Staunton, July 21 – A century ago, Russians cheered the entrance of their country into World War I, but the country wasn’t prepared and as a result, it suffered military defeat, social and political revolutions, and a brutal civil war. Tragically, Maksim Kalashnikov says, the parallels between 1914 and now are all too obvious.
The Russian Federation, the Russian nationalist commentator says in a post July 21, itself “a parody of the Russian Empire is again being drawn into a world war,” and just as in the case of World War I, it is not ready and is “condemned to defeat because a collapse of the economy and an explosion in the rear”.
As a century ago, he continues, those countries which are drawn into the war will be “blown up from the inside and dismembered by a new slave-holding civilization.” Russia will be one of them because just like in 1914, Russia now is “absolutely unprepared for war,” especially a modern one.
“Its rear is eaten away by corruption, its economy is collapsing, and within its borders are millions of people who are angry at the authorities and the existing social order.” And it is not “and not a mythical hot war of the combined West against the Russian Federation which is the first order danger.”
The Putin regime’s propaganda is working overtime to distract attention “from the dawning economic collapse of the Russian Federation and the ever increasing inadequacy of the state apparatus of the country.” That propaganda is working, and “the majority in the Russian Federation simply do not understand what is happening or what the chief danger is.”
But “the Kremlin does not understand” either, Kalashnikov says. “It is reacting to the growing economic collapse in the worst way possible. Sometime in the fall, political repression will begin,” with anyone who doesn’t “recognize the ‘divinity’ of the authorities” or who “criticizes the first person of the state” facing repressive measures.
But this won’t save the system. It will only accelerate its demise just as such actions by the tsarist government during the first world war did to it. There simply isn’t a cadres reserve of people who could built an effective totalitarian dictatorship, and efforts to do so without them will lead to collapse.
Some near the Kremlin like the members of the Izborsky Club are hoping for a miracle, but that isn’t going to happen either. The current authorities “can only IMAGINE ‘a strong hand,’ but they can’t become one.” Tightening the screws isn’t a substitute as some understand and others will find out.
There are of course things that could be done to prevent the collapse, but they are very numerous and likely beyond the capacity of the current regime. Among them are using the Central Bank, the finance ministry and the economics ministry to re-inflate the economy so that it has a chance to grow, an end to wasteful spending on sports extravaganzas, refusing to implement the demands of the World Trade Organization, genuinely fighting corruption, “and much, much more.”
Kalashnikov says he doesn’t think the current Russian government is any more capable of doing what is necessary than were its tsarist predecessors. He adds that he would like to be proved wrong. But that will only happen if Moscow recognizes that the main threats to it are inside the borders of the Russian Federation and not from abroad.
“Just like a century ago,” he concludes, “the main threat is an explosion of the rear and the collapse of a weak, unmobilized economy, an outbreak of thievery and the incompetence of the state apparatus.” When it has needed to be, Russia hasn’t been prepared. “The parallels with the tsarist regime of the last monarch are simply shocking.”