Michael Kimmage is a professor of history and former head of the Russia desk at the State Department. Here from Politico is his conclusion concerning the recent unrest in Russia. It sounds ominous coming from a historian.
Prigozhin’s trial run was a burlesque version of what may become a regular feature of Russian politics: calculated plans for depriving the state of its monopoly on violence (not to destroy the state) and thus to take power at the barrel of a gun, continuing the regime while changing its leadership. The tsar is old; the state is weak; the future is open.
That last line feels like a valedictory.
