Reuben Johnson
PUBLISHED on August 18, 2025, 9:40 AM EDT, Key Points and Summary – While the theory that Russia could collapse under the strain of the Ukraine war is popular, a direct comparison to the fall of the USSR is flawed.
-Unlike the Soviet Union’s final years, which saw a rapid turnover of leadership and liberalizing reforms under Gorbachev, Putin’s Russia is a stable, repressive regime.
-However, this analysis argues that the current system faces its own unique pressures: major state-owned companies like Gazprom are hemorrhaging money, and a rising tide of violent crime from returning convicts is creating deep social instability that could lead to a different kind of collapse.
The Russia Collapse Theory: What We Know
One of the popular theories connected to Russia’s war in Ukraine is that this could cause the collapse of the regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin—and that Russia as a nation-state could even splinter into numerous, new independent nations.
The theory in this instance is that under the weight of massive military spending that is growing at the expense of scores of vital government services, the economy begins to come apart, and the system no longer functions.
Three times in modern history—1905, 1917, and then again in 1990—Russian governments collapsed due to unsustainable military spending. The current war with Ukraine is creating numerous shocks to the economy that are chipping away at internal stability.
Therefore, there are those who believe that Putin’s regime could fall apart at any moment. These predictions are based on the thesis that “the USSR was a powerful and totalitarian system, no one thought it would collapse.” The difficulty with this scenario is that today’s situation is a far cry from the circumstances that existed in the waning years of the USSR.
No comments:
Post a Comment