When we were kids, we used to play “king of the mountain”. In the winter, we would do a snow slide in the backyard, and the goal was to get to the top pushing everyone else down. All means were permitted. The history of Russia has been marked by this sport for ten centuries. The difference is that it is not a game, the blood actually flows and floods the whole country from time to time.
The mountain makes the tsar. You can declare yourself president of Russia in exile, you will be laughed at. You can seize Rostov and proclaim a People’s Republic of Rostov – the rest of the country will remain loyal to Moscow. But if you declare yourself the new Tsar/President in the Kremlin, all of Russia will recognize you. Because reaching the Kremlin is already winning, becoming the “tsar of the mountain”.
I remember a video recording: after a campaign speech by Alexei Navalny (he was a presidential candidate – not so long ago!), a not so young voter approached him and said: “Alexei, I like what you say and the way you criticize the corrupt. But first become president, and then I will vote for you”. This is all there is to know about the relationship between the government and the people in Russia.
The whole country eagerly watched the advance of Prigozhin’s columns towards Moscow. The world literally changed before our eyes, history was written live. There were still 400 kilometers to go to the Kremlin. 300… 200… Nobody stopped their tanks. The country, sensing the strength and determination of the challenger, was preparing for the “rebel” to take the Kremlin and declare the usurpation of the previous ruler. The change was long overdue. The fact that the incumbent tsar is not a real tsar has been clear since the failure of the “special military operation”, when the authorities promised the population to seize Kiev in three days. A true tsar is always a conquering tsar.
Repeated wars
The main Russian questions – “Who is to blame?” and “What should be done?” (titles of famous Russian novels of the 19th century) – were questions only for a reading public. For millions and millions of illiterate Russian peasants, the main question has always been (and remains to this day for the population of this vast country): is the Tsar real or fake? If the tsar is real, the country will be in order. If he is not a real tsar, then we must expect unrest, chaos and anarchy. Elections confer no legitimacy. The only legitimacy of a Russian tsar comes from strength and victory.
Joseph Stalin could kill his fellow citizens by the millions, winning the war against Nazi Germany made him a true tsar in the eyes of the people – beloved to this day. Adored by everyone except Russia, Mikhail Gorbachev lost the war in Afghanistan, lost the Cold War against the West. He therefore has nothing of a real tsar in the eyes of most of his compatriots, and is still despised. This was understood by Boris Yeltsin, who promised the people democracy and prosperity, but only managed to give them poverty and total corruption. Yeltsin wanted a victorious little war. His generals promised him to take Grozny in three hours. But the first war in Chechnya ended in a humiliating defeat. The next tsar thus had to prove his legitimacy by victory. Putin began his rule by killing his own citizens – the FSB blew up buildings in Moscow in order to obtain a pretext for a new war in Chechnya. This second Chechen war – a genocide – ended in victory. Russia finally had a real tsar.
But such legitimacy requires constant confirmation. It requires repeated wars and new victories. This is what the annexation of Crimea was for. “Crimea is ours!” jubilant the Russian populations, who put themselves in tune with the macho on the throne. But the euphoria fades. We still need victories. The generals then promised Putin: we will take kyiv in three days.
Putin’s indecision
Every dictator loses touch with reality. The first victim of any dictatorship is information. Putin only received the information he wanted to receive, and the result was a military setback in Ukraine. But the absence of victory for a tsar is already a defeat.
Opposition “patriotic” television channels shouted loudly that the Tsar was not real. The casting for the role of the real tsar began a long time ago, and Prigozhin was one of the main candidates. This owner of a private army knew the rules of the game of the “king of the mountain” perfectly well: he needed a victory, no matter how small. Amid general military failure and the defeat of the Russian army, the “capture of Bakhmout” made him the sole victorious military leader of that war. The fact that a small, strategically insignificant town, razed by months of fighting, was taken with enormous casualties, literally covered in blood, played no part in Wagner’s colossal public relations campaign. The focus was purely on winning. Of all the players in current Russian domestic politics, Prigozhin, the winner of Bakhmout, turned out to be the main contender for the role of the new Russian tsar.
In the eyes of the population, he had many qualities that could not but please him. First of all, he was “of the people” – he had been through a Russian prison, had learned the experience of “real” Russian life and spoke the language of the street, which has more uncensored words than words censored. Having himself benefited from Putin’s corrupt regime, he began to openly criticize the Putin elite who had enriched themselves by robbing the common people. He started saying loud and clear what people were feeling and whispering among themselves: the war had gone wrong because the Ministry of Defense had hijacked everything the army needed. He accused Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of General Staff Valeri Guerasimov of being traitors.
The fact that he was allowed to criticize his superiors in this way for months, and even in the middle of the war, is disconcerting, and means only one thing: the weakness of the tsar. If the Tsar tolerates such impudence, it’s because he’s not real. Conversely, if Prigozhin rises up against the country’s leaders in this way, he embodies real strength.
Prigozhin himself seems to have believed in it for some time. When Putin, hated by those around him for his indecisiveness, finally gave the go-ahead for the destruction of Prigozhin and his private military company, it was time to act. Wagner’s columns moved towards Moscow to take control of it.
What prompted Prigozhin, in the last hours before the capture of Moscow, to stop, turn his tanks and surrender? Historians will write detailed studies about it.
For now, one thing is important for the history of Russia: here is another pretender to the throne who turned out to be a false tsar. Who will be the next “king of the mountain”? We don’t know his name, but we know what he will be: the new tsar will need victory at all costs to be legitimized.
*Mikhail Shishkin is a Russian novelist who has won the most prestigious literary prizes in his country (Russian Booker Prize, Bolchaïa Kniga Prize). He just published peace or war (Black on white editions).