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Every awful regime needs a Nelson Mandela—a dissident who speaks with moral clarity and can lead a peaceful political transformation. Back in the days when The Economist was allowed into Russia, I sat in
Alexei Navalny’s
office in Moscow listening to the late, brave dissident explain, with great moral clarity, how Vladimir Putin manipulated and corrupted public life. Maybe, I thought, Navalny could be Russia’s Mandela? Alas, things did not work out that way. Mandela had the advantage that, during the 27 years that he was a political prisoner, South Africa’s apartheid regime did not kill him. Navalny died after only three years in Mr Putin’s gulag. Of natural causes, the authorities said. Of a toxin found in South American poison-dart frogs, Western governments discovered.
So Russia will not have a Mandela, I fear. The alternative, perhaps, will be change driven by realignments within the Russian elite. This week our cover story offers
clues as to how that might happen.
Astonishingly, Russia’s biggest industrialist, Andrey Melnichenko, has opened up to The Economist about how grim things are looking for his country. In an essay and
60 hours of interviews,
he lays out a series of long-term scenarios, all of which would be dangerous for Russia and the world.
He is no dissident; on the contrary, his factories have supported Mr Putin’s war economy. Nor is he, like Navalny or Mandela, a high-minded speaker of plain truth to power. What he says is often obscure or wrapped up in parables, no doubt because plain speaking in Russia is so dangerous. He espouses a fist-thumping view of Russian “sovereignty” that would dismay its neighbours, were they not already dismayed. But the fact that he is talking at all—and hinting that his country needs a more inclusive political system—is stunning.
As we also report this week, the public mood in Russia is of anxiety and
“seething hatred of authorities”
as petrol pumps run dry due to Ukrainian drone strikes, and Mr Putin’s vanity war goes nowhere. On The Insider, Zanny Minton Beddoes, our editor-in-chief, joins expert colleagues to discuss what to make of all this. Don’t hold your breath for a rainbow revolution in Moscow. But don’t discount the possibility of change.
Watch the episode now.
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