How strong is Russia?
When considering how strong modern Russia is, the first thing to remember that it is Russia, not the Soviet Union, and not even the Tsarist Empire.
The resources available to Moscow today are far less than those that the Soviet Union commanded, and it controls much less territory than the Tsarist Empire. However President Vladimir Putin’s regime has stabilised the country politically and economically.
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Viewed against the backdrop of Russian history over the past 700-odd years, during which the government of Russia has taken the form of autocracy interrupted by periods of chaotic anarchy (1), Putin has provided the average Russian with a significant degree of personal freedom within a framework of a significant degree of stability.
Putin’s Russia does not meet Western democratic standards, but it remains, for the average Russian, an improvement over the disorganisation of the immediate post-Soviet years and a great improvement over the Soviet period.
This has been a source of strength for Putin that seems rarely to get the attention it deserves in Western analyses. (This is not to deny increasing dissatisfaction with his regime, which is not surprising given that he has ruled Russia for some 22 years now, as Prime Minister or President, but it is not clear if this dissatisfaction is strong enough yet to force him out of office.)
In purchasing power parity terms, Russia has the world’s sixth largest economy, with a value of $4.016-trillion. However, its exports are dominated by petroleum, petroleum products and natural gas. Any falls in world oil and gas prices severely affect the country’s economy (2). Russia is also suffering from demographic decline. Its population is expected to fall by 5.4% between 2018 and 2040, from the current 142-million to 134-million. But this would still make it by far the most populous country in Europe (with Turkey in second place, with a population of just over 89-million forecast for 2040) (3).
Putin has clearly restored the effectiveness of Russia’s conventional armed forces (or of most of them), maintained and is modernising the only nuclear arsenal in the world that is on a par with that of the US, and has reasserted Russia’s status as a major power, through carefully chosen military interventions and actions.
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