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President Vladimir Putin
As the Ukraine crisis settles into what appears to be a long stalemate, perhaps it is time to consider the future of Russian recalcitrance to the West—and who and what may follow in the footsteps of the main author of this recalcitrance, Vladimir Putin. Russia plainly needed someone like Putin as this point in its history. But did it also need Putinism? Will it in the future?
Will the autocratic, state-centered ideology that Russian's leader has come to represent survive the man?
I believe there is a good chance that it will. Coming out of the failure of the Soviet Union,
Russia needed a new feeling of mission, a new Russian idea. This is what Putin delivered. Though there is no elaborate Putinist ideology, a document prepared by a think tank established by the Russian politician German Gref in 1999, just prior to Gref's appointment as minister for economic development, and approved by Putin, constituted a platform for Putin's election campaigns. The document said that
Russia was passing through the greatest crisis in its history and that all its resources, political, economic, and moral, would have to be enlisted so that a united country will be able to overcome it. The country needed solidarity and above all
gosudarstvenost, or strong state power.
This need is not going away. Contrary to the beliefs of those who subscribe to the idea of an "End of History" in which liberal democracy becomes the common form of government throughout the world, Russians feel the need for strong state power more than many other countries. At the core of the Russian character is a belief that, without discipline, people would not work and nothing would function, and only government authority can enforce this discipline. Given the basic anarchic inclination of the people, but for a strong state power, the country would fall apart.
Beyond that Russians tend to believe that Russia can exist only as a great power to fulfill its historic, God-given mission, and a democratic Russia would not be strong enough to attain great power status. This is at the root of the weakness of every democratic movement in Russia throughout history.
Comment: As well as keeping 'swarms' of migrants out, in the event of economic or environmental catastrophe, such border control fencing could also be used to keep people in. See also:
Syrian refugees in Europe, regime change in Damascus, and the mass migrations still to come