The Greying Dividing Line, The Dangerous Red Line

One of West's fears is the disappearance of Russia once again to make room for another Soviet Union-type of government. For the sake of simplicity, I will refer to it as a Reemerged Soviet Union or RSU.

From An Old Western Nightmare

This fear is not principally founded in the economic or even the military power that this RSU might assert globally. The fear is founded in another important but more subtle lessons from the Cold War: Namely, RSU might once again become an ideological competitor and attempt to thwart Western values of democracy and capitalism.

Modern Russia is a good place. Russians today enjoy the highest standards of living that they have ever experienced. Consumer goods and food are plentiful; barring the strain that rampant corruption puts on the system, the current economic system is capitalistic. There is also more political freedom and civic society empowerment than ever before.

However true these observations may be, they are statements about "averages." For example, imagine three people who on average earn $100,000 per year. We can imagine this to be a happy group based on averages, but we can easily imagine one of those three earning $300,000 per year while the other two are abjectly poor and earn nothing. The point is that averages sometimes yield useful information but often deceive.

So, while - on average - Russians have better lives than ever before, the situation is not universally true for every Russian. Clearly, there are those who long for the days in Soviet Union where there was significantly more law and order, a clearer social hierarchy, more security, and a sense of being a global power. Not surprisingly, those with this longing happened to live in the Soviet Union and had their formative years there. The youngest of them is now in his middle age; his hairline is receding and his hair his graying. He was born in 1970. RSU is his secret wish, if not an openly declared desire.

Old Soldiers Never Die; They Just Fade Away

Younger Russians either do not know the Soviet Union or spent so little time there that its existence does not registry with them meaningfully. They are used to having open access to good, seeing Bentleys and BMWs cruise the streets, and their peers become wealthy international tennis stars by virtue of their talent and work. They are also used to a more chaotic society with less hierarchical order. They travel abroad and have a sense of Europe and the West. And although Moscow's streets in 2010 are not as safe for them as it was for their parents in 1980, they see much safer streets today than they did in 1995. For them, life is improving and there is no going to RSU.

I Can Make Even Paris Hilton Blush

Time and therefore demographics are on the side preserving the modern Russian state. As the 1970 babies (and older ones) age, the probability of RSU becomes less. However, there is another sinister threat to Russia’s existence – one that will undermine the state and give rise to another backward-looking and repressive regime. That sinister threat comes not from outside; rather it is an internal cancer. It is corruption. Corruption may push Russia over the dangerous red line.

As long as corruption exists on the scale that it does in Russia today, there is the real and present danger of weakening the Russian state with many dangerous potential outcomes. Those outcomes range losing control of Russia’s resource rich eastern region to having Russia’s nuclear arsenal fall in the hands of unsavory, rogue regimes. In other words, while the threat of reverting to Soviet Union is diminishing with the greying dividing line, there is a real possibility of losing Russia to something far more pernicious because of internal Russian weakness. This is crossing the dangerous red line.

I hope that that day, the day that Russia crosses the dangerous red line, will never come. It is to the developed world’s interest to see a strong Russian state – and a strong Russian state has a chance of coming onto the world stage if the right internal reforms, namely those to eradicate corruption while increasing transparency, take place.