How Politics in Russia are Different from the West

Many Western politicians envy Putin's sky high by Western Standards support levels. They think with a rating like that he can rule eternally and one day might even break Queen Elizabeth II record in power. 

Because of that. any notion that Putin needs to go great length, such as starting wars, just to maintain his support and stay in power is often dismissed out of hand as ludicrous. 

However, reality of Russian politics is that such gargantuan support can indeed disappear in a course of several days.

In fact, people in 80s also thought that USSR was eternal and will not just disappear into nowhere over the course of a confusing post-Perestroika days. Yet USSR did just that and many still struggle to understand how that happened. 

Different Foundations of Support

The reason is that for instability of Putin's support compared to Western politicians lay in different bases of support.

Western politicians' support is built on much more stable foundations. Most parties have a very loyal base that will never desert them: business owners and shareholders for the center-right and waged employees for the center-left. In between them are so called swing voters who does not fit into either category, so they keep changing their vote between the two main parties and determine the outcome of most elections. 

However, swing voters are much fewer in numbers than the two main blocks. Hardly more than 10%, maximum 20% of the people are swing voters. The rest are glued to their party, sometimes they are even referred to as Iron Vote.

Because of that even 55% support is a lot, and many Western politicians envy Putin who easily break 80% in some polls. 

However, what they are not aware of is that Putin's support is based on much more wobbly foundations. With exception of government bureaucrats, police, various government security agencies and army officers he does not have any strong base under him. All of them combined hardly amount for more than 10%. All the rest are basically swing voters and can easily swing away from him as things change.

To make matters worse, there is not any single biggest opposition party in Russia that can rally the people to their banners, should Putin fail. So, neither Putin, nor the rest of the government could possibly predict where disillusioned people will go, if they ever get disillusioned with Putin and that terrifies them.

Because of that Putin and Russian bureaucrats are much more jittery about anything that might tank support unexpectedly, like major scandal or some sort of natural disaster. They censor the media precisely to avoid something like that.

They jail or overwise silence people like Navalnyi, Litvinenko or Khodorkovsky, who expose corruption for exact the same reason.

How Putin Wins Swing Voters

Since Putin cannot win voters with constant haggling over the Industrial Relations (Labour) Law, like Western Parties do, he has to do something else.

However, he can no longer use promises of free stuff in future just like in Soviet times. Free stuff managed to unite a lot of different people being the government during Soviet times, but after these promises failed to materialize, people got disillusioned. This and other issues such as Chernobyl and casualties in War in Afghanistan eventually created a critical mass of disillusionment with the system that led to dissolution of USSR and collapse of the whole system.

However, what else could possibly unite so many different people with such a different and conflicting needs, believes and desires. Turns out fear. 

Terrorist attacks on apartment blocks in 1999 united people in fear that terrorists might blow up their homes next. Back then Putin so successfully managed to alleviate people's concerns by promising to defeat terrorists and protect everyone. His rating went through the roof, and he managed to win elections of 2000 easily.

However, if Putin would have failed to eventually defeat terrorists, public would have got disillusioned with him. On the other hand, if he actually defeated all the terrorists, then public would have eventually forgotten about the whole terrorists' menace as they switched to other concerns. In both of these outcomes he would have lost the elections.

Solution to this dilemma turned out to be simple. Simply invent new threats and then lie to public about them. Georgian menace replaced terrorists, then Ukrainian Nazis replaced Georgian menace.

How That Evolved Over Time

Eventually lies became taller and more elaborate. Public got used to the whole constant threat thing and switch their attention to other issues. Thus, propagandists had to make their stories about fake enemy increasingly more brutal to keep people concerned. 

Exaggerated, but still loosely based on real events, stories about Georgian shelling of 'peaceful' Tskhinvali, gave way to stories of made-up hate crime murders by completely made-up Ukrainian Nazis. Then when public started to question whether these stories are true, they had to forge evidence of these crimes in an infamous Bucha Massacre, where Russia's own troops massacred civilians so that Russian government propaganda could show Russian public fake evidence of crimes against humanity, committed by made-up Ukrainian Nazis.

Taller lies, build on top of existing lies are as stable of a base of support as house of cards. With each new layer of lies there are more and more risk that some irrevocable evidence against the claims of Russian media will topple the whole pyramid of lies and plunge the country into 1990s style collapse. However, the only solution government knows of is to add more lies, hoping the house of lies will not collapse this time.

Risks for Russian Government

That house of cards and lies produce ever increasing risk for Russian government. Sure, people in the West talk about politicians lie all the time, however the scale of their lies are different. 

When a politician promises money for a school or a road and do not deliver its upsetting, but not world shattering. You will not want to flee the country, fearing for your safety.

When the government constantly feed you a story about atrocities committed by fictional Nazi until you believe it's in your best security interest to support a military interference to stop them. If after that you accidently learn that these atrocities were actually committed by the very government, you just recently trusted to protect you from them. That is world shattering.

After all, how can you ever trust that government again, when you know they can so easily get away with literal murder. What if they murder you next and they just say it were Nazi or terrorists?

And if you cannot trust this government ever again, then government and the country itself will have to go.

The USSR Experience

The very same issue toppled the USSR. It is not the very fact of the Afghan War, that made people to oppose the soviet system, but the casualties of the war.

It is when they realized there is a good enough chance that their own sons or husbands might actually get killed there, they started to worry. Universal conscription and singe child families further exacerbated their fears. Even those who had daughters were concerned: number of men in Russia is limited and if their potential son in law dies in Afghanistan there are good chance their daughter will not be able to find another husband.

After casualties of the Afghan war crossed a certain threshold, it became as unstoppable as nuclear chain reaction. A chain reaction that ended up with dissolution of the USSR.

Chernobyl disaster, shortages of consumer goods and low oil prices further added fuel to the fire. Cumulative effect of it all was something no Gorbachev or anyone else could possibly stop.

In the end of the day the entire Soviet federal government together with Gorbachev and the country was simply abolished. Consistent republics (first level subdivisions) all became independent nations. Even some extra unrecognized independent nations emerged.

Implications for Russian Federation

If the same kind of collapse will happen to a current Russian Federation, then we will have 90 something new independent nations.

Ultimately current Russian Federation is a Frankenstein, stitched together from parts that have little in common with each other. There are no any intrastent forces that can keep it together in face of a storm.