In April 2007 Peter Zeihan of Stratfor wrote a thought-provoking article The Coming Era of Russia’s Dark Rider, which tries to pin down the metahistory of Russia’s socio-political evolution and perhaps even inspired a book. The basic idea is that following its cyclical collapses (the Mongol conquest, The Time of Troubles, the Civil War and the post-Soviet transition), there eventually emerges a messianic “white rider” who heavy-handedly restores order and national morale (the early 16th C princes of Muscovy, Peter the Great, Lenin). Putin is the current white rider, intimately cognizant of Russia’s weakness from his intelligence background and determined to once again play state-driven catch-up to the West.

Disappointed by slow and stunted progress, the white rider  “realizes that the challenges ahead are more formidable than he first believed and that his (relative) idealism is more a hindrance than an asset”. In steps the “dark rider”, who unburdens himself of the white rider’s moral restraints in an all-out drive to fulfill the state’s goals through strict internal controls, subjugation of the economy and military expansionism. The most famous examples are Stalin and Ivan Grozny in their later years. Yet the dark rider sows the seeds of destruction by overextending his realm, ushering in a period of stagnation and increasing socio-economic strains. Half-hearted attempts at reform fail and the country slides from decline into a new collapse, thus closing the cycle.

Mostly agreed so far, even despite the latent simplifications and semi-mystical approach to history, but we diverge on the interpretation of the current situation. Zeihan now writes “Putin’s efforts to stabilize Russia have succeeded, but his dreams of Westernizing Russia are dead. The darkness is about to set in”. The main evidence? The crackdowns on liberast protesters in Moscow and St.-Petersburg, in the same month that the article was written. But as I’ve pointed out many, many, many times, these folks are by and large jokers who enjoy no support from mainstream Russian opinion – points that Zeihan actually concedes. Yet though undoubtedly heavy-handed, there is absolutely no evidence for interpreting this as an omen of impending despotism.

Instead, I think the Putin circle of siloviks (Sechin, Ivanov et al) and patriot-liberals (Medvedev, Surkov, etc), constituting an organic whole whom I’ll henceforth refer to as Putvedev – was, is and will remain a white rider for at least the next decade. In support of this view I’ll draw in the ever incisive Nicolai Petro, or rather his most recent article The Great Transformation: How the Putin Plan Altered Russian Society.

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