cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/45454904
Mounting economic hardship and growing public discontent could push Russia toward internal conflict, a senior Kremlin official has warned.
The stark message comes as inflation, war fatigue, and social divisions deepen across the country.
Alexander Kharichev, head of the Presidential Directorate for Monitoring and Analysing Social Processes, issued the warning in a state-run journal.
[…]
Military over social spending
Rising prices have hit ordinary Russians hard, with food costs climbing well above the national inflation rate. Businesses are struggling to stay afloat, and layoffs and bankruptcies loom large.
Despite the pressure, the Kremlin continues to prioritize military spending over social welfare.
At the same time, Russia’s workforce has been decimated by more than a million war casualties, mostly men of working age, worsening the long-term demographic decline and ageing population.
[…]
Kharichev warned of “fragmentation of society” and the “loss of Russia’s ability to fight for its survival.”
His analysis cited the growing erosion of public trust in government and widening rifts within Russian society.
[…]
As soon as it became clear how much russia botched the invasion initially, I’ve thought of vovka as Tsar Nicolas III
Be careful what you wish for. We might end up with Soviet Union Two: Electric Boogaloo.
Maybe this time they won’t dismantle the worker’s councils after the revolution, that’d be nice.
We’ll get Stalin 2.0.
or maybe Trotsky 2.0
As in, an improvement on the original (fewer famines) model? Or an upgraded, more effective (bigger famines) model?
2040: A group of Neo-Bolsheviks seize control of Russia, fully intending to literally make fully automated luxury gay space communism real. Imagine a publicly owned vast automated supply chain that produced goods at scale with little human effort. Go full tilt on automation of all kinds, but direct all profits to the general welfare. Maybe do away with money entirely. It would start with a genuine utopian dream.
2060: Neo-Stalin rules over what was once Russia. Its human population, long since more trouble than they were worth, were largely done away with. The population of the country is approximately 2300. Yet the combined industrial output of the automated leviathan that sprawls over what was once the Moscow-St. Petersburg corridor now exceeds that of the PRC. And a frightening fraction of that is directed towards military purposes. Their population reduced to a handful of oligarchs still controls the first, second, or third most powerful military in the world, depending on form of measure.
Maybe they’ll get it right this time and will be more resilient to capitalist interference.
Yeah… That was the problem…