How Russian history and the concept of 'smuta' (turmoil) sheds light on Putin and Prigozhin – and the dangers of dissent

• 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.
• Whether or not Prigozhin may have exposed Putin’s vulnerabilities, history suggests that what is to come could well be worse.
• By referencing the smuta Putin was reminding Russians of the profound dangers of dissent – and of his mandate to suppress it.

The gathering of the lands

• The campaign, begun under his predecessor Ivan III (“Ivan the Great”), is known as the “Gathering of the Lands”.
• Ever since, Russian leaders have perpetuated the idea that Russia must dominate its peripheral lands as a defensive act of national survival.
• The terror he wrought on his people, economy and lands through years of war and repression sowed the seeds for the smuta to come.

Boris Godunov

• Boris Godunov was inspired by a period of crisis that forms the bedrock of Russia’s national mythology.
• 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.
• When Fyodor died childless with no appointed heir, his brother-in-law Boris seized the throne, becoming Russia’s first non-Rurikid Tsar.
• Pushkin’s play ends as Boris, haggard in the face of increasing dissent, dies as a result of foul play.

Smuta

• Otrepyev was crowned Tsar Dmitry I, but his reign lasted less than a year.
• Over the following eight years a brutal struggle for sovereignty took hold.
• The smuta thus ended with the founding of a new autocratic bloodline that would rule and expand the Russian Empire for the next 300 years.
• It has been used to justify the absolutism and revanchism of Russian leaders from Tsars through to Soviet Commissars and modern-day politicians.

Divine right

• Russian Tsars were legitimised by the myth of divine right, meaning their power and authority as “Guardian of Holy Russia” was derived from God, rather than the Russian people.
• 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.
• Putin has made it his spiritual mission to shield the Russia from the chaos of democratic and liberal freedoms.
• Read more:
  'Today is not my day': how Russia's journalists, writers and artists are turning silence into speech

The roots of Russian silence

• All he asked for in return was “unity”, which in Russian is a byword for passivity and acquiescence.
• The passivity of the Russian people often baffles the Western world, particularly in response to the war in Ukraine, which is being waged in their name.
• 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”.
• The truth is that the Russian ruler’s prerogative as tsar-batiushka or “Father Tsar” can only hold sway over an acquiescent, even infantilised realm.
• An old question arises: will the Russian people remain silent?