Originally Posted by
WideScreen
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").
Sorry but this is wishful thinking in the extreme.
The issue as I see it that Russia, in its current guise, is far too tempting a grift for a wannabe Putin successor to pass up: the opportunity to enrich yourself, your family and friends beyond measure, to literally have the natural resources of the world's largest country as your bank account, coupled the ultimate safeguard of the world's largest arsenal of nuclear weapons, oh and a supremely pliable and gullible population to ride roughshod over (vodka + circuses, that's all it takes). Even the most liberal-minded pro-Western amongst them would be tempted.