The Tsar Monk and the Psychedelic GULAG

An exit strategy for Putin

The stalemate

Putin’s been in power for more than 20 years and is approaching his 70s. The longer he stays, the worse he’ll be remembered—slower, more out of touch, having stayed past his time.

But he can’t simply step down. He made himself the central pillar of the regime—and plus, it seems a demotion or retirement won’t work for him psychologically.

People have tried to force it on him. The most successful ones are dead or in jail.

One way out of this stalemate could be a scenario where the country transcends Putin’s rule by allowing him to transcend the role of the President.

Path dependence

A “path-dependence problem” is the economists’ way of describing the tendency of old patterns to persist and re-establish themselves despite our attempts to break away from them.

The most important Russian examples of this are serfdom and autocratic rule.

In 1918, the Bolsheviks murdered the Tsar and his family in an attempt to kill Tsarism itself. Less than 10 years later, the first Red Emperor was…