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I often hear a popular opinion that “Russians will never rebel”, regardless of how miserable living conditions or repressions become as result of the war. This is justified by the past passivity of the #Russia society, which is a fact.

But there’s one catch - Russians never experienced such a combination of factors before. The potential for social revolt in Russia is growing all the time - because of the deteriorating economic situation, because of the huge losses on the front, because of the ethnic conflicts, because of the increasing violence and corruption by the power structures.

Russia has had technocratic mechanisms developed over the years to manage this potential…. but they have always been based on a combination of carrot and stick. Putin has repeatedly backtracked on unpopular reforms in the past if polls showed that they could lead to revolts. Now the ‘carrots’ have run out, hence Putin’s recent words that ‘the next 20-30 years will be difficult’.

But the dysfunction of the Russian system of power also lies in its blindness to social phenomena that do not fit Putin’s vision, as demonstrated by 24 February 2022 and the growing public discontent over the war since then. This means that Putin is very likely to disregard warning signals, believing himself in a myth that “Russians will tolerate anything”.

And what is the aforementioned ‘stick’? The stick is the immensely proliferated power structures that make up 10-15% of the workforce in some republics and are accustomed to living a life of serfdom. But what added value do all these FSB, ‘Rosgvardia’, FSIN, FSOs, etc. produce? They live mainly on budget funds (fed by gas exports), a kind of ‘taxation’ of the grey economy (bribes) and what they steal in the occupied territories.

Russian society, including the power structures, is a collectivist society, i.e. one in which the opinion of the whole is central to the choices made by individuals. The consequence of this is that the potential for rebellion in general is low, because everyone looks to others and decides to keep a low profile themselves.

But the other side of the coin is that if the threshold of social discontent exceeds a certain limit then it will not be some isolated, easily suppressed outbreak but a violent wave of protest and violence that will spread across the country.