Weekly Blog - 26 June 2023 - Russian Revolution?
Russian revolution?
The world is still trying to understand quite what happened last weekend with the rebellion of the state-backed mercenary group Wagner in Russia. On Saturday 24 June Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin announced he was pulling his forces out of Ukraine and marching on Moscow demanding the removal of Russia’s military leadership, and implicitly challenging the Russian regime itself. Prigozhin has been extremely public and vocal in his criticism of defence minister Segei Shoigu and head of armed forces in Ukraine Valery Gerasimov who he accuses of incompetence in their handling of the war in Ukraine, and of failing to properly supply his troops with ammunition. There have also been tensions over a proposed imminent merger of Wagner into the mainstream Russian army. On Saturday morning Wagner forces took over the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don and began their march on Moscow. They shot down at least 6 helicopters and a plane from the regular Russian army on their march and got within 200 kilometres of Moscow before negotiations mediated by Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko ended the abortive uprising. Yevgeny Prigozhin agreed to go into exile in Belarus with any Wagner loyalists, whilst the rest of Wagner is supposedly either disbanding or being absorbed into the regular Russian army, although they were still actively recruiting as normal as of Friday 30 June.
It is difficult to know exactly what happened last weekend, or indeed exactly what is or isn’t happening with Wagner now. However, some things are clear. Firstly, it is highly unlikely that Prigozhin would have made such a reckless move if he did not think he had a serious prospect of success. This implies he believed significant sections of the regular Russian military were ready to defect to his side. And indeed at least some sections of the regular army did do exactly that. Furthermore, the Russian people of Rostov-on-Don appear to have welcomed his troops with great enthusiasm, and the wider Russian public certainly didn’t rally behind President Putin with any kind of enthusiasm, and appeared to display a distinct agnosticism and indifference towards whoever would come out on top of the power struggle. Secondly, from all previous behaviour we can be confident that President Putin’s instinct would have bene to brutally crush the uprising and punish the leaders. The fact that he didn’t, and permitted a peaceful negotiated settlement, very likely indicates he didn’t feel his forces were strong enough to destroy Wagner without significant losses, and that he may well not have had confidence in all the mainstream army remaining loyal. The prospect of military defection is the nightmare scenario for President Putin, and he certainly emerges from last weekend as a much weaker figure with his power significantly diminished.
The dynamics of military defection as part of regime change
When elements of the military begin to publicly defect in autocratic countries like Russia, that is often a signal that the regime’s grip on power is coming to an end. Dictatorships looks powerful, but in the end the autocratic leader is only one man (and it almost always is a man). Ultimately, he can only rule with the consent of others. Dictators live in fear of the day they give an order and one of their ministers says ‘no’, they then turn to the head of police or military and order their arrest, and they also say ‘no’. The illusion of power has gone. This is often one of the final stages in a change brought about by a successful peaceful bottom-up reform movement of ordinary citizens demanding change. Supporting bottom-up Reform Movements (and the Christians that are so often at the heart of them) in countries around the world is one of three key focus campaigns for Arise. One of the key findings from a major research report from Arise, the Arise Manifesto, is that it is just such bottom-up reform movements which are usually the most reliable way of ending dictatorships (Arise Manifesto, pg 86 – 88, 108 – 119). In holding such regimes to account and demanding greater freedoms, human rights and democracy, such movements are following a tradition that goes right back to Biblical times when prophets like Isaiah challenged the rulers of their day, “stop doing wrong. Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.” (Isa 1: 16 – 17).
The strategy of such peaceful reform movements is to peel away more and more support from the regime they are seeking to reform. This means making common cause with an increasingly wider number of dissatisfied constituencies, thus knocking away the ‘pillars of support’ of the regime, leaving them more and more isolated and their position increasingly untenable. Ultimately any regime is only as powerful as people’s willingness to obey it. The more groups that withdraw their cooperation, the weaker an authoritarian government becomes. The late Gene Sharp is among many other experts on bottom-up nonviolent reform movements to stress the importance of this in his manual for bringing about political reform From Dictatorship to Democracy. The power of a regime and its pillars of support will consist of its “moral and political authority – its legitimacy”, “the number and importance of the persons and groups that obey, cooperate with, or assist the rulers”, “financial resources, the economic system, property, natural resources, transportation, and means of communication”, and “the police and the military forces”. Therefore, “success against an entrenched dictatorship requires that non-cooperation and defiance reduce and remove the sources of the regime’s power. Without constant replenishment of the necessary sources of power the dictatorship will weaken and finally disintegrate. Competent strategic planning of political defiance against dictatorships therefore needs to target the dictators’ most important sources of power.” [1]
Ultimately, successful reform movements have managed to capture the sympathy of significant parts of the police and the military, thus peeling their support away from the regime. The success of this strategy has been recognised in multiple studies, not least from the Peace Research Institute Oslo, who note in a major policy brief on the subject, “Widespread defection among the security forces also leads to a relatively quick end to a non-violent campaign. If the security forces defect, the chances of success for a non-violent campaign increase substantially. Defection can take the form of desertion or shirking (standing idly by) and not following orders to repress. Non-violent tactics are much more likely to lead to defection than violent tactics … Whether the decision to repress starts with a civilian dictator, the top of the military hierarchy, or somewhere further down the chain of command, in the end, individual members of the security apparatus on the ground must decide how to interpret orders and whether or not to carry them out. If sufficient numbers fail to comply with orders to repress, the movement is likely to grow.” [2] (Arise Manifesto, pg 115 – 116)
In the current case in Russia, significant external pressure, rather than internal pressure from reformers, appears to be the primary driver for last weekend’s defection. An awful lot of this has been pressure the regime has generated itself, by its own actions. The very nature of autocratic regimes is to weaken themselves, by the leader surrounding themselves with ‘yes’ men who will always agree, and never challenge or bring bad news, and eliminating all those who will show ability or their own initiative as potential threats. Furthermore, the war in Ukraine, which Russia unilaterally launched in February 2022 believing it would be over in days, has proved to be extremely costly and dragged on for sixteen months with no end in sight. It has exposed appalling logistics, bad planning, outdated equipment and very low morale in the Russian army. Western sanctions and international diplomatic isolation in response to the unprovoked invasion have also further increased pressure on the regime, with even China now becoming distinctly cool in its support for Russia. Applying such pressure from outside of the nation is another key element that the Arise Manifesto finds is crucial for success in reforming or removing autocratic regimes (Arise Manifesto, pg 119 – 124).
Charting a course for reform in a dangerous phase
However, the weakness of the current regime also indicates a potentially new and dangerous phase. Another key finding from the Arise Manifesto research is that the period when an autocratic ruler’s grip on power begins to break down can be volatile and dangerous. Powerful factions, usually from the security forces, can all too easily step into the power vacuum and seize control (Arise Manifesto, pg 116 – 117). We have seen this recently in Sudan where the military seized power in 2021 after a successful peaceful uprising of ordinary citizens toppled the previous regime. This led to the situation earlier this year where a powerful paramilitary group previously working for the state split away from the regime and has begun brutal open conflict with the regular army, rather than become disbanded and subsumed within that army. A situation with distinct parallels to last weekend’s events in Russia. In some ways this situation is even more likely in Russia. Despite the many brave independent Russian journalists, students, opposition politicians and ordinary people who have challenged the regime, as yet there is no widespread coherent popular bottom up reform movement with obvious civilian leaders ready to step into power when the regime collapses and transition the nation back to democracy. In such a context a civil conflict between rival military factions in a nation with many nuclear weapons is far more likely. As such, the international community were wise in their response last weekend in saying little and seeking to avoid further inflaming tensions.
The international community needs to continue to handle such a scenario with great diplomatic care and sensitivity in the short-term, whilst in the long-term doing all it can to support reformers within Russia as they emerge. But this too needs to be done with great subtlety and sensitivity, and only in ways those reformers want, to prevent them being portrayed as stooges of the west. This might involve spotlighting and publicly condemning specific incidents, diplomatic pressure, further sanctions, seizing illicit Russian regime assets and using them to support reformers, further travel bans for any with regime links, offering asylum for activists who have had to flee, or multiple other actions (Arise Manifesto, pg 119 – 124). In Russia’s current intolerant domestic environment, such a reform movement requires enormous courage, wisdom, skill and perseverance from its members. However, the actions of the current Russian regime are far from universally supported, and do not represent the true heart of the Russian people. Ultimately it is the ordinary people of Russia, and the many Christians amongst them, getting mobilised and demanding justice and change from their government that provides the best hope for a stable, peaceful democracy re-emerging in the great nation of Russia.
Find out more
Find out more about how God is at work in the world, and the role we all have to play in that work, in the Arise Manifesto. This report is Arise’s big picture, researched, Biblical, holistic and practical vision for a better world. It looks at what the Bible says, and what we can learn from the best data and the world’s leading experts on the five major areas of evangelism, discipleship, social justice, development and the environment. It then draws these lessons together into a practical road map for the changes we need to see in our world, which the Arise movement campaigns to achieve.
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[1] Sharp, G., From Dictatorship to Democracy, (London, Serpent’s Tail, 2012), pp. 104 – 107
[2] Standing Idly by during the Revolution, PRIO, (2016), pp. 1 – 2, http://files.prio.org/publication_files/PRIO/Gates,%20Dahl,%20Nyg%C3%A5rd%20-%20Standing%20Idly%20by,%20PRIO%20Policy%20Brief%2015-2016.pdf