OCTOBER REVOLUTION? PUTIN GAMBLES ON THE NATIONS FUTURE

Westerners who live in modern stable democracies, especially in the EU and I include Japan, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, do not truly recognise revolution, certainly not since 1900. Examples such as the Greek overthrow of the Colonels in the 1970’s, or Portugals removal of the fascist Salazar regime were relatively quiet affairs over and done with in days. Even the East European states when they undertook the removal of their communist governments, for the most part did it quietly. Only the Chauçescu regime met with a violent end.

Russia has never had a really representative democracy as a form of government. Russians have never really understood what it meant or why it mattered that it should be protected. The entirety of Russian history has been a society where leaders lead and everyone does what they’re told, using varying degrees of enforcement.

When Russians eventually find they have had enough they simmer like a pan of almost boiling water – the steam escaping now and again – until it gets to a point where someone emerges out of nowhere and the water explodes. Rather rapidly and without much warning, change occurs fast and those in power are either swept along as the Czar was in 1905 and forced to compromise (after a lost war I might add), or in 1917 was simply too stubborn to see the reality or do anything about what was causing the disquiet. The collapse in frontline morale (which arose from poor supplies and high mortality, with soldiers being asked to make senseless sacrifices by attacking German positions they could never stand a hope against). The Czar was unceremoniously swept away, deluded that he was going to be able to live quietly in exile in England. That was February 1917.

By October 1917, the Germans having grown tired of trying to end the war with the Provisional Government which promised to carry on fighting, found themselves allowing Lenin to leave Switzerland in a sealed train carriage that took him via Sweden and back to St Petersburg (Petrograd as it was at the time). He quickly set about sidelining the Provisional government and effectively overthrew it using strikes and revolutionary violence, ended the war with Germany surrendering vast areas including all of Ukraine, leading eventually to a brutal civil war.

The establishment of the USSR which within a very short time because of Lenin’s sudden death, fell into the hands of Stalin, set the tone for decades to come. It was almost certainly the most brutal regime that ever ran a single country, even the Nazis with all their atrocities which were vast and inhuman on a mind bending scale, failed to massacre as many people as Stalins Russia.

The USSR failed everyone in it. Chernobyl was perhaps the beginning of the end and the people became fed up and demoralized with any hope of genuine reform. Perestroika wasn’t cutting it and everyone wanted change. In August 1991 seeing the end was fast approaching hardliners overthrew the communist regime aiming for a return to strict communist orthodoxy – they were unsupported, nervous and all they did was end the Soviet system once and for all as they slipped away in miserable failure. The USSR was formally abolished and the Russian Federation came to the fore.

Once again, the Russian people, having got rid of what they didn’t like accepted what looked better in Yeltsin but by the end of a momentous century Russia was broken, broke and riven with oligarch driven violence, economic discord and international weakness, let alone wars with the Chechens and random terrorism, some of it almost certainly state sponsored red flag incidents.

For the first time perhaps, Russians voted willingly for the man Yeltsin appointed as his successor – Vladimir Putin. The oligarchs thought he was one of them effectively and that they could easily control him. He was not and they couldn’t. Twenty-six years later he is still president and they are afraid of him almost as much as he now appears afraid of almost everybody around him.

He has lost touch with reality, his statements just in the past few weeks have been reluctantly forthcoming, haven’t really addressed the issues and show a marked disconnect from the old Putin of the pre-war period. His illness and his age have caught up with him. He’s always been mildly paranoid – he is ex KGB/FSB it goes with the job and is deeply ingrained. These days it’s a new level, made worse by his very public self distancing during and after COVID, with those giant tables he met guests at almost 20m apart. That rolled on to identical offices so as to never give away where he was to Russian officials. The paranoid refusal to use email, computers or mobile phones, or to allow anyone near him to do so. A bodyguard now 800 strong plus the 40,000 strong Rosguardia virtually under his direct command, the icing on the cake of a paranoid, isolated dictatorship.

And now we have rapidly spreading news from Ukrainian and Russian sources, that after the elections later this year, in October there are plans afoot to call up 500,000 men directly and that the total is planned to reach 1.2 million. Because Russia only knows how to use manpower to overwhelm and even though it hasn’t worked since 2022, it might this time.

Except this isn’t Russia 2022. It’s a Russia of shortages, fuel poverty, inflation, high interest rates, mind numbing censorship and a population clearly ticked off by how the war is going. Many now know they’re being lied to. Having up to 1.2 million men taken away to face death by drone on the frontlines to fulfill paranoid Putin’s imperial dreams isn’t going to go down as easily as it did before.

The government knows it. As soon as the announcement is made the entire internet is to be shut off for five days – that way nobody can complain or organize any opposition – or so the government thinks. The internet wasn’t there in 1905 and 1917 and yet it still happened.

Imagine if you will it is October. Ukraine has been waging a massive strategic campaign and fuel and food are in short supply, Moscow has been hammered, war industries are crumbling and the logistics and morale situation on the frontlines are dire, and winter is coming, by October in Russia it might already be there. The economy is collapsing, bank runs seem imminent, effective bankruptcy isn’t even out of the question. The government then institutes a mass mobilization – no thought as to how to get these men around yet alone feed and clothe them, and of course arm them.

Has anyone really thought this through? Are they so deluded they think it’s going to all happen just like that? No problems, just sheep rounded up for the slaughter? Drone meat.

I would say that by October, given the moaning and misery we’re seeing from Russians right now over a few fuel shortages, if Ukraine keeps up and increases the pressure, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Another revolution is coming if they keep this up. Russians have notoriously short tempers. When they’re riled up they act and they don’t act reasonably or quietly. History tells you they will stand up if they think things have gone far enough. They might sit down again and go home quietly afterwards, leaving it for someone else to sort out, but they can, have and will act again if pushed too far. Putin is so disconnected from reality he no longer understands his own people. he’s been told they’re under control, the same way he’s been told the army is almost in Kyiv, but it’s not real. Nor I suspect is his assesment of his people.

The Analyst

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