‘This is not about Ukraine at all, but the world order,’ said Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, a month after the invasion. ‘The unipolar world is irretrievably receding into the past … A multi-polar world is being born.’ The US is no longer the world’s policeman, in other words – a message that resonates in
Putin is an anti-communist and a reactionary for sure, but so far i have not seen any convincing evidence of him being “hyper-wealthy” as the liberal media always claim. He governs in the interest of oligarchs to a considerable extent, that’s indisputable, but i am not sure we can say that he is one himself. At the same time the Russian government is not controlled by oligarchs, it is in a sort of weird position where it is in partnership with many of them but also frequently makes demonstrations of its power over them by disciplining those whose greed endangers the stability of the state. It is not the same kind of oligarchy that the West has where corporate interests basically directly control the government, and the state itself is relatively weak and little more than their puppet.
Russia is in a weird in-between state at the moment where the transition to a mature capitalism like the West’s never quite finished and instead you have a precarious balance of state and private interests brought about by the need to put an end to the total devastation and chaos of the kleptocratic 90s lest the new bourgeois state face the danger of another revolution. This is probably not sustainable in the long run, it will have to tip one way or the other. Either Russian capitalism matures and it transitions fully to a Western-like liberal system, or the communists will grow stronger and stronger until they return to power.
The problem for the Russian bourgeoisie is that the imperialist core has made it virtually impossible for them to integrate into the West’s neoliberal system as equals, the West demands Russia’s total subjugation. Without integration into that global system the completion of the transition is impossible and they will remain in this limbo. Putin is a keystone of this precarious balance and i am not sure what will happen when he retires.
Putin is an anti-communist and a reactionary for sure, but so far i have not seen any convincing evidence of him being “hyper-wealthy” as the liberal media always claim. He governs in the interest of oligarchs to a considerable extent, that’s indisputable, but i am not sure we can say that he is one himself. At the same time the Russian government is not controlled by oligarchs, it is in a sort of weird position where it is in partnership with many of them but also frequently makes demonstrations of its power over them by disciplining those whose greed endangers the stability of the state. It is not the same kind of oligarchy that the West has where corporate interests basically directly control the government, and the state itself is relatively weak and little more than their puppet.
Russia is in a weird in-between state at the moment where the transition to a mature capitalism like the West’s never quite finished and instead you have a precarious balance of state and private interests brought about by the need to put an end to the total devastation and chaos of the kleptocratic 90s lest the new bourgeois state face the danger of another revolution. This is probably not sustainable in the long run, it will have to tip one way or the other. Either Russian capitalism matures and it transitions fully to a Western-like liberal system, or the communists will grow stronger and stronger until they return to power.
The problem for the Russian bourgeoisie is that the imperialist core has made it virtually impossible for them to integrate into the West’s neoliberal system as equals, the West demands Russia’s total subjugation. Without integration into that global system the completion of the transition is impossible and they will remain in this limbo. Putin is a keystone of this precarious balance and i am not sure what will happen when he retires.