Last night, reports began circulating about the death of Uzbekistan’s President Karimov. At first, everyone started discussing what risks Russia might face from the destabilization of that country (and all observers believe that risk is quite high), and then, predictably, a disgusting—but eternal—debate sprang up on Twitter: one day, after Putin, everything will collapse and it will be a nightmare. Better to keep Putin around longer than face the inevitable horrors supposedly threatening us.
“Sure, Putin has driven the country into the ground, but now let him stay longer, otherwise millions will die right away.”
You can read a detailed explanation from Smirnov.
There’s nothing new here; it’s just astonishing how eternal this discussion is.
I once read in someone’s memoirs about how people reacted to Stalin’s death. Everyone was in shock and expecting a war. No one knew with whom, exactly, but it simply had to happen: after all, HE had died, and everything had rested on HIM. And the conversations in the streets went like this: people were ready to die for Stalin... but now what? Die for Malenkov? No, people won’t die for Malenkov.
And then a week passed, and there was no need to die for Malenkov, or for Khrushchev, or for anyone at all. Then another week passed. The sun was shining. Water was running from the tap. There was no war.
Years have passed, and we’re hearing the same thing: fascists will come to power and there will be innocent victims.
The discussion is pretty dumb, but not all the people taking part in it are hopeless, so the basic truths need repeating:
A specific point. The death of Uzbekistan’s president worries you. But the death of the president or prime minister of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden, Japan, or even the United States does not worry you, right? Why? Because it would be a sorrow and a tragedy, but nothing extraordinary would happen. We know that.
U.S. presidents have been assassinated fairly often, and what happened? Did millions die, or did fascists come to power? No. They elected a new one, and that was that. The system works.
In the plane crash near Smolensk, Poland’s entire leadership was killed. Terrible. Did this former Eastern Bloc country withstand it? Absolutely. No cataclysms. The system coped.
But Uzbekistan has a problem. This is what’s happening there now:
And Russia will have problems too, for one main reason: a dictator destroys institutions. He wants to control everything himself; he does not want to share power.
That is why this must be branded everywhere with a hot iron, etched with acid, and decorated with wildflowers: The threat to the country and to stability lies not in the dictator’s death, but in the dictator’s life.
He will die; that is guaranteed and built into the natural order of things. And there will come a day when someone else must take power. But how, and who, is unclear. Which means there will be days—like in Uzbekistan now—when it is not even clear whether the dictator is dead or still alive. There will be a fight over his inheritance, and between whom?
The dictator and his inner circle are deliberately leading their country toward this point of guaranteed instability. That point is inevitable when a country has no depersonalized system for transferring power.
The longer a dictatorship lasts—and the harsher it is—the more problems there will be. The same goes for autarky, as in Russia or Uzbekistan. Everyone who says, “Better Putin than civil war,” is helping increase the likelihood of civil war.
In general. The research exists (I’m too lazy to look up the link right now): all regimes since 1950 have been analyzed, and a clear relationship has been established—the probability of instability, crisis, and violence in an authoritarian system is always much higher than in a democratic one.
That is simply a fact.
So, my friends, if anything tears Russia apart, it will not be Putin’s death, but what he is doing right now. What he did yesterday, is doing today, and will do tomorrow: strengthening personal rule. And Uzbekistan may go through a crisis—though that is not inevitable—not because people are mortal, but because Islam Karimov specifically suppressed the opposition and established a regime of personal power.
So, if you are against Russia’s collapse, against millions of victims, against instability and crisis, then let’s fight Putin. Here and now. The sooner his regime collapses, the better and safer it will be.