Originally Posted by
SASless
If Putin and some cronies want to rebuild the Soviet Union.....and we know how the people when exposed to Western style freedom and prosperity react....how does that old hardcore communist core of the Russian Government react?
We saw an example when the Berlin Wall went up and they killed many trying to escape.
What do the Russian People want these days....more empty shelves due to Communist Party failures or Western style lifestyle items and some freedom?
How does Putin handle that now with the complications of a failed War in Ukraine and the resultant Sanctions?
Juggling those two Balls is hard enough but what if there is some real move by the Russian People or his Military and Security Service to challenge his Rule?
What then?
I agree with you, that a transition of Russia to a real democracy will be a very difficult one. As such, my earlier suggestion, the Russian Federation breaks up and later on rejoins according to something like the EU model (with I hope significantly fewer languages). Breaking up of the Federation would imply that a lot of the centralized dye-hard communist structures become redundant and control moves to a more local scale. Implying the propaganda and other controlling institutions also break down.
What the Russian people want: Stability, if needed to be enforced the hard way. Forgetting that "the hard way" becomes more and more brutal, the longer such a scheme runs. Breaking up the Federation would make things a significantly smaller scale and as such better manageable.
For now, Putin rules by propaganda, FSB enforcement, social control, zero press freedom and Stalin practices. Though the longer the Ukraine war takes, the more service men are missing or return home dead, fueling the unrest of the population. Difficult to predict what is going to happen, though Chaos is a certainty. Chaos anyway, when Putin dies, since nearly every major decision is tied to him personally and though there are formal institutions, these aren't recognized to be applicable (see the ignored formal transfer of power to the prime-minister position, when Putin gets his planned cancer operation, the power goes -rumored- to his FSB "friend").