The Russian leadership is sincerely convinced that it «does not create problems, but merely reacts to the hostile steps of others.» However, the outside world, viewing reality through a different civilizational lens, sees the exact opposite: it is precisely the Kremlin’s isolationism and its inability to negotiate on equal terms that create these historical deadlocks.
This explains why Putin’s «soft» rhetoric toward a Westward-leaning Armenia (just like his approach to Ukraine decades earlier) inevitably leads to a harsh conclusion, and why historical blindness prevents the Kremlin from building a viable macro-region.
Neither Bogdanov’s Theory nor Lenin’s Practice
The central tragedy of the modern Russian elite is its ignorance and misunderstanding of the true history of Russia and the communist movement, which has been distorted for decades to serve fleeting political interests. The Russian Federation’s political Olympus still operates on the myths of 1937.
In the early 20th century, a monumental intellectual duel unfolded within the Bolshevik movement. Georgi Plekhanov, the leader of Russian social democracy at the time, gave a precise assessment of the two Bolshevik leaders: «Bogdanov in theory is Lenin in practice.»
Aleksandr Bogdanov was a profound scientist. While Lenin—who occupied only the third position in the Bolshevik party hierarchy in the early 1900s—managed the operational running of the Foreign Bureau, Bogdanov directed the actual work of the party organizations inside Russia. It was Bogdanov who developed Marxism, integrating it with the latest discoveries in the natural sciences and medicine. His ideas later laid the groundwork for the sciences of the future that define our present: cybernetics, genetics, systems analysis, and computer science.
The second man in this hierarchy was Leonid Krasin—a brilliant organizer who built the Bolsheviks’ financial and logistical empire, coordinating militant groups, manufacturing, and weapon supplies.
When Lenin effectively carried out a coup within the leadership during the fierce internal party struggles at the Prague Conference and squeezed Bogdanov out, Krasin left with him. Krasin went on to head the Russian representative office of the German giant Siemens, becoming a world-class top manager. Before World War I, he even participated in backchannel, separate negotiations with Berlin on behalf of Nicholas II, once the Tsar realized that dragging Russia into a war against its main economic and trading partner—Germany—was a fatal mistake (a mistake for which the Romanovs paid with their lives).
But what was Lenin’s primary strength when he was left alone at the pinnacle of practical power? He was not a great academic philosopher (this myth was first voiced by Bukharin at Bogdanov’s funeral in 1928). Lenin was an absolute pragmatist. His genius lay in his phenomenal ability to yield to reality and instantly pivot whenever an old policy led to a dead end. For example:
- The evolution of his stance on the Soviets: Initially, Lenin fiercely criticized Bogdanov’s idea of relying on the Soviets (Councils) to build a parallel governance system and a second center of political power. Instead, Lenin demanded participation in the Tsarist State Duma. However, when the grassroots population in 1905–1906—through local worker and peasant communities, as well as Old Believer communities—spontaneously created and developed the Soviet system, and Bogdanov, Krasin, and Gorky (who ran the Bolshevik party school on Capri and secured the party’s main funding channel) spearheaded this process, Lenin adjusted his position in time and backed the Soviet system. In 1917, he proclaimed: «All power to the Soviets!» and led the October Coup (he initially referred to it precisely as a coup, understanding that a socialist revolution is a prolonged process of socializing the state and building a new social system and economy).
- The rejection of dogma: When the policy of War Communism (which Krasin ironically labelled «permanent economic constipation») ran its course and the world revolution in Europe failed to materialize, Lenin did not burn Russia in the furnace of dogmatism and the myth of European revolution, as Trotsky demanded. He called on Krasin to rescue the economy and organize supplies for the Soviet Red Army. After winning the Civil War, Lenin announced the New Economic Policy (NEP), restored private property, fostered cooperatives, and sent Krasin to rebuild economic ties with the West (Krasin died in London in 1928 while serving as an ambassador to Europe).
In 1922, near the end of his life, Lenin signed the executive decision to establish the world’s first Institute of Blood Transfusion for Bogdanov (which Bogdanov headed until his tragic death in 1928 during a blood-exchange experiment to save a young student). Lenin knew how to adapt to life rather than bend it over his knee.
The Stalin Syndrome and the Trap of Blocked Information
Today, Vladimir Putin operates within a Kremlin information vacuum and an illusion of control, repeating the mistakes of Soviet leaders but lacking Lenin’s agility.
In 2005, while managing a large-scale reconstruction of the Special Zone of the President of the Russian Federation inside the Moscow Kremlin, I exposed massive corruption schemes. I submitted formal complaints to the prosecutor’s office and handed the files over to the Commandant of the Special Zone and Presidential Residence (a colonel within the FSO). He reported it to the leadership of the Federal Protective Service, only to receive a blunt response: «Shut up and stay out of things that don’t concern you.» Information meant for Putin was blocked by members of his «St. Petersburg» clan.
Five years later, while working on Olympic infrastructure in Sochi, the pattern repeated itself: the Presidential Property Management Department system was stealing billions, presenting Putin with mere window-dressing under the guise of innovations. I managed to get criminal cases initiated only because I bypassed the blockade and reached Dmitry Medvedev directly during his presidency. Getting information through to Putin, who was Prime Minister at the time—despite his own personal request for a briefing—proved impossible. This system of «reality filtering» rules the Kremlin to this day.
This vacuum births false historical analogies. A myth persists that prior to the war, Stalin exhibited unforgivable gullibility toward Hitler, and that he should have focused entirely on military preparation and launched a pre-emptive strike.
This is a lie. Stalin possessed comprehensive intelligence data, including reports directly from the military attaché in Berlin, Admiral Vorontsov (whose son, Yuli Vorontsov, later became a prominent Soviet diplomat and ambassador to India and the US). Vorontsov officially evacuated his family from Berlin a month before the war and left himself just two days before the invasion, knowing Hitler’s plans entirely.
Yet, Stalin deliberately refrained from placing the troops on full combat readiness until the very last moment. Why? He was aware of a strict decision made by Great Britain and the United States: they had resolved to support whichever side was attacked and oppose the side that launched a pre-emptive strike. It was critically important for Stalin to avoid provocations and secure the position of the victim to obtain Western resources. He did everything to ensure there was no doubt whatsoever that Hitler was the unprovoked aggressor and the perpetrator of the world war.
In 2022, facing the situation in Ukraine, Putin attempted to play the «pre-empted strike» card in reverse—convinced by fraudulent reports from Medvedchuk and the intelligence services that his troops would be greeted with flowers. As a result, he walked into a geopolitical trap from which the Kremlin has no strategic exit strategy.
The Collapse of the «Beads and Baubles» Economic Model
Following the collapse of the USSR, the criminal-bureaucratic clans that seized power in Russia under Boris Yeltsin established a system of criminal-bureaucratic governance, a vital component of which was a system of preferential pricing.
Since then, this approach was applied not just to Ukraine, but to all former Soviet republics, and was extended to Russia’s other foreign partners. Today, this exact same approach is maintained toward Armenia, Georgia, Central Asia, and the Baltics.
When Putin spoke in Kazakhstan, he softly chided Pashinyan, hinting that exiting Russia’s orbit would cost Yerevan too dearly: «We will take away your gas and oil discounts, close our markets, and cut off subsidies.»
This reflects the mindset and psychology of the Yeltsin-era criminal bureaucracy: «We give you cheap resources that your elites and ours can steal, and in return, you stand at attention before us.»
But this model no longer works. The world transitioned to global pricing long ago. Furthermore, the world is currently seeing the formation of civilizational macro-regions, where integration is built not on bribes and discounts, but on a new technological paradigm, transparency, and global efficiency.
Look at how the global energy market is structured. Prices in the UK, France, or Germany may fluctuate slightly, but they all purchase energy resources at global market rates. The efficiency of a state is determined by how its internal systems function (such as the housing and utilities sector), not by whether you successfully extorted a discount from a neighbour or a subsidy from a bureaucrat.
Oil and gas-producing nations sell resources to their domestic companies at market value. They do not hand over the resulting surplus profits to oligarchs to buy football clubs and build private skyscrapers—they return these revenues to the population through social wealth funds, direct payouts, and targeted subsidies.
In an efficient economy, the end consumer decides which system to choose. For example, in the utilities sector, a consumer chooses between a classic boiler and an ultra-efficient tankless heat exchanger—a technology originally designed by American corporations for military needs to instantly heat water in field conditions without bulky boilers. Massive centralized boiler plants and millions of kilometers of pipelines have long become a thing of the past. Market competition and technology drive down net costs; they do not extract state subsidies and live off them through theft.
Instead of Subsidies—Terms of Cooperation
The Kremlin still fails to understand that the strength of a macro-region lies not in raw resources, but in its civilizational foundation, intellectual weight, and social capital.
Forget the word «subsidies» or «concessions.» These are merely tools used to sustain corruption in the former Soviet republics.
If Armenia or Ukraine wish to develop relations with Europe, that is their prerogative. In any case, Moscow must say: «Go ahead. It is your sovereign right. If you are not part of a unified state with Russia, then our relations become strictly market-based. You used to pay a third of the European price for gas, but from now on, the price will be the market rate. Let us sit down, restructure our agreements so they do not harm our economy, and discuss joint investment projects.»
There is no tragedy in this—it is a standard technical process of interaction between two large systems. Instead, the Kremlin activates the outdated psychology of a criminal bureaucracy. Consequently, instead of a voluntary alliance of civilizations, a cordon sanitaire of frightened and aggressively hostile neighbours is being erected around the Russian macro-region. The exact same contradiction is brewing from Finland to Central Asia.
If Russian civilization wants to become a centre of gravity, it must offer the world advanced institutions, technologies, and respect for the sovereignty of others—rather than «beads and baubles» to bribe local rulers and allow domestic and foreign elites to steal at the expense of the Russian people and Russia’s resources. One cannot block the natural evolution of life with old criminal complexes. It is vital to adapt to a changing world, to innovate from the ground up as Bogdanov and Krasin taught and as Lenin practiced—otherwise, Russia is doomed to be left in absolute isolation amid the debris of its own collapsing Tower of Babel.
