The Future Brief – What’s After Putin? History Already Told Us
Russia’s next collapse: why the system can’t hold.
Russian history does not follow forward movement or evolution. Instead, it’s cyclical. Russian governments fail, reform, recentralize, fail - repeat. The problem now? Putin is trapped at the end of that cycle, with no path forward but implosion.
THE NEWS
📰 Moscow’s War Economy Hits the Breaking Point
The Kremlin’s spending on the Ukraine war now consumes over 40% of the national budget. Civil services are being slashed, pensions are being delayed, and inflation continues to rise. The ruble has weakened again, now requiring artificial support from the central bank, which just raised rates to 18%.
📎 Reuters, May 2025
📰 Crackdown at Home, Chaos Abroad
Over the past year, over 200,000 Russians have been arrested, conscripted, or exiled. The assassination of opposition leader Alexei Navalny in 2024 triggered new waves of internal dissent. Meanwhile, Moscow is tightening its grip on Belarus, threatening Moldova, and deepening alignment with Iran and North Korea.
📎 Politico
📰 Russia’s Technocratic Elite Is Leaving
Since 2022, more than 1 million skilled professionals, IT workers, engineers, and academics have fled the country. Many joined an expanding Russian diaspora now lobbying Western institutions against the Putin regime. Brain drain has intensified economic stagnation.
THE PATTERN
Collapse, Reform, Retrench. Repeat.
Russia doesn’t evolve, it circles. Scholars have tracked the same cycle for over a century. And today, we’re entering the final stage, again.
Zubok (2021) shows how Gorbachev’s reforms, intended to save the USSR, instead hastened its disintegration. Attempts at modernization, without real democratization, left the system exposed and unstable. Putin is now repeating that pattern in reverse: forced modernization through militarization, with no political openness.
Kotkin (2001) describes how entrenched networks outlast collapse. The USSR fell, but Russian culture remains. The elites regrouped, centralized power, and returned with a new face. Putin is the latest product of that retrenchment.
Skocpol (1979) adds the revolution piece: state breakdown doesn’t just lead to change, it clears the ground for a new regime. But Russia today is in pre-collapse paralysis: no new ideology, no new legitimacy, just a brittle authoritarian hold on power.
Sakwa and Lewin both show the same loop: reform creates instability → instability invites crackdown → centralization breeds stagnation → stagnation triggers collapse.
We are now in stage four.
TIMELINE OF TRANSFORMATION
1917–2025: The four cycles: Collapse, Reform, Recentralize
Cycle 1 | 1917 → 1953
Collapse
Nicholas II abdicates. The empire implodes. Chaos grips Russia.
Reform Window
The provisional government tries to implement parliamentary rule.
Brief, idealistic, fragile, quickly overwhelmed.
Re-centralisation
Lenin’s coup establishes Bolshevik rule.
By 1928, Stalin’s first Five-Year Plan locked in one-party control.
And it begins again.
Cycle 2 | 1953 → 1991
Collapse
Stalin dies. His reign of terror ends. A system built on fear starts to crumble.
Reform Window
Khrushchev denounces Stalin’s abuses.
Over 1 million prisoners freed. Controls on speech and art loosen briefly.
Re-centralisation
Brezhnev’s palace coup restores the hardline.
Hierarchy returns. Reform ends.
And today…
Cycle 3 | 1991 → 2025
Collapse
The USSR dissolves. Moscow loses control.
Reform Window
Yeltsin’s republic holds competitive elections.
Markets open, but chaos, corruption, and oligarchy follow.
Re-centralisation
Putin is named acting president.
Three months later, he’s elected. The authoritarian hierarchy is rebuilt.
Cycle 4 | 2025(?) → 2060 (?)
Collapse
The war economy is unsustainable. Skilled elites are fleeing. Internal fractures—regional, economic, and institutional are growing too wide to contain.
HOW WE GOT HERE
Every Fix Failed
Modernization Without Openness
Putin pursued selective modernization - military, energy, infrastructure - without institutional reform or political transparency. Like Gorbachev before him, he misread the balance between control and change. But while Gorbachev allowed too much openness too fast, Putin allowed none at all. The result: a brittle modernization built on authoritarianism and repression of the oligarchs, opposition, and civil protest. .
📖 Zubok, Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union (2021)
Empire Thinking in a Post-Imperial World
Russia never fully accepted the loss of its empire. After 1991, the political elite and security services preserved imperial logic, seeing Belarus, Ukraine, and Central Asia as “belonging” to Moscow. Reforms were filtered through this mindset. That’s why Putin’s regime views the NATO expansion and Ukrainian democracy as threats, not foreign policy shifts.
📖 Kotkin, Armageddon Averted (2001)
Reform, Fear, and Reaction
Russia never stabilized because the central authority eroded without social transformation. Putin’s re-centralization did not come from institutional renewal; it was a reaction to the fear of the masses organizing, of democracy, and of social collapse. But like all reactionary systems, it could not resolve the underlying pressures. It could only suppress them temporarily.
📖 Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions (1979)
The Illusion of Stability
Russia’s “managed democracy” was never a democracy. Elections were controlled, opposition marginalized, and civil society suffocated. When stress came from the Ukraine war, sanctions, and internal dissent, the regime could not adapt, just repression.
📖 Sakwa, The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union (1999)
Power Built on Habit, Not Legitimacy
Soviet politics makes it clear that centralization in Russia is not just a political choice; it’s an ingrained social culture. Institutional mistrust, vertical power, and informal networks have shaped governance for over a century. Reform is seen not as progress but as a threat. And in a system that cannot evolve, collapse is inevitable.
📖 Lewin, The Soviet Century (2005)
THE CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE
Russia’s collapse pattern is not just political—it’s cultural.
Lewin and Sakwa explain that the Soviet system wasn’t just centralized by force; it was centralized by cultural habit. Russia ranks high in Power Distance (Hofstede) and operates in a High-Context communication culture (Hall), where loyalty, implicit meaning, and personal networks matter more than institutions.
That’s why reforms often fail: they disrupt the unspoken rules of power.
Attempts to create accountability clash with a culture of silence. Efforts to decentralize are viewed as a betrayal. Western models assume structure; Russian power flows through relationships.
Skocpol would call it pre-revolutionary: a rigid, opaque, centralized regime, overstretched abroad, weakened at home, and incapable of structural reform. That’s not just a theory, it’s Russia in 2025.
WHY IT MATTERS
Russia’s collapse is inevitable. An outcome of its historical cycles. And events are lined up just as expected. We’ve seen this movie before.
Putin has not created a stable, strongman government. He’s created the environment for collapse. His rise came after the Soviet collapse, and his fall will trigger the next collapse.
Russia is now ruled by fear, hemorrhaging talent, stuck in a war it can’t win, and operating an economy that cannot sustain it. Putin is stuck. He has no way out.
Just like in 1991, a sudden unraveling will reshape global power overnight.
The West isn’t ready for that moment. But the earthquake is coming.
WHAT’S NEXT?
Barring an external military defeat, expect collapse to emerge from within:
Regional power centers (e.g., Tatarstan, Chechnya, Siberia) will demand more autonomy
Security elites (siloviki) may fracture, as war failures spread blame
Economic implosion could trigger hyperinflation and domestic protests
Exiled opposition may unite with elite defectors to enable a post-Putin transition
China will assert more control over Russia’s east, not as a partner, but as a manager of decline. China has its eye on Siberia.
In academic terms, the Soviet cycle is concluding again, we are seeing the collapse stage.
The real question isn’t if Russia collapses, it’s what comes after, and who takes control.
The collapse won’t lead to a long-lasting democracy. It’s more likely to bring chaos, with different groups, military leaders, regional governors, and wealthy elites fighting for power. Revolutions and collapses usually don’t lead to freedom right away. Instead, power goes to the people who control the weapons, land, and institutions.
After the Soviet Union fell, the same political networks stayed in place. When Putin’s government breaks apart, expect a split among insiders: some loyal to the old regime, some trying to make peace with the West, and others looking to China.
Russian politics relies on strong, centralized control. When the system breaks, the culture of top-down power inevitably shapes what follows.
Don’t expect freedom right away. Expect a fight for control, a short reform period, recentralization, collapse, and repeat.