Opinion Change will come to Russia — abruptly and unexpectedly

Political change in Russia always comes unexpectedly. The czarist minister Vyacheslav von Plehve, who before 1904 called for a “small victorious war,” never imagined it would lead to a revolutionary explosion and force the monarchy to agree to a constitution, a parliament and freedom of the press. Vladimir Lenin, complaining to the Swiss Social Democrats in January 1917 that “we of the older generation may not live to see the decisive battles of this coming revolution,” did not suspect that it was only a few weeks away. And absolutely no one in the summer of 1991 expected that by the end of the year, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union would be banned and the Soviet Union dissolved.

The next time, change will come in exactly the same way — abruptly and unexpectedly. None of us knows the specific moment and specific circumstances, but it will happen in the foreseeable future. The chain of events leading to these changes was started by the regime itself [with its full-scale invasion of Ukraine] in February 2022. It’s only a matter of time.

And this means, as Alexei Navalny rightly pointed out in a recent and widely discussed article, that a window of opportunity for the reestablishment of the state on democratic principles will soon appear again in Russia. Not a “window of guarantees,” not a “window of a final result,” not a “window of a bright and happy future” — but rather precisely a window of opportunity that we must use wisely and not squander yet again, as was done in the 1990s. And that is why a serious, meaningful and public conversation about those missed opportunities is so important — not for historical reflection but to avoid stepping on the same rake again.