Will Russia’s history of violence come home to roost?

Putin and Russia have one thing in common: violence.

Russian history is essentially a history of violent undertakings in the vast region known as Russia. In the same fashion, Putin’s life has been, and continues to be, marred by violence. If there is any truth to the saying that he who lives by the sword will die by the sword, both Russia and Putin are in for some bad news. Putin allegedly wears a bullet-proof vest when appearing in public.

Russian historians like to describe their country, whether in its original form as the Muscovite State or the Russian Empire, as the target of incessant imperialist invasions — by Mongols, Poles, Teutonic knights, Swedes, Tatars, Ottomans, French, Germans and so on. They’re right, but only half so, because the Muscovites and their successors the Russians gave as good, if not better than, they got.

One doesn’t acquire an empire spanning 12 time zones — or more, if one counts East Germany and Alaska — by only losing. One gets it by means of imperial expansion, which always entails massive applications of violence against the indigenes: be they Novgorodians, Belarusians, Ukrainians, Georgians, Central Asians or Siberians.

With some 800 years of violence from inside and from outside, it’s no wonder that violence has become woven into the institutional and cultural fabric of Russia. Unfortunately and tragically, violence has been normalized and routinized. As have most people’s response thereto: ducking, fear, quiescence, conformity, collaboration.

Putin’s life is also marked by incessant violence, from his childhood and adolescence in tough neighborhoods to his fateful decision to join the most bloodthirsty of the Soviet Union’s institutions — the KGB, the secret police — in 1975, at the very height of its crackdown against the dissident movement and just seven years after the Prague Spring, Czechoslovakia’s short-lived attempt to create “socialism with a human face.”

Putin knew exactly what he was doing. Small wonder that his assumption to power in 1998-1999 was accompanied by the terrorist bombings of several apartment buildings. Hundreds of Russians were killed, the Chechens were blamed, and Putin had his pretext for the Second Chechen War.

There followed the war in Georgia in 2008, the occupation of Crimea and the Donbas in 2014, and the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Interspersed throughout were the murders of some 20 oppositionists, the defenestrations of a score of businessmen, the killing of the putschist Valery Prigozhin and a series of attempts to assassinate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Given this record, it’s not unreasonable to ask whether Russia’s oppositionists — and they do exist, and not just in exile — will at some point decide that the only way to fight fire is with fire. According to Ilya Ponomarev, a former Duma deputy now resident in Ukraine who has been actively involved in organizing the armed anti-Putin units that have successfully conducted raids into provinces bordering on northern Ukraine, that point may be now.

Writes Ponomarev: “the scale of political repression in the Russian Federation is greater than it was under the post-Stalin general secretaries.” As a result, “the possibilities of nonviolent resistance in Russia” are “closed.” Apparently, armed resistance is now on the political opposition’s agenda, having been actively discussed at the Forum of the Russian Opposition, which took place in Lviv, Ukraine in late May. The meeting was attended by 40 oppositionists and had the blessing of Ukraine’s military intelligence chief, Kyrylo Budanov. (That said, Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyy said he had no knowledge of the event and wondered whether it was a “joke.” His skepticism is understandable given Ponomarev’s somewhat shadowy reputation.)

Continues Ponomarev: “The Forum’s resolution states that support for Russian volunteers and guerrilla groups fighting against the Kremlin should be the top priority of all — absolutely all! — factions of the Russian opposition, as long as Russia continues its war of conquest against Ukraine.”

This wouldn’t be the first time in Russian history that opponents of the regime felt compelled to resort to violence. Back in the 1870s and 1880s, young Russians disillusioned by their inability to speak to the people turned to bombings and assassinations. The Bolsheviks fought their czarist — as well as socialist and non-Russian — opponents with indiscriminate terror. Ukrainian and Russian peasants opposed collectivization in the late 1920s with violence. Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian and Ukrainian guerrillas resisted the imposition of Soviet rule in the aftermath of World War II. Hungarians, Afghans and Chechens fought Soviet/Russian invasions with arms.

The problems with violence are twofold. It may be of questionable morality and, more important for the oppositionists who turn to it, it only works if the state being resisted has been severely weakened by someone or something else: an invader, a natural catastrophe, etc. Other things being equal, guerrillas are no match for states and their armies, militias, and secret police forces.

Ponomarev appears to understand this: “I can’t help but recall that wars that go badly for Russia … have often resulted in the deepest internal political turmoil. … I am sure that during the current war, there will be a window of opportunity when the Russian resistance will be able to seize the levers of state control, eliminate Putin’s regime and lead Russia through deimperialization and democratization.”

These may be pipe dreams — or, as Vladimir Lenin and the Ayatollah Khomeini could attest, they may be harbingers of Putin Russia’s final confrontation with violence.

Alexander J. Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia and the USSR, and on nationalism, revolutions, empires and theory, he is the author of 10 books of nonfiction, as well as “Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires” and “Why Empires Reemerge: Imperial Collapse and Imperial Revival in Comparative Perspective.”