The thug state: Prigozhin and the shadow of the 90s
Back in the 1990s, my mum’s friend was murdered by thugs. He was a small business owner in our hometown in southern Siberia, selling novelty teas. When the USSR fell apart, and the tectonic changes that came in its wake broke down barriers and tore down institutions, there were suddenly no rules. So, people who dared, created their own rules. To fund his business venture, my mum’s friend borrowed money from a local mafia gang. He was slightly late with repayments. His wife found his body in their flat, strangled to death by his own leather belt; the gangsters had taken with them the family jewellery and the collection of crystal bowls.
In the 2020s, a friend of mine runs an independent art gallery in the same Siberian town, providing a space for artists to work and exhibit. It is a labour of love; the money he gets from the artists barely covers rent. A couple of weeks ago, one of the resident artists invited a Wagner soldier to the gallery for some late night drinking. The evening ended in a horrific drunken fight, the two men smashing vodka bottles against each other’s faces, blood smeared on walls, the interior of the gallery trashed. The Wagner soldier ran away with the gallery keys, leaving the drunk artist for dead.
Two stories, 30 years apart… unrelated?
Live by the sword
The founder and figurehead of PMC Wagner, Evgeny Prigozhin was a product of his time. A petty criminal enabled by the chaos of the 90s, he was keen to make his own rules; and his risk taking paid off. Then it paid off again, and again. The rise and rise of Prigozhin has been well documented: criminal gang member, turned hot dog seller, turned post-Soviet entrepreneur and Putin’s Cook, turned founder and leader of one of the most notorious and violent military groups in recent history, instrumental in Russia’s wars in Syria and Africa, and, of course, Ukraine.
It’s easy to forget that if anything in Prigozhin’s story had gone wrong at any point, not only would we have never heard of him, but he would have perhaps ended up dead years ago, like my mum’s friend or other entrepreneurs of the 90s that were not so lucky. But Putin’s Cook lasted thirty more years and left behind a remarkable if bizarre legacy — of the Wagner Group, of the infamous internet troll factory, of ultraviolence, of gold bars and severed heads.
Prigozhin didn’t neatly fit into the niche of strongmen and oligarchs that formed the cream of the Russian Putinist elites; the Kremlin circles kept him at an arm’s length. The events that saw him to his death — the recruitment of murderers in prisons; the standing on a field of corpses in Bakhmut, yelling obscenities at the Russian military leaders; the increasingly deranged televised speeches about “the happy, clueless grandfather” (Putin); the ill thought-out coup; the eventual fiery demise — bore the markings of an impulsive, unconventional and extreme risk taker living on the outskirts of the system. “The cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover,” indeed, but this time, it is the Thief, not the Cook, who emerged from this stranger-than-fiction narrative seemingly intact.
Addressing the conspiracy
Following Prigozhin’s mutiny and murder, there has been a flurry of speculations about him and Putin being in cahoots, of Prigozhin faking his death and suchlike. I’ve spent plenty of time commenting on Medium and elsewhere debunking these theories, and my post isn’t about that, so I will keep this part brief. But it is clear to me and to the political commentators whom I trust (such as the excellent Timothy Snyder), that, based on Putin’s behaviour after the coup*, the behaviour of his loyal propagandists**, and the fact that Prigozhin had previously staged his own fake deaths, yet this one did not follow the previously established patterns — everything points to the fact that he is really dead this time and that the Kremlin is indeed responsible.
* Upon hearing about the mutiny, Putin ran scared in a private jet; afterwards, he held a hurried meeting with the leaders of Rosgvardiya, offering them weapons and promising to give them whatever they needed to prevent such coups in the future. Then, unusually for him, he suddenly started to appear in public — presumably, in a bout of insecurity, to try to buy back “the trust of his people”.
** The propagandists were initially at loss as to what to say and stayed silent; then, as per usual, they switched to blaming the mutiny and the murder on the US and those pesky ‘anglo-saxons’. Here is one such quote from Rostislav Ischenko, president of the Russian Centre of Systemic Analysis and Prognosis — but really, it could have come from any of the other propagandists, such as Peskov, Simonyan or Solovyov:
“The fact that this [Prigozhin’s murder] was done by the Americans or by someone following their orders, is quite obvious. With the help of this assassination, they hope to shake up the political situation in Russia and provoke an internal Russian conflict. We know that we cannot be shaken up like this, but the Americans think: what if they get lucky? Such a tactic can be seen in many examples. As to who do they use for this act — the Ukrainian agents in Russia, or are they acting on their own? — this is item number ten down the list.”
It is grimly hilarious that the propagandists care so little about truth or logic that the sum total of their ‘explanation’ of just how the Americans have managed to reach a plane flying between Moscow and St Petersburg, blow it up and disappear without trace, consists of “This is item number ten down the list.”
The formation of a ‘new Russia’ — but not the ‘beautiful’ kind
Like moths to a flame, Russian opposition leaders keep returning to that short period in the post-Soviet history, the 1990s. To them — including Navalny — this was a key time when Russian democracy was born and had a chance to deliver the “beautiful Russia of tomorrow” (прекрасная Россия будущего), only to be squandered by those put in charge of it, the clueless democrats who were not principled enough to keep the democracy alive. Navalny’s recent letter from prison (translated here into English) even resorts to bitter name calling of specific people, many of them his former collaborators and supporters.
The old elites
The reality, however, was likely far simpler.
In his response to Navalny’s letter, the Russian opposition politician Maxim Katz argues that the democratic movement in Russia has never got off the ground at all:
“…I want to dispel the myth that has been stuck in the minds of many Russians and many oppositionists, that in the 90s democrats and liberals were in power in Russia. In fact, the liberal government of Yegor Gaidar lasted exactly six months, from June 15 to December 15, 1992. After that, the country was ruled by Boris Yeltsin and Viktor Chernomyrdin, who were previously both members of the Soviet nomenklatura, occupying very high positions in the pre-perestroika system; and the State Duma, where the largest faction was the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, formerly known as the Communist Party of the Soviet Union; and this continued, uninterrupted, until Putin’s arrival. Yes, there were some liberals like Nemtsov, and yes, they occupied some positions — but these positions were few and far between, and they were not the key ones. The Kiriyenko government, which did resemble a liberal one, basically lasted 4 months.”
He continues:
“A large-scale transformational crisis was going on in the country, dramatic changes were taking place in all aspects of life, the economy was being rebuilt from a planned one to a market one, but the key positions in the Russian government continued to be occupied by essentially the same people as in the USSR — either in their previous capacity, by simply changing the flag, or as representatives of the same clans and the same social strata [as before]. Ministers, governors, mayors remained in the same or similar jobs as they had done in the USSR. Rare inclusions of limited numbers of new people into this old elite did not change the situation. And this did not happen because during their six months in 1992, the stupid democrats had failed to ban the Communist Party or to carry out lustration. It happened because the existing elites really do not like to give up being elites; and since by definition, they have a lot of influence and resources, they use these resources to stay at the top. And in most cases, they succeed.”
The thugs
Signal, the newsletter published by Meduza.io***, describes a particular, crucial ingredient of Putinist Russia: the силовики, or “strongmen”. The силовики is an umbrella term used to describe the power structures that have the right and ability to use violence on behalf of the state: the Ministry of Defence and the Armed Forces, the police, the Rosgvardiya and the OMON, the FSB, the Prosecutor’s Office, the Investigative Committee, the prison guards, and a dozen or so other organisations. Their number has grown enormously since Putin has come to power — by 2003, they already constituted more than 50% of all the higher officials, in contrast with the mere 4% they had occupied in the USSR.
*** Meduza is one of the last surviving dissident Russian publications, operating from exile since 2014.
Of course, the силовики did not just emerge from the thugs of the 90s. Over the past two decades, the power structures grew as people joined them from many walks of life, all wanting a slice of the pie. But what united them all was their systemic violence — it was both the prerogative for their very existence, and the primary tool to ensure Putin’s State’s survival. The violence came in handy for all sorts of other ‘side functions’, too, including control of people’s daily lives. Under Putin, one no longer needed to become a gangster to satisfy one’s thirst for brute force and money — one could just join the силовики instead.
The Russian-speaking blogger Victor Rain writes about the palace of Zolotov, the current head of the Rosgvardiya, nicknamed ‘generalissimo’ — the man tasked by Putin to protect him in case of a future Prigozhin-style mutiny:
“…marble, gold, vases, chests of drawers, five-metre high Roman and Greek statues in an assortment with 14-metre ceilings. It’s a requirement to have a “modest” church/chapel with a golden dome in the courtyard, while the altar is also made of gold, decorated with rhinestones; above the altar, there are icons of saints. The church shares a courtyard with a collection of Maybachs, Geländewagens and Bentleys. Near the palace, there is a guest house and barracks for servants, and a helipad. A fence, cameras, scary guards and hungry dogs.”
Rain goes on to link this to the case of the golden toilet discovered in the mansion of the head of the Stavropol traffic police, charged with organised crime, bribery and abuse of power.
“The conclusion is obvious: there are no mental and cognitive differences between the Stavropol traffic cop and the generalissimo: one has a golden toilet and a bidet, the other has a golden toilet, a bidet and the surname Zolotov [My note: ‘Zolotov’ in Russian literally means ‘Golden One’]. Naturally, there is no difference between the generalissimo and the President.”
“…The godfathers of the Italian mafia in the US lived in ordinary inexpensive houses and worked as accountants and plumbing salesmen, laundering billions of dollars offshore. The gangsters were afraid and were hiding from law enforcement officers. Russian gangsters live in palaces, keep hundreds of billions of dollars offshore and spend them openly, without fear or hiding from law enforcement officers, because the Russian gangsters are the law enforcement officers.” [note: emphasis is mine]
The people
In the chaos of the 90s, to some, like Prigozhin, everything seemed possible, whereas to others, life ceased making sense. Fear, denial and rejection were the most common reactions. The father of my school friend was fired from his cushy Soviet ‘job-for-life’ and spent the remainder of the decade on the sofa, staring at the TV. Other adults I knew fell victim to pyramid scams, losing their scant remaining money. People threw themselves at the mercy of psychics, such as the famous Kashpirovsky whose ‘seances’ became a regular staple on national television. They were lost; they craved the return of Soviet-era stability.
No surprise, then, that when the new-cum-old, elite-cum-thug government offered the Russian people a ‘strong hand’, they bit it at the elbow — voluntarily, to start with.
Over time, the Putinist State matured as capitalism continued spreading across the post-soviet space. The government structures formed what became known as Putin’s ‘crony capitalism’, injecting the market with government-backed loans and drawing poorer citizens further and further into dependence — while on the surface, appearing to offer them better standards of living. Those who wanted to rise higher, could do so, as long as they did so within the system. The gradual erasure of civil liberties, of free speech, of the rights of minorities, and the ‘bolt tightening’ of propaganda, were par for the course.
When describing this process that took place over two decades — and is still ongoing, picking up pace since the invasion of Ukraine — my dissident Russian friends often use the term “boiling the frog” (варить лягушку).
Today, it no longer matters whether the people voluntarily accept the system or not — the frog, by now, has been thoroughly boiled, and the system can do anything with it that it wishes.
These are the people…
But it is people, not frogs, who enact the rules of this system.
This is the judge who sent Sasha Skochilenko back into detention, despite solid evidence presented in court of her multiple, deteriorating medical conditions.
This is another judge who rejected the plea of Zhenya Berkovich to be transferred from prison to house arrest, making it impossible for her to ensure the welfare of her two adopted daughters.
These are the members of the State Duma — 1 in 5 of whom are lobbyists of the FSB or the Ministry of Defence — who unanimously (always unanimously) passed the mobilisation laws, the “discrediting the army” and “distributing fake information” laws in 2022, the inhumane anti-trans laws in 2023.
They were “just doing their job,” they said.
This is the OMON that broke the back of the young Russian activist whom I met at the start of the war.
This is the police that beat up a gay man, friend of friend, in the St Petersburg metro, causing him to die of his injuries a year later, while the perpetrators walked free.
These are the policemen who tortured and killed the activist Anatoly Berezikov with electro-shockers while in their custody.
To be attractive to these people, the system doesn’t even have to be especially efficient — unlike, say, Germany during the Third Reich, today’s Russian power structures can be chaotic and disorganised — but it simply needs to offer them an attractive enough place within it. A place where they could “just do their job” while committing atrocities large or small, all in the name of the State. These people are the system that has unleashed and sustained the full-scale invasion of Ukraine since February 2022.
Gilded icons and severed heads
Like Zolotov, Prigozhin and his Wagnerists were a part of Putin’s system, too, in their own way. But one would never expect to hear about Zolotov sending Rosgvardiya soldiers to mutiny against Moscow. Prigozhin took more risks, experimented more with the system’s limits, and allowed his impulsivity and recklessness to take him to places where established putinists like Zolotov dared not go; adding, as it were, portraits of severed heads to the expected collection of gilded saints. But sticking his own head out so far above the party line has ended with it being severed, too.
Prigozhin as a credible force for change, as an anti-hero who “had Putin by the balls”, was a seductive myth that even some of the prominent Russian dissidents like Hodorkovsky appeared to believe in for a short while. But it was merely a myth. Whether or not he rebelled, whether or not he and his Wagnerists marched all the way to Moscow, whether or not the Rostov-on-Don residents cheered him on, it mattered little. The beastly system, temporarily shaken, righted itself, even as it had been hit by his mutiny, by the sanctions, by the mobilisation, by the sheer percentage of GDP being thrown into this war, by the meat grinder that had already consumed hundreds of thousands of people.
Maxim Katz predicts that even Putin’s death may not destabilise the beast:
“The day after Putin’s death or resignation, everyone will go to work exactly as they did before, food will not disappear from the stores, petrol stations will not run out of petrol. Ordinary life will continue; only instead of Putin, Mishustin or another person who is prime minister at that moment, will become president.”
Then, what will do the trick? There are many theories out there. Katz believes that the most realistic, sustainable change must be gradual; that upon Putin’s death, his successor will soften up, the government will see some of the elites remain and others be replaced, and that the war with Ukraine will be halted. He surmises that this is when the Russian opposition should aim to get a seat at table and finally get further than they ever did in the 90s.
Others predict a fiery death to the empire, willing for it to be dismantled in the way that Germany was post-WWII, willing for the justice and the reparations to be severe and absolute.
Fantasising about Russia’s fiery end is seductive, for sure. I, too, dream of Russia falling apart, of the culprits responsible for this war burning in hell, of Ukraine getting reparation money from every Russian citizen. Sometimes, I even dream of my beloved homeland, Siberia, breaking free and taking its immense wealth of natural resources with it, so that it can build its own tomorrow without Russia’s rule. But nothing short of a civil war could bring this to fruition. And, given the apparent self righting ability of the beast, I am doubtful that this is possible.
The gilded icon, Prigozhin
In the aftermath of Prigozhin’s death, many of his Wagnerists, including the 50,000 convicted criminals that he had famously recruited directly from prisons, have now been released back into the wild. Leaderless and aimless, hitherto above the law with a licence to kill, it is no wonder that they have brought home violence and death. My friend’s art gallery incident was quite minor compared to the many stories I see of Wagnerists raping teenage girls at gunpoint, murdering their own relatives, pillaging and terrorising their old neighbourhoods.
In 1989, the wave of violence brought home by the veterans of the Soviet-Afghan War, hit the USSR. There is evidence, even, that there is a direct link between that and the formation of the modern-day Z movement in Russia. The Soviet-Afghan war went on for ten years; and yet, just nineteen months into the Russia-Ukraine war, Russian losses on the frontline are already eight times greater (an estimated 120,000 to the 15,000 claimed in the Soviet-Afghan war), while the social impact of this war on the native Russian soil is hard to estimate. With the Wagnerists now an extra ingredient in this mix, it is terrifying to think what the future could hold.
A social order laced with thuggery begets more thuggery, it pushes thuggery into the world around it. When its own symptom comes home to infect it, what can one say!
You reap just what you sow. Что посеешь, то и пожнешь.
Against this landscape, perhaps Prigozhin — with his ultraviolence, his severed heads, his fields of corpses, and his failed march on Moscow — is the gilded icon, the pseudo-saint that Putin’s Russia truly deserves.
***
What of my friend’s art gallery, then? After cleaning up the blood and the broken glass, changing the locks, and evicting the guilty artist who has, thankfully, survived the ordeal, my friend is having to shut it down. The landlord, outraged by the incident, is forcing the gallery to vacate the premises. The Wagner soldier who has caused the damage, is nowhere to be found.
