Why Russia Is Happy at War | A centuries-long tradition of authoritarian rule and disregard for individual rights underpins Vladimir Putin’s imperial project

submission statement:

>A rigid autocracy since the nation emerged from Mongol rule in the 15th century, including seven decades of totalitarianism in the 20th century, Russia’s government has never had any effective separation of powers. For most of that history, the state has allowed few, if any, avenues for genuine political debate or dissent, and the judicial system has acted as a rubber stamp for its rulers’ orders. During my childhood, in the late Soviet years, the message that the individual and individual rights don’t count was drummed into us at school: Я, the Russian pronoun meaning “I,” is “the last letter of the alphabet,” we were told.
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>This subjugation to the collective embodied by the Russian state is the reason Putin could mobilize society for war so easily. Before the invasion, a quarter of Russians already believed that the state was entitled to pursue its interests at the expense of individual rights. More than two years into the carnage, public support for the war in Ukraine is polling at an average of 75 percent. So who’s to stop the Russian autocrat?
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>In peacetime, conformism, nepotism, a weak rule of law, and corruption do not inspire the innovation and initiative necessary for economic advancement. But when war comes, Russia suddenly starts humming along. The very things that hamper Russia in peace—the rigidity of its authoritarianism; its top-down, centralized system of government; its machinery of repression; and its command economy—become assets during periods of conflict because they allow the government to quickly and ruthlessly mobilize society and industry for its war effort, making up for the technological backwardness and social atomization that otherwise typify the country.
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>To the state, war provides its raison d’être: protecting Russians from enemies. In other words, Russia has been made for war.
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>The West must take this threat seriously and fight back. And here, it can take a different lesson from Russian history.
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>As Napoleon and Hitler both discovered, to carry a conflict onto Russian soil can come at a devastating cost. But defeat in a war beyond its borders can be fatal for Moscow’s rulers. Only when faced with that sort of military disaster and humiliation do Russian autocracies teeter and collapse: Already damaged by its failures in the Crimean War of 1853–56, which accelerated the abolition of serfdom, and in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05, which forced Nicholas II to concede a parliament and constitution, the Romanov dynasty could not withstand the catastrophe of World War I; the humbling of the mighty Red Army in Afghanistan in the 1980s proved to be one of the nails in the U.S.S.R.’s coffin. A year ago, at a nadir of Russia’s campaign in Ukraine, Putin survived the rebellion of the Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin; since then, Russia’s military has recovered its position, and Putin’s rule has stabilized. But if Ukraine can begin to prevail, Putin’s narrative as the grand defender of Russia will no longer hold, and regime change will become possible once more.

The generations of Russian/Soviet leaders who have treated their citizens as resources to be used to expand their physical sphere of influence have created a culture and primed their citizens to unite in times of conflict. Putin in this regard is no different, and so long as he can continue to convince the broader Russian public that theirs is a worthwhile endeavour, it’s likely that he will continue this trajectory. Invasion has typically ended badly for the invaders, however if the Russian state can be defeated in one of their foreign conflicts, it might provide enough impetus for the public to begin questioning this course of action again.