HOW PUTIN'S RUSSIA WILL COLLAPSE

Russia may not survive the coming decade due to the divisive stresses pulling the federation apart.

- JOHN DOBSON

In 2007, two years before he died, Russia’s first post-communism prime minister, Yegor-Gaidar, published a book with the title, “Collapse of an Empire: Lessons for Modern Russia”. In it, he warned Russians against the “post imperial syndrome that Putin has come to represent”. That path would only lead to ruin. And so it has.

Responding to Putin’s famous statement describing the breakup of the Soviet Union as “the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century”, Gaidar warned that “Trying to make Russia an empire again means imperilling its very existence”. He then attacked Putin’s narrative: “The legend of a flourishing and mighty country destroyed by foreign enemies is a myth dangerous to the country’s future.”Gaidar always feared that Putin would do exactly what he is doing now in Ukraine. He even prophetically referred to Putin’s invasion of the country, fifteen years before the event: “Dreams of returning to another era are illusory. Attempts to do so will lead to defeat,” he wrote. He was right, but he was right too soon and his warning went unheeded. If only Vladimir Putin had read Gaidar’s book. If he had, Russia’s future would not be in so much doubt.