One of the questions I hear most often from my Western viewers is: “How do you turn Russia into a normal country?” By normal, they mean a country that does not attack anyone, lives in peace, and builds its own prosperity instead of building an empire.

The solutions most often suggested online usually sound like this: “Putin must be replaced,” or “Russia must fall apart into several pieces and forget the idea of imperialism.”

Neither of these will work — and here is why.

If we replace Putin with anyone else, we still get the same system: a country of many millions whose fate depends on the whims of a tsar, while the level of repression at home and aggression abroad is determined by his personal tastes, fears, and fantasies. In that situation, all you can do is pray that the next tsar will be kinder than the previous one. But after a kind tsar, another psychopath can easily arrive — and everything begins again.

The collapse of Russia would not solve the problem either, because it would be temporary. Russia is not so large because every little Siberian town has a military garrison standing over it. They do not. The reason is that it is extremely difficult for these regions to survive on their own, because they lack infrastructure, capital, skilled people, and access to navigable rivers and ice-free ports. In such conditions, you can sit on enormous natural wealth and still be terrifyingly poor — as in Africa. There, too, the ground contains almost the entire periodic table, but that alone means nothing, because the economy depends on geography. And geography is what it is.

Even if Russia suddenly falls apart, its pieces will still tend to drift back together, like drops of mercury. Here, as in China, the reason is simple: surviving separately is harder than surviving within a single economic space. China, too, has broken apart and reunited again and again. So the real question is not the size of the country. The real question is how it is governed.

Today, we’re going to look at what could actually turn Russia into a normal state.

Here’s our roadmap:

• The Logic of Authoritarianism — Why dictators always move toward war
• Castes, Natural Resources, and Monopolies — The three conditions that create authoritarian rule
• Money, Power, Information, and Violence — How redistributing resource flows can change the situation
• Potential Reformers — Who has the power to begin real change

The Logic of Authoritarianism

Authoritarian regimes are always a threat to their neighbors. Just follow the logic of how authoritarianism develops.

A dictator usurps the highest office in the state and begins to control all of its resources.

To secure his power, he appoints people not because they are the most competent, but because they are the most loyal — people who depend on him completely and therefore will defend him to the end. As a result, the quality of governance moves steadily toward zero, while the level of corruption, on the contrary, breaks every record. The country clearly loses the competition with other geopolitical players at its level, and everyone can see it: the elites, the ruler himself, and ordinary people.

So the conclusion almost suggests itself: let us start a war, take from our neighbors what we need, distribute the wealth among the elites, and delight the ordinary people with greatness and new territorial acquisitions.

But that is not all. Dictators are people of a particular type. They believe they are exceptionally intelligent, talented, and perceptive — ask any courtier, and he will confirm it. And they constantly want to measure themselves against other rulers: who is greater, who is stronger, who is more important. They cannot simply sit calmly on the throne. They get bored.

This is not an exaggeration. These people belong to the Hunter personality archetype, and to feel happy, they need victories and trophies. If there is no one left to crush at home, their whole being starts demanding an enemy abroad. Do you want examples? Just look at the endless rivalries of kings in Europe, the many khans of the Golden Horde, or the fights between Chinese princes.

In other words, war becomes desirable not only for political reasons, but also for purely psychological ones. And the country snaps to attention and carries out the order, because authoritarian countries have no emergency brake.

Here, we should note that humanity has lived this way for most of its existence, because for our biological species, authoritarian rule is the norm. It is natural because it is modeled on the ordinary patriarchal family, where the head of the family controls all property and the lives of his relatives. His word is law. Nobody elected him. There is no authority above him. You can run away from him — and not always — or you can kill him and take his place. Those are the options.

Democracy is not the norm. It is an artificially created social construct that helps people live better, richer, and safer lives. Political scientist Ekaterina Shulman has a wonderful metaphor. Tooth decay is normal; brushing your teeth is a human invention created by people who are not satisfied with the natural norm. Tooth decay will develop by itself. But to brush your teeth, and generally to maintain your health, you have to make an effort.

If people do not make an effort to maintain democracy, the result will be authoritarianism. It will assemble itself.

So, we have noted that authoritarian rulers always arrive at the idea that they need to fight a war. What happens next depends on the resources available to them and the stability of their power.

Now, let us look at the mechanisms that make people obey a dictator against their own interests. If our goal is to understand what needs to be fixed in Russia for it to become a normal country, we first need to understand what exactly is wrong with it.

Castes, Natural Resources, and Monopolies

At first glance, it seems strange: how can an autocrat hold on to power? He is literally harming all his subjects, except for a small handful of people close to him. Why do they obey him?

There is an ancient and highly effective mechanism that allows one person to subjugate millions. We need to divide society into castes — a higher caste and a lower caste — and make sure that the higher caste has privileges that are unthinkable for the lower ones. The gap has to be enormous. Then those below will climb upward with all their strength, while those above will fear losing their privileges and will defend the person who guarantees them.

The supreme ruler has to keep rewarding the members of the higher caste so they remain personally invested in him. For that, he needs a steady source of income. The population can serve that purpose, of course, but people are troublesome: they rebel, get sick, and constantly want things. Natural resources are much better. Then everything becomes wonderfully simple: you sell them, collect the money, feed the courtiers, and they secure your power. Meanwhile, the population lives somewhere out there, mostly on its own. You remember it during state holidays, catastrophes — or when you suddenly feel the urge to start a war.

To cement this structure, you need to establish as many monopolies as possible: so that only you are the supreme arbiter, only you can allow or forbid the transfer of major property, and you yourself make the laws, apply them, and control their enforcement. You need monopolies on education, weapons, foreign trade, information, land, religion — the more, the better.

The ideal monopolist state was the USSR. Its citizens owned nothing of their own — not even their homes. The state, headed by the leader, owned the land and mineral resources, the education and healthcare systems, capital, industry, all communications, all information…

The problem is that such systems are not viable. As soon as trouble begins with their source of income, they either lose the wars they themselves started, or simply fall apart.

But there is no reason to celebrate. Authoritarianism will restore itself if nothing is done. As we have already established, for our biological species, it is the natural state of things.

Money, Power, Information, and Violence

To reform Russia, the first thing that needs to be broken is the caste system. The main privileges of Russia’s highest caste are:

A) the right to receive and distribute money from the state budget.

B) the right to appoint and remove top officials.

C) the right to control information — what people should know and what they should believe.

D) the right to use violence.

If the ruling elite is stripped of these privileges, it will no longer support the dictator, because there will be no reason to do so. More than that, it will lose its monopoly over the resources that are redistributed inside the clans. And then the mid-level and lower-level subordinates will also have no reason to obey orders from above.

How can this be done? The place to begin is financial reform, because in authoritarian regimes, money is the most important thing.

Financial Reform

In Russia, almost all taxes and fees flow to the center and are distributed from there. That is why Moscow and the federal government have such enormous power over the regions. That is precisely why Moscow can appoint officials in the provinces without taking the wishes of the population into account at all.

The locals have to obey, because without money, there will be nothing.

Subsidies support not only the budgets of individual regions, but entire industries as well. For example, the military-industrial complex, the auto industry, air travel, and much else.

There are also countless state programs without which whole sectors of the economy would simply collapse. For instance, the construction industry is heavily dependent on subsidized housing loans for the population. The banking sector would not survive without help from the Central Bank.

The state is the employer and source of income for the overwhelming majority of the country’s population — directly or indirectly. Without payments from the budget, people would have nothing to live on.

Naturally, in such a setup, the official who distributes the budget becomes a master of fate, almost a celestial being.

To deprive him of this power, the system of tax collection and the allocation of state contracts and subsidies has to be changed. Taxes should remain in the regions, while small transfers should be sent upward — for foreign policy, defense, and maintaining the central administration. This would immediately take power away from a huge number of Moscow officials and completely reformat the central government, shifting the emphasis toward the regions. Moscow would still remain the center of everything, because it is the largest and richest region, but it would no longer be draining the life out of the other regions.

State contracts would have to be cut, but this must be done very carefully. Under Putin, a large part of Russian business was trained to depend not on the end consumer but on the state. As a result, these businesses become uncompetitive because their money comes not from customers, but from officials. The film industry is a good example: it is almost entirely subsidized from the state budget. So what gets filmed, and how, is decided by officials, not producers. What the audience actually wants barely matters.

The same thing happens in many areas — from road construction to drone assembly. 

If all state contracts and subsidies are abolished at once, the economy will crumble. But if everything is left as it is, this is the road to further degradation and the rebirth of authoritarianism. This is a very delicate subject, and it requires serious thought: how to soften the blow and make sure that businesses begin to orient themselves toward the end consumer, while people do not suffer.

The goal is simple: officials should not run the country’s economic life, and they should not decide who gets to earn money and who does not.

Reform of State Governance

Political reforms are also necessary. At the moment, almost all important officials in the country are appointed from above. Positions are either bought or redistributed as part of internal clan warfare. As a result, people’s lives are controlled not by elected representatives, but by God knows who — and this applies to every branch of government: legislative, executive, and judicial.

At the moment, the parliament in Russia, as well as the legislative bodies of the federal subjects, are purely decorative institutions. They are not independent political players. They pass any laws handed down from above and have no ability to challenge anything. And there is no one there to act as opposition anyway, because dangerous candidates are not even allowed to reach the elections.

For normal laws to be passed in the country, deputies need to report on their work to voters, not to their superiors. State funding of political parties must be abolished. The bans that prevent candidates from running must be removed. Deputies must be given real powers that allow them to solve problems and to control and restrain the executive branch.

Gubernatorial and mayoral elections must be restored. A mass of insane laws adopted since the early 2010s must be repealed, and the Ukrainian territories inserted into the Russian Constitution must be removed from it.

And, most importantly, the president’s power must be significantly limited. Russia must become a parliamentary republic, where all major questions are decided not by the will of one person but through debate, discussion, and the formation of coalitions. Perhaps the office of president should be abolished altogether, so there is no temptation for the next autocrat.

Reform of Media, Education, and Religion

The next essential element is the abolition of censorship and internet restrictions, the privatization of all state media, and a ban on state funding of media outlets, so that the state cannot impose its will on journalists.

The decentralization of education is also essential. Right now, there is a single curriculum and a vertical chain of command that subordinates teachers to the Ministry of Education. Teachers receive orders from above and are forced to follow them under threat of dismissal.

Curricula should be developed and approved at the local level.

Universities will also have to be made independent somehow. Right now, they are funded by the state, and therefore, university leadership is appointed from above, not by boards of trustees.

No religion should count on state support. Right now, the Russian Orthodox Church is practically financed from the state budget, despite the fact that the absolute majority of Russians do not live a church life and do not want to go to church regularly. Those who need the church should contribute to its needs. And religion certainly must not be imposed on society. It must be a free choice.

The goal of all this is to guarantee free access to information and the exchange of opinions.

Reform of the Siloviki

Another crucial reform is the reform of all security agencies. The judiciary must be independent: right now judges are appointed from above, and they are built into the privileged class. Judges should be elected.

The FSB, the Federal Service of Troops, the Rosgvardia, and the Federal Protective Service must be completely disbanded. These state structures bring Russia nothing but systematic harm.

The Federal Penitentiary Service must also be reformed, so that the prison system gets rid of practices that cripple convicts instead of correcting them.

The police should be funded and formed at the local level and subordinate to local authorities. Right now, as everywhere else, there is a vertical power structure, and all top figures are appointed in Moscow.

Military reform is a separate and enormous task. After so many criminals were brought into the army during the war in Ukraine, military culture has effectively fused with prison culture. The war has produced monstrous corruption and extreme cruelty toward Russia’s own soldiers. All of this would have to be rebuilt from scratch.

A New Identity

And most importantly, Russia must build a new self-identity, based on real achievements, creativity, and discoveries, not on the idea of imperial conquest.

There needs to be a mass information campaign about what actually happened in Ukraine. People need to be told exactly how, and by whom, they were deceived, seduced, and coerced; how much it cost; and what results it produced. It is necessary to explain why the deception worked. It is necessary to identify everyone who gave and carried out criminal orders that led to human casualties and destruction.

Many people in Ukraine and in the West want to punish and isolate Russia. As I have said in my previous videos, this will only lead to a surge of nationalism, the emergence of a new Führer, and another war in 20 or 30 years. Humanity has already been through all this: this is exactly how Germany was treated in 1918, after its defeat in the First World War, and the result was a thirst for revenge, nationalism, and nostalgia for a “strong leader.”

We do not need any of that. So the task of the outside world is to support healthy forces inside Russia.

Potential Reformers 

All of this sounds wonderful, but the question is: who can launch these changes if all the resources are concentrated in the hands of the upper caste, the very group that would suffer as a result of reform?

The privileged class will not give up power voluntarily. That much is obvious. So what options do we have?

Let us look at the most realistic ones.

A palace coup. The upper caste realizes that the course chosen by Putin will lead the country not only to military defeat, but also to serious economic problems. The president is removed, but in reality, this will not save the economy.

It is very important to take into account the lessons of the 1980s and 1990s, when the West helped the USSR and then Russia, but ultimately let the situation drift and allowed authoritarianism to reassemble itself.

Sanctions should be lifted, and any financial aid provided, only on the condition that the reforms we discussed earlier actually begin. At the same time, the negotiators on the Russian side will need some kind of incentive. They will lose their status as untouchable gods, so they must receive something in return. Otherwise, they will dig in their heels and bet on a North Korea-style regime — one in which they personally remain comfortable while the rest of the population pays the price.

Military defeat and an army revolt. This situation is much more complicated. Military people usually do not know how to run a state. If they seize power, the current elite will instantly scatter in their business jets, and God knows who will take their place. They will wreck what remains, blame everything on external and internal enemies, redistribute property in their own favor, and trigger mass emigration, which would only make the economy deteriorate even faster.

If events unfold this way, it will be necessary to look for someone in the military with whom constructive negotiations are even possible. If such a person can be found, there is hope for a positive scenario. But it is very possible that there will be no one to choose from. Then authoritarianism will reassemble itself again, but at a much lower level.

A revolution is not really visible at the moment, because everyone who could have carried it out has left the country. In addition, Russia has a very low percentage of young people, so there is no one to wave flags on the barricades.

Unfortunately, at the moment, a democratic transition is the least likely scenario in the coming years. A democratic transition requires more than people protesting. It requires institutions, legal politics, independent media, an elite group ready to negotiate, and a social consensus that the imperial war was a catastrophe. Right now, almost none of this exists.

Even if the regime cracks, the first people likely to step onto the stage will not be liberals, but security officials, governors, military men, “patriotic” populists, and people with access to violence.

So the most likely scenario at the moment is inertia. Russia remains in a state of prolonged war, but without a major political explosion. The government continues to sell society the same idea: “We are suffering because we are fighting the West.” The economy does not collapse, but it gradually becomes poorer and worse: less private initiative, more military spending, more dependence on the state, China, raw materials, and gray schemes.

This will work until it stops working.

What the world needs is a window of opportunity for democracy to take root in Russia. That window will appear. It is impossible to say when or how, but Putin will eventually leave power one way or another. And when that moment comes, it will be crucial to help healthy forces inside Russia turn the wheel in the right direction.

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