[LINK] "Does Putin's Russia Have a Future?"

[rfmcdonald]

Bloomberg View's Leonid Bershidsky writes about futurology in contemporary Russia. As elsewhere in the world, futurology relates at least as much to concerns about the present as to serious predictions about the future. Things are not expected to be good, as noted in two linked scenarios.

Russia's present is too unbalanced to discuss, and President Vladimir Putin prefers to rehash the past. That increases the temptation to talk about the distant future, to fathom where the country's current trajectory is leading. Some smart commentators in Moscow have also given in to this temptation, and their scenarios are bleak.

The Russian ruble is down 30 percent against the U.S. dollar so far this year, causing runaway inflation -- 7.13 percent since the start of the year -- and a panic on the social networks. "Ruble Apocalypse Now," trumpeted Moscow's MK tabloid. A nationalist legislator has even revived a doomed proposal to ban the circulation of dollars in Russia. Another legislative proposal, which is much more likely to pass, imposes new taxes on small businesses. At a minimum of $130 per square meter of floor area per quarter, the taxes threaten to kill off many restaurants and hair salons, but the government desperately needs more revenue as oil prices plummet. A two-month-old truce in eastern Ukraine is falling apart, raising the specter of more Western sanctions and unacknowledged Russian casualties.

Good news is scarce, and there's no reason to expect things to get better in the near term. That may be why Putin's speeches have grown heavier on historical references. A recent major anti-Western tirade was mainly about the past, and yesterday, in remarks to Russian historians, he presented a spirtited defense of the 1938 Molotov-Ribbentrop pact[. . .]

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Commentators such as Movchan and Inozemtsev know full well it's impossible to make accurate predictions even for the next year or two: Russia's strategic direction depends too much on the will of one man. As with most people in Russia, however, they see Putin's power as unshakable and project his increasingly nostalgic vision of Russia's role in the world into the future. It is, indeed, hard to see what force could topple Putin in the immediate future or change his mind about breaking with the West and making a doomed bid for self-sufficiency. Therefore the scenarios of economic gloom and political sclerosis.