liberties because he understood that reforming the inefficient Soviet economy was not possible without taking some power from the rigid Soviet bureaucracy. He used the Soviet masses to assert pressure on the Soviet bureaucrats refusing to reform.

Yeltsin was also not a democrat. He was a young provincial bureaucrat who ran on a promise to invigorate the already mummified Soviet system of governance and get rid of corruption among the higher echelons of power. He was popular because he was better than the alternative.

The USSR also wasn't disbanded because of mass protests or the desire for democracy (excluding the Baltic states), Yeltsin simply found a common language with other communist leaders of the Soviet republics and they divided the empire among themselves, like feudal lords of old.

In this endeavor they sometimes used the masses, called on them to gather and protest (there was no mass protest in Russia during Gorbachev or Yeltsin that wasn't sanctioned and organized by some part of the elites).

Yeltsin came on top, against Gorbachev and against the communist hardliners. But he received a shrunken and weakened empire. He never gave up on aspirations to be a leader of a dominant nation. Yeltsin's Russia meddled in the affairs of Georgia and Moldova, for example.

Russia under Yeltsin didn't have global aspirations, like Putin's Russia, but it thought itself a regional hegemon and the former republics of the USSR as its responsibility. Internal democracy felt more like controlled chaos, from which the oligarchs were born.

Transition from state controlled economy to a free market one was never to be easy. But the high inflation, that wiped the accounts of 🇷🇺 citizens clean, which was followed by total privatization, meant that the majority of citizens were excluded from redistribution of capital.

In practice, a relatively low number of people got rich, while the rest remained poor or were even worse off than during the late communist era. It was Yeltsin's fault that democracy came to be a synonym with political anarchy, ruthless crony capitalism and widespread crime.

The thought "the West has ruined us", wasn't popular during the 90s, it came to be at the start of the new millennium with Putin's rise to power. This sentiment wasn't invented by Putin, it was merely used to the greatest degree by his propaganda.

Where did putting the blame on the West come from? It came from a disillusion of the Russian masses who expected to reach a living standard of Switzerland in a few years if they only wore blue jeans and dined at McDonald's. From great irrational love came great irrational hate.

And when Putin claimed that the collapse of the USSR was "the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century", he resonated what the Russian masses already believed to be true - "we gave up our empire and received nothing in return". The well off middle class was in the minority.

What the Russian masses did not understand was that bringing back autocracy would eventually lead to a bloody war with the West, and that this would further degrade their living standards. An empire in Russia never brings prosperity to its people, only the ruling class.

The Russian masses got what they wanted all along, an imperial war to return them to a place of former glory, that they would at least be feared, if they cannot live in prosperity. Only the war isn't going as they believed it would be, not to mention the clash with the West.

How can Russia exit this vicious circle of self-defeat? Only by being resolutely defeated in the war it started. Only a great defeat can become a wake-up call to the masses filled with resentment. And it is tragic that Ukrainians are carrying this burden, while the world watches.