A brutal irony lies at the heart of autocratic regimes. They brook no dissent, work to crush their opponents and are accountable to neither genuine elections nor a free press. Yet they can fall at any time, often at the hands of those closest to them — think Nikita Khrushchev after the debacle of the Cuban missile crisis.
But Russian history gives evidence of other dangers to such regimes, nightmares that can become real with unexpected speed and produce widespread, indiscriminate violence. In Russia such an episode is called bezporyadok. This translates as “disorder,” but in the Russian context it means a violent breakdown in traditional society, including longstanding norms of passivity and compliance. In this anarchic situation, seemingly unchallengeable systems are faced with revolt, upheaval and murderous actions directed at all forms of existing authority, including those at the top.
Russia has seen such generational uprisings in both the distant and not so distant past. In 1773–1775 the Cossack Yemelyan Pugachev (a disaffected army officer) led a rebellion against Tsarina Catherine II; in 1670–71 Stenka Razin did the same against Tsar Alexis. More recently — and more directly relevant to the current regime — widespread peasant upheavals drove the First Russian Revolution of 1905 and forced Nicholas II to make concessions to a new parliament. Scarcely a dozen years later, the Romanov dynasty came to an end as socialists used countrywide attacks on landholders and morale-sapping WWI defeats to bury 400 years of tsarist rule — and later the tsar himself. Soon enough, and for more than a decade after, the Bolshevik rulers faced regime-challenging peasant upheavals.
Elite fear of social disintegration is a possible explanation for the strangely favorable deal Vladimir Putin cut with the rebellious mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin. Moscow dropped criminal charges of insurrection against Prigozhin and his men, and Prigozhin himself was allowed to find refuge in Belarus. The troops of Prigozhin’s private army, the Wagner group, can return to their base and even join the regular military if they agree to sign contracts.
This arrangement came virtually moments after Putin accused Prigozhin of “state treason and betrayal” and risking civil war. He said there would be harsh treatment for all who followed him. For his part, Prigozhin claimed it was not a coup but a “march for justice” against the corrupt regime that was bringing the country to disaster. Given that his main targets were close Putin allies (Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Russia’s top general, Valery Gerasimov), this could be nothing other than an attack on Putin himself.
After the Wagner troops stood down, Putin blamed Prigozhin (and, incidentally, the West) for wanting Russia to be “society to break up and perish in a bloody feud.” He put the blame on Wagner’s leader while excusing the actions of its troops, saying they made a “mistake” and were lied to. This is remarkable forbearance from a regime that has imprisoned dissidents like Alexei Navalny for simply speaking out — and has been directly implicated in the poisoning and murder of political opponents.
Historical analogies are always imperfect, and putting a national leader on a psychiatrist’s couch to speculate if he had the country’s horrifying precedents in mind is fraught. Yet no recent Russian ruler has been more steeped in his country’s history or more eager to draw comparisons than Putin. He drew on these to rally support, comparing Prigozhin’s actions to those who “stole” Russia’s WWI victory in 1917 and threatened the country with “the greatest turmoil.” In this analogy, Putin would be cast in the role of the tsar who lost both the war and his life, so it’s not impossible to imagine that the current leader of Russia was in the grip of such a fear as he faced Prigozhin’s advance.
Prigozhin and his troops were able to move from Ukraine through Rostov and Voronezh in Russia, more than 400 miles toward Moscow in less than two days. During this time there was not a single report of locals attacking, harassing or trying to hinder the column’s progress. Indeed, video from Rostov showed locals cheering and fraternizing with Prigozhin’s men. When Germany invaded Russia in 1941, the Russian people burned their own houses and plowed under their crops to cripple the invaders. Prigozhin was two hours from Moscow and, apart from failed helicopter sorties by the regime, not a hand was lifted to try to stop him. The rebellion’s failure after the fact may seem clear, but not to the targets at the time.
Most observers see Putin as deeply wounded by this uprising. Scenarios sketch an insider coup d’état or, at the very least, a weakened and divided elite. While such may be the case, our search for an explanation for Putin’s uncharacteristic rush to settlement might well consider the fact that Russia’s history-obsessed leader knows well the consequences of bezporyadok.
Ronald H. Linden is a retired Professor of Political Science at the University of Pittsburgh, where he served as Director of the Center for Russian and East European Studies and the Center for European Studies.