The Russian enigma — how will it end?

Where is Yevgeny Prigozhin? Is he dead, or is he being resurrected? What was the role of Prigozhin in the Ukrainian invasion and in Russia now?

The developments in Russia have become complicated. Three traditional pillars support the power of Kremlin rulers, namely: the military, the interior ministry, and the security service (Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti, formerly Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (KGB)). A fourth actor, the Wagner group of Prigozhin, has entered the picture. Putin’s immediate task is to retain his office by redistributing the powers of government among these four actors. Kremlinologists have evaluated the nuances of Russian politics by studying the interplay of these actors. The situation now is very complicated, it is time for experts to step aside.

Our readers can make their own evaluation and decide what will happen to Prigozhin, Vladimir Putin, Russia, and the world. To assist our readers, an overview of historical events analogous to events in Russia, is presented here.

Recall Nazi Germany. Adolf Hitler never fully trusted the Wehrmacht (German Army). So from the beginning of his regime, he started building a counterweight against it, giving rise to the SA, or the Sturmabteilung, the Nazi party’s original paramilitary wing under Ernst Röhm. Later, Hitler purged Röhm and disbanded the SA due to his fear that it might overthrow the rule of his party. Intrigues by sycophants around Hitler also played a role in this drama, since there was no evidence that Röhm was plotting to topple Hitler. The führer did not, however, abandon setting up a counterweight to the Wehrmacht. In due course, the Schutzstaffel (SS) became the Nazi party’s private army, headed by the more pliant Heinrich Himmler.

Toward the end of World War II, the Waffen-SS (its military arm), became a huge force with around 900,000 troops. Those who had watched the movie “Valkyrie” depicting the plot to assassinate Hitler saw the complicated plot. The plotters had to neutralize the SS to prevent a civil war between the Wehrmacht and this private army.

Benito Mussolini, Hitler’s ally in Italy, faced a different problem. Throughout World War II, the Italian Army performed dismally on all fronts. Critics of Mussolini state that even a dictator cannot coerce his army to fight and die for a cause they do not believe in. When the Germans occupied Italy after the latter’s armistice with the Allies, the Italian partisans fought the Germans as valiantly as the other partisans in Europe. Putin’s army is a clone of Mussolini’s army. It is an army unwilling to fight for a cause they do not believe in (that is, fighting in Ukraine and protecting Putin).

Given the foregoing perspective, Putin has a very difficult task. The Russian military will no doubt obstruct efforts to revive the Wagner force and expand it like the Waffen-SS. Hitler gained valuable time in forming the Waffen-SS because of easy victories early in the war in Poland and in all of Western Europe. Had the campaign in Poland become a stalemate like the current campaign in Ukraine, Hitler would have been deposed by the Wehrmacht. The stalemate in Ukraine may have deprived Putin of the time essential to resurrect the Wagner group.

From the assumption of power by the Bolsheviks in 1917, the ascendancy of one of the three pillars cited earlier over the other may be noted. The victory of the Bolsheviks over the White Armies in the 1917-1922 Civil War made the military pillar prominent. In 1937, Joseph Stalin purged the Soviet military with the execution of Field Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky. The KGB became ascendant until the end of Stalin’s rule. Lavrentiy Beria, the KGB chief, was the heir apparent of Stalin but was executed in 1953 by his politburo colleagues who feared that he would institute another purge of the party. The military led by Marshal Georgy Zhukov, played a major role in toppling Beria. The Soviet military thus became the guardian of the European satellite socialist empire under the Brezhnev Doctrine. (The Soviet Union can intervene in its satellite countries to preserve socialism.) The Soviet military suppressed the Hungarian revolt in 1956 and the Prague Spring uprising in 1968. When Mikhail Gorbachev became head of the Soviet Union, he downgraded both the military and the KGB. Both had played a major role in the ill-fated Afghan invasion and occupation of 1979-89. One of Gorbachev’s major initiatives was to end the unwinnable Afghan War. The interior ministry became the ascendant branch under Gorbachev until the 1991 aborted coup.

It is ironic that twice within a generation, in 1991 and at present, the nuclear weapons in Russia have posed a greater danger to itself than to its foreign enemies. The problem remains, however, that whoever gets possession of these nuclear weapons in a post-Putin Russia, like Prigozhin or Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, may have a low threshold on their use. The world can only pray for the best outcome in this mess.

Hermenegildo C. Cruz is a career ambassador with a graduate degree in Sovietology. He served in Moscow during the reform era under Mikhail Gorbachev.