The connection between periods of crisis and autocratic rule is deeply embedded in the Russian consciousness.
In Russia, failed coups portend turmoil and collapse. They also herald greater repression, and a tightening of centralised control. This is because Russian history has swung back and forth between chaos and autocracy, which have become mutually reinforcing symptoms of the same historical condition.Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin has come to symbolise a new cycle of this history taking place in Russia today.
To understand this maxim, one needs to understand Russia’s history and its underlying power dynamics. On the morning of Prigozhin’s rebellion, Putin referred to the smuta in a national address. Prigohzin, he said, was attempting to “create internal turmoil” and “split and weaken the country, which is now confronting a colossal external threat, unprecedented pressure from outside”.
The gathering of the lands The origins of this historical syndrome can be traced back to Ivan IV, better known as Ivan the Terrible, who in the 16th century transformed Russia from a loosely connected group of medieval states into the foundations of a modern empire. In the years before his death, Ivan grew isolated and paranoid. When he murdered his favourite son and only viable heir, Ivan Ivanovich, in a manic fit of rage, he created a succession crisis.
Pushkin’s play tells the story of Boris Godunov, a Russian nobleman who came to power at the end of the 16th century during the “Time of Troubles”, the first period of smuta – a succession crisis that began in 1598 with the death of Tsar Fyodor I, the last of Russia’s founding Rurikid dynasty. Amid this period of turmoil, an opportunistic young priest named Grigory Otrepyev posed as the dead Dmitry and amassed a grassroots following on the pretence of being the true Rurikid heir. Garnering support from the Polish nobility, who were keen to exploit Russian factionalism, Otrepyev advanced on Moscow in 1604, flanked by the Polish army and ordinary Russians compelled to fight for the man they believed to be the only legitimate Tsar.
The crown changed hands numerous times through a series of bloody coups. The country descended deeper into civil war. At the height of this breakdown of central authority, the unthinkable happened: a Polish king, Sigismund III Vasa – a Catholic – occupied the Russian throne. Soviet leaders, outwardly atheist, exercised a similar prerogative. The General Secretary of the Communist Party was vested by the laws of History to lead Russians and their Soviet comrades along the true path to their glorious future. This, too, placed Soviet leaders above political accountability.
Read more: 'Today is not my day': how Russia's journalists, writers and artists are turning silence into speech Pushkin describes the narod – the Russian people – as “obedient to the suggestion of the moment, deaf and indifferent to the actual truth, a beast that feeds upon fables”. They are portrayed in his play as a rabble that is roused by False Dmitry. It is not long before they demand Boris Gudanov’s death, along with that of his innocent wife and young son.
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