Russia has suffered several attacks this week on its own territory, coups carried out by the Russian military fighting alongside Ukraine. They have been limited but significant, the embryo, according to historian Orlando Figes, of what could be a civil war. “I see a risk of civil war”, he admitted yesterday during a lunch prior to the conference that he gave in the afternoon at the Fundació Catalunya Europa-Llegat Pasqual Maragall.
The British historian, who has written extensively on Russian society, culture and history, believes that this new civil war could resemble the one that devastated Russia after the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. There was no defined front and sabotage, attacks and massacres were committed in a wide area of Russian territory.
Small offensives on Monday and Tuesday in the Belgorod region destroyed an arms factory warehouse and a building of the FSB, Russia's main security service. Dozens of Russian fighters attached to two groups that fight within the International Legion, a foreign military unit under Ukrainian command, participated. Hundreds of anti-Putin Russian soldiers have fought in Bakhmut and other hot spots on the front.
It remains to be seen if these expeditionary forces will continue with this strategy of hitting Russia in the rear. In any case, Figes acknowledges that "the Russian state is too strong and civil society too weak for an internal revolution to break out."
It is the result of this internal weakness that the author of "History of Russia" (Taurus) sees an external incursion as the best trick to overthrow the Putin regime.
The British historian also admits, in any case, that many revolutions are difficult to predict and time, which today seems to be playing in Putin's favor, could turn against him if the hardships of war take their toll on an impoverished society and above which very little is known. "For obvious reasons," he says, "it is impossible to know what the Russians think of Putin."
"Time seems to favor Russia," Figes explains. Putin is confident that the West will eventually tire of war because its cost is too high. Trump will exploit this fatigue in the next campaign for the presidency in the United States and if he recovers the White House in November 2024, Ukraine will be lost ”.
The civil war broke out in 1917 and lasted until 1923. It pitted the Bolsheviks against the White army that defended the old tsarist order. They were almost six years of horror and barbarism. Each side committed gruesome crimes, but the inhumanity of the Bolsheviks was relentless. More than ten million Russians died, almost all of them civilians.
Figes recalls that Putin is recruiting young Russians in a similar way as the Bolsheviks did, that is, putting them between a rock and a hard place, giving them no alternative. Thus he has recruited tens of thousands of soldiers. To succeed in the Ukraine, however, he needs even more men and if he wants them to fight he has to change the argument.
"Saying that the war is a special military operation is no longer enough," explains Figes. Now it has to elevate the invasion to a patriotic war, as was the Second World War. In a way, it's already doing it. The speech that he gave on May 9 on Red Square in Moscow on the occasion of Victory Day went in this direction ”.
The Russians cannot oppose this new logic. “They have no choice but to bow to the will of the Kremlin,” says Figes. The repression is too strong, as much as the memory of the past. "The Russians have a genetic fear -he-he-explains, very established since the atrocities of Stalinism from 1937. They only have to obey".
Submission to power, low material expectations, capacity for suffering, collectivism and acceptance of violence at the hands of the State are characteristics that Figes associates with the Russian character. Putin reinforces them with the argument that "NATO started."
Figes sees a grain of truth in the idea that NATO is responsible for the climate that led to the invasion of Ukraine. He is of the opinion that “it should have been dismantled after the cold war, as was the case with the Warsaw Pact. The USSR satellites, however, found protection in an Alliance that went from being anti-Soviet to being anti-Russian.
Figes believes that Putin is a brutal dictator and that the invasion of Ukraine is unjustifiable, but adds the nuance that "throughout history, the West has used Poland and Ukraine to attack Russia, and now is no different."
There were a few years, especially between the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the dismantling of the USSR in 1991, when another Europe was possible. It was raised by the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev. His Europe stretched from the Urals to the Atlantic and had to have a unique security system. Figes believes that the West did not appreciate the importance of helping Russia, of offering it a Marshall plan. “Instead, NATO treated it as if it were still the USSR. He needed him to continue being the enemy in order to justify his existence."
Gorbachev's diplomatic weakness also explains this failure. He accepted, for example, the unification of Germany without demanding that it be neutral. He was content that it was free of nuclear weapons. A neutral Germany might have slowed NATO's expansion to the east.
Putin blames Gorbachev for the dismantling of the USSR - "the worst geostrategic mistake of the 20th century" - but Figes defends the pacifism of the last General Secretary of the USSR Communist Party: "The country was also on the brink of civil war and Gorbachev's conciliatory attitude prevented it”.
Figes considers that the fall of the USSR was a very dangerous moment, of defeat and disorientation: "There was no longer a utopia to reach or a leader to follow." Any scenario was possible, including civil confrontation over possession of natural resources and state industries.
Putin bases his power on the ability to radiate strength. Coercion and propaganda, mythologizing the past to face the future, have made him the savior of Russia. He recovered the tsarist flag of the White army and the music of the Soviet anthem, and on these pillars he promises to recover the lost greatness. He then invaded Ukraine to survive the passing of history, and this mistake, according to Figes, highlights the envy felt by much of the Russian people of "a Ukraine that has chosen its path to the West", a path that Putin himself attempted. to follow at first, but which he later renounced, convinced that the principles of liberal democracies are anti-Russian.
As long as there is no regime change in Russia, Figes believes there will be no solution for Ukraine. Until then, the best future for him would be that of Korea, that is, a country divided into two parts by an armistice that lengthens the war situation but, at the same time, prevents more deaths.
