Actively Pro-Russian?

Joseph Stalin died in 1953. It took another four decades for the totalitarian state he engineered to wither, stumble, and follow him into history.

The oligarchic, authoritarian, proto-colonial state that Vladimir Putin has been engineering will also one day have its reckoning. Whether that will hinge on the actuarial reality of Putin’s mortality or not is something only the Fates can know.

But a reckoning will come, because facts, as the Russian proverb has it, are stubborn things (Факты упрямая вещь).

In 2006, Russia had 90 million citizens in its workforce. Today it has less than 80 million. Over a million agile, young brains are thought to have drained out of the country since Russia began its War on Ukraine (and over 20% do not anticipate returning). Spending on economic development, education, social safety nets, and infrastructure are all taking a back seat to spending on war and death. The population is declining, production is in free fall, and only cheap imports from China are keeping Russia afloat.

None of these trends leads to a stronger, more prosperous, more stable Russia.

A massive cadre of chinovniks (government officials / bureaucrats) supports the Putin/Kremlin Line. Yet is conceivable that someday, in a not too distant future, before the facts pile up too high, a savvy individual will strike out and convince enough of the leadership cadre that Putin has led Russia astray through personal avarice and imperial ambition, that the costs have been too great, and that it is time for change. History has seen this movie play over and over again, and it is the sort of story that surely keeps a reclusive dictator from sleeping soundly…

While the US and the West cannot instigate such a turn, they can create a fertile ground to entice post-Putin Russia back to a world that will be better for it and for all of us.

What we need is to become more actively pro-Russian while remaining staunchly anti-Kremlin. We should open our doors wide to risk-taking Russians who fled their homeland, by offering visas, opportunities for travel, education, work, investment, cultural exchange.

While we cannot expect a pro-Western leader to arise from the ashes of Putin’s fires, we can cultivate pro-Western, pro-democratic entrepreneurs, social leaders, and activists among those who are Russian, love Russia, and want to return there one day to clean up the mess.

Cultural change does not happen from the top down, but laterally, and slowly, through person-to-person contact. It happens one conversation, one college course, one work experience at a time.

Enjoy the issue.