The Russian state today presenteth a most singular paradox: it becometh ever more centralised in its political dictates, yet findeth itself increasingly incapable of maintaining an administrative presence upon its own soil.

The state retaineth the faculty for drafting federal laws, concocting national projects, launching campaigns, imposing prohibitions, distributing billions, and producing an avalanche of regulatory parchments. Yet, failures emerge with alarming frequency there where the state ought to manifest in its simplest and most ancient form: in the presence of a constable in a district centre, a functioning post office in a hamlet, the execution of a judicial decree, a military commissariat capable of true mobilization accounting, or the mere arrival of water and warmth within the home.

'Tis here, and not in the quantity of decrees, forums, or state programmes, that the true measure of state viability resides.

Therefore, that which we witness today is more accurately termed not a crisis of isolated departments, but a gradual emptying of the very fabric of the state.

The State Was Not Conceived for the Provision of Services

The modern state grew, by historical necessity, primarily as a machine of war.

Even Machiavelli didst vehemently criticise the dependence of the Italian city-states upon mercenaries, seeking to oppose them with an armed populace. For Florence, 'twas primarily a matter of coin and political fidelity: the mercenary demandeth constant payment, whereas a man who perceiveth war as the defence of his own patria is motivated by a far loftier spirit.

Yet, this model only truly flourished much later.

The state of the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries learned the art of forging a 'citizen'. To this end, there were required universal schooling, a unified literary tongue, a national history, a national culture, the mass-circulation of the press, and an army of universal conscription.

Thus emerged the man who was French, Russian, or German not merely by residence, but as a participant in a vast political communion.

And subsequently, the state acquired the power to demand of him the ultimate sacrifice—that he should die for this communion.

The twentieth century marked the culmination of this model.

The Great Wars were simultaneously wars of armies, economies, educational systems, sciences, industries, propaganda, and millions of mobilised citizens. Though the disparities between political regimes were vast, the penetration of the state into society increased almost everywhere.

'Twas then that the state reached the historical zenith of its potency.

The Internet Hath Broken the Machine of National Standardisation

Following the Second World War, a fundamental shift occurred.

Nuclear armaments precipitously raised the cost of direct war between Great Powers. War did not vanish—the Russian-Ukrainian conflict hath shown the return of large-scale terrestrial warfare to Europe—but the former certainty that a Great Power’s normal state is the periodic total mobilisation of all society hath disappeared.

And then came the Internet.

Herein lay a far more fundamental transformation.

The national state of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries existed by virtue of its ability to create a singular informational reality. There was but one history textbook. A handful of central newspapers. A few television channels. The agenda of the day was delivered simultaneously to tens of millions of souls.

Today, this edifice is crumbling.

This doth not imply that the youth have ceased to be patriots. However, a man's self-identification and his readiness to bear material, social, and human costs for the sake of the state are entirely different matters.

The state may retain the flag, the anthem, the school curriculum of history, and the official television channels. Yet it exerteth far less control over the very mechanism by which a man’s identity is formed.

A modern twenty-year-old Russian may simultaneously belong to Russia, to Yekaterinburg, to a football club, to a professional guild, to a computer game, to a musical subculture, and to an international internet circle.

And each of these identities contendeth for his time and emotional loyalty.

The state hath ceased to be the sole manufacturer of the human being.

Perchance those now aged forty, and some in their thirties, are the final generations for whom the old mechanism of mass state influence yet holdeth a familiar meaning. The youth hath grown up within a wholly different informational system.

He is, from the outset, a user of the Internet.

Thus, patriotic instruction in schools, and especially the propaganda of the television, exert a significantly lesser influence upon him than they did upon the generations of newspaper readers and state-television viewers of the previous century.

In this sense, the problem lieth not with the specific names of the television presenters. Solovyov, Kiselev, or Simonyan are, first and foremost, representatives of an antique technology of political communication, designed for an audience that receiveth information from a limited number of sources and perceiveth the mere appearance of a man on the central broadcast as a mark of authority.

For the internet user, this no longer holdeth sway.

A Crisis of Ideology: The State Attempteth to Invent That Which Once Arose Naturally

Here we encounter another principal ailment of the modern Russian state—a crisis of ideology.

It is commonly asserted that after the collapse of the USSR, Russia became a state without ideology. Formally, the Constitution of 1993 indeed expressly forbiddeth the establishment of any ideology as state-mandated or compulsory.

Yet, in truth, Russian society received then a most intelligible system of life's orientations:

Freedom of economic activity.

Private property.

Enterprise.

Personal initiative.

The opportunity to attain education, to labour, to earn, to establish business, to purchase a dwelling, to build a house, and to provide for one's own kin.

This was not a state ideology in the juridical sense, but it proved to be the natural ideology of post-Soviet Russian society.

It required no daily television propaganda, for it was confirmed by practice.

One need not explain to a man the value of a handsome wage.

One need not cultivate the desire for one's own home through a special lesson.

No state programme is required to prove that a prosperous enterprise is superior to a bankrupt one.

'Tis for this reason that this system of values, despite all the tragedies and contradictions of the 1990s, proved viable. It was woven into the practical lives of millions.

The modern state attempteth to replace it with an artificially constructed ideological system, wherein patriotism, traditional values, imperial history, Soviet nostalgia, religious symbolism, opposition to the West, and ruminations upon a peculiar civilisational path are all indiscriminately mingled.

But to artificially create an identity is far more arduous than to pass a normative act.

Moreover, if one returneth to the original historical meaning of national ideology, its utilitarian function becometh clear. It permitted the state to motivate the citizen toward service and war not merely with coin, but with a sense of duty, belonging, and patriotism.

To put it bluntly, a well-functioning national ideology allowed the state to avoid purchasing every soldier as if he were a mercenary.

Hence, the attempt to administratively manufacture patriotism today hath such practical urgency.

The state again requireth a citizen who perceiveth military service not as a contract between two parties, but as an unconditional obligation toward the political community.

But here arises the problem: patriotism cannot be manufactured by administration.

If a man perceiveth the offered system of values as artificial, contradictory, or irrelevant to his own life, the result is not conviction, but ritual assent.

He shall learn to answer questions correctly.

He shall attend the proper functions.

He may call himself a patriot in a sociological survey.

Yet this speaketh nothing of the real price he is prepared to pay for the state.

The more insistently this artificial patriotism seeketh to supplant the real interests of the man, the higher the risk of reaping not mobilisation, but repulsion.

'Tis here that the old formula of the national state beginneth to fail.

The Special Military Operation Hath Revealed a New Economy of Mobilisation

This was most vividly demonstrated after the year 2022.

Russia conducted a partial mobilisation, but subsequently the primary mechanism for replenishing the army shifted effectively toward a contract system and substantial monetary payments.

This doth not imply an absence of patriotic motivation among the soldiers. Men have diverse reasons for entering military service.

Yet the state mechanism becometh ever more transparent.

Service—for monetary allowance.

Contract—for a lump sum payment.

Risk—for compensation.

Thus, the modern state gradually returneth from the model of the citizen-soldier to a far more ancient and universal model: "for money—yes."

This is a grave political symptom.

The state more frequently entereth into a relationship of exchange with the citizen, rather than the relationship of unconditional political obligation characteristic of the mass state of the twentieth century.

And this signifieth that the very nature of the state is altering.

Mobilisation as a Trial of the State's Capacity to Perform Its Chief Function

Yet the events of the autumn of 2022 revealed another, perhaps more serious, crisis.

The state, historically created primarily as an organisation of war, upon facing the necessity to swiftly mobilise hundreds of thousands of men, discovered the limitations of its own capacity to provide these men with all necessities.

It emerged that problems could arise at the most basic level—from uniforms, individual gear, generators and tools, to modern communications, drones and other apparatus.

At the official level, it was repeatedly declared that the Armed Forces were provided with all necessities. Simultaneously, across the land, there arose a vast torrent of regional, entrepreneurial, and volunteer aid to the units.

Governors purchased additional property.

Entrepreneurs acquired generators, tools, carriages, and equipment.

Kin of the soldiers assembled parcels.

Volunteers purchased thermal imagers and drones.

A whole parallel system of supply emerged, existing alongside the official state machinery.

Of course, it would be erroneous to assert that civil society "supplieth the Russian army in stead of the Ministry of Defence." The bulk of armaments, machinery, ammunition, provisions, and material means flow through state channels.

But the very fact that during a great war a vast non-state system of constant provision formed around the army is exceedingly telling.

A paradox emergeeth.

The very market society, which state ideological rhetoric often suspecteth of excessive individualism, materialism, and a lack of patriotism, proved in the critical moment to be one of the most vital resources of state stability.

Why so?

Because the entrepreneur knoweth how to do precisely that which a heavy, vertical bureaucracy doeth poorly:

Swiftly find a commodity.

Agree upon a price.

Transfer funds.

Organise the production of a small batch.

Alter a design.

Deliver the necessary goods to the unit.

Not wait half a year for a state contract to be amended.

The tale of the drones was particularly illuminating.

War swiftly rendered the cheap civilian drone one of the most vital instruments of the field of battle, and a great role in saturating units with such systems was played precisely by private producers, volunteer organisations, and civilian collections.

This is already a serious symptom of state degradation.

For if the state existeth primarily as an instrument of war, yet in the moment of war is compelled to lean constantly upon a non-state system to meet the basic needs of its own armed formations, the question ariseth as to the state's ability to perform its historically chief function.

The Most Perilous Failure: The State Ceaseth to Know Reality

There is, however, an even more fundamental level to the problem.

The state may possess insufficient postmen.

It may suffer a deficit of constables.

It may encounter problems of military supply.

All these troubles are, in principle, rectifiable.

Far more perilous is this: the state may lose the capacity to receive objective information about itself and the world around it.

Such a question inevitably ariseth upon analyzing the events preceding February 2022.

Today, it is impossible to establish with certainty from open sources what precise assessments were provided to the Russian political leadership by the secret services, military intelligence, the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and other structures.

Therefore, it would be too simple to assert that the secret services deliberately misinformed some party.

But the final result presenteth us with a systemic question.

Before accepting a decision, the state ought to have possessed at least two critically important groups of information.

First—the real condition of its own Armed Forces and their capacity to execute the assigned military task within the presumed timeframe.

Second—the real condition of the Ukrainian state and society: the stability of institutions, the army's capacity for resistance, the presence of trained units, the mobilisation potential, the public attitude toward a possible invasion, and the prospects of external support for Ukraine.

It is evident that a significant portion of the initial assumptions proved erroneous or substantially inaccurate.

Had a scenario of a multi-year war of attrition, enormous human and economic costs, and prolonged military-political confrontation between Russia and a united West lain before the political leadership in early 2022, it is difficult to imagine that such a scenario would be consciously regarded as a desirable outcome of the operation.

Consequently, the problem resideth in the mechanism of producing strategic knowledge.

Various possibilities exist here.

The secret services and departments may have been mistaken.

They may have possessed more complex information, but the unpleasant conclusions did not reach the highest leadership.

Or the leadership received several competing assessments and preferred that which best aligned with pre-existing notions.

For the assessment of the state's quality, there is no principled difference between these options.

In all three instances, the state system failed to ensure that an exceedingly important decision was made based upon an adequate picture of reality.

And this is one of the most dangerous symptoms of institutional decay.

A Vertical Wherein Ill Tidings Ne'er Ascend

A super-centralised state is especially prone to this malady.

The more a functionary's fate dependeth upon the evaluation of a superior, the fewer incentives he hath to report unpleasant news to said superior.

A problem is transformed into an "isolated deficiency."

A systemic crisis—into a "settled situation."

Non-fulfillment—into an "adjustment of deadlines."

A threat—into a "controlled risk."

Each floor of the bureaucracy slightly embellisheth the picture.

And at the very summit, the leader receiveth a report that is perfectly logical, internally consistent, and yet drifting ever further from reality.

This is one of the fundamental paradoxes of Russian centralisation.

The more information formally floweth upwards, the less reality may remain at the top.

For the state, this is far more perilous even than corruption.

Money may be stolen once.

But erroneous information is capable of compelling the entire state to adopt a wrong strategic decision.

The Russian Paradox: A Strong Centre and a Voiding Territory

Yet in Russia, this process is overlaid upon another problem.

Over the last twenty years, the Russian political system hath become exceedingly centralised. However, political centralisation doth not necessarily imply an increase in the state's administrative capacity.

One may obtain the opposite result: the strongest political centre and ever weaker state institutions upon the ground.

Moreover, regional and municipal governments hitherto often resist this process better than the federal one.

Moscow continueth to repair roads, embellish streets and parks, and ensure communal services. Regional governments support schools, hospitals, and transport. Municipalities are compelled daily to resolve entirely mundane tasks.

The system yet liveth.

But against this backdrop, the thinning of the federal state presence is especially marked.

The State Beginneth with the Postman

One may ironise as much as one pleaseth regarding the "Russian Post," yet the post hath historically been one of the fundamental state networks.

The postman went where practically no one else went.

He delivered the letter, the pension, the notice, the newspaper, and thereby daily confirmed to the man: thou art within the state.

Today, the Russian authority itself is compelled to admit the problem of the contraction of this network and seek ways to maintain postal infrastructure in small and remote settlements.

This is not merely the problem of an inefficient company.

A closed rural post office is a small territorial capitulation of the state.

The flag above the administration may remain. Upon the map, the territory shall also remain Russian. But the number of physical points of daily contact between man and state is diminishing.

And 'tis precisely from such points that the real territory of the state consisteth.

Military Commissariats: A Reform Whose Meaning Was Revealed Thirteen Years Hence

Even more symbolic is the tale of the military commissariats.

During the reforms of the early 2010s, a serious enlargement of the system of military commissariats occurred; a significant portion of military posts were replaced by civilian ones.

Formally, the network did not vanish.

But its institutional weight was altered.

That which for decades had been a full-fledged military organ at the district level became a territorial subunit of a larger structure.

In times of peace, this might be termed "optimisation."

But state institutions are tested not when no one employeth them. A fire station is needed during a fire; a mobilisation system—during mobilisation.

And the reforms of peacetime suddenly begin to look quite different when the state again faceth the necessity of waging a large-scale war.

The MVD: A State Wherein None Remain to Be the State

Yet the most eloquent example is the police.

The Russian MVD now openly speaketh of a large-scale deficit of personnel. This is felt most acutely where the citizen directly encountereth the state: the patrol service, the criminal investigation, the district officers, the inquiry and investigation.

In the Middle Urals, the situation likewise remaineth dire: a significant shortfall existeth in key territorial police units.

And here, the discourse on the degradation of the state ceaseth to be philosophical.

The district officer is one of the simplest and most ancient forms of state power.

When there is no man upon the territory capable of accepting a report, conducting prevention, knowing the troubled families, speaking with adolescents, preventing domestic crimes, and ensuring the daily presence of the law, state power becometh increasingly virtual.

One may install a million cameras.

But a camera is not a state.

Even to Win a Lawsuit is No Longer Sufficient

A similar situation ariseth at the stage of executing judicial decisions.

The FSSP remaineth a vast operating system through which tens of millions of enforcement proceedings pass annually.

Therefore, to say that bailiffs execute nothing at all would be erroneous.

But an enormous burden and personnel problems create a more subtle issue.

The state doth not necessarily vanish. It becometh ever more costly to employ.

To obtain from an institution the performance of its formal function, a man must spend more time, more effort, create more petitions, complaints, and contacts.

For the state, this is an exceedingly dangerous symptom.

For the value of a court is determined not by the number of decisions rendered, but by the probability of their execution.

Communal Accidents—The Moment of Encounter with Reality

While municipal and regional systems continue to operate, they constantly mask the failures of infrastructure.

But the margin of safety is shrinking.

The severe communal accidents of recent years in the Urals—problems with heating, water supply, worn-out networks—can each time be explained by a specific cause.

But when accidents begin to form a sequence, the question ariseth not of a specific pipe or boiler house.

The question ariseth as to the state's ability to reproduce infrastructure faster than it physically ageeth.

National Projects as a New Form of State

Another side of the process is especially interesting.

The federal state retreateth from permanent territorial institutions and simultaneously existeth more actively in the form of "projects."

Not a permanent service—but a national project.

Not an institution—but a programme.

Not a state organisation operating for decades—but the absorption of budget funding under KPI.

The national project in the sphere of unmanned aviation was created precisely as an instrument to ensure the technological independence of Russia and the formation of its own industry.

However, numerous problems of localisation, criminal investigations surrounding certain industry participants, and the continuing dependence of frontline drone supply upon volunteers pose an inconvenient question regarding the ratio of enormous state expenditures to real results.

Naturally, a criminal case against a specific official or entrepreneur is not proof of the failure of the entire industry.

But for the analysis of the state system, the contrast itself is vital.

On one end of the system—gigantic programmes of technological sovereignty and billions in budget funding.

On the other—the necessity to discern whether a produced Russian product is truly Russian, and civilian collections for apparatus needed by units today, rather than after the conclusion of another state procedure.

This is the malady of the "project state": it is adept at creating a financial flow, but far less so at creating a stable institutional environment around that flow.

Russia Doth Not Turn into Haiti. Something More Interesting Occurreth

When men speak of the degradation of a state, they usually imagine a "failed state": the absence of central authority, gangs, the collapse of police, civil war.

The Russian situation is fundamentally different.

The federal budget existeth.

The army existeth.

The tax system collecteth taxes.

The central authority is politically exceedingly strong.

Governors are manageable.

Laws are passed.

Elections are conducted.

Yet simultaneously, the density of daily state presence is thinning.

Therefore, that which is happening may be defined as administrative desertification amidst political hyper-centralisation.

The Centre becometh stronger in relation to the Governor.

But the district officer becometh fewer.

The Centre becometh stronger in relation to business.

But the post office closeth.

The Centre is capable of designing a national project worth tens of billions.

But the local state institution more and more frequently operateth at the limit of human possibility.

This is far more perilous than a classic administrative crisis.

For the political system yet looketh monolithic and therefore long remaineth unaware that the foundation beneath it is becoming hollow.

The Federation Turneth into an Archipelago

Should this tendency continue, Russia may gradually transform from a unified administrative space into an archipelago of normally functioning territories:

Moscow.

The largest regional capitals.

Wealthy industrial centres.

Territories of large state corporations.

Military installations.

Points of resource extraction.

Between them—vast spaces where the federal state shall be present ever more formally.

Not because there shall appear another army or another flag.

But because the state shall cease to be a daily practice.

And 'tis precisely this that constitutes the true territorial contraction of the country.

The territory endeth not where the boundary post vanisheth. It endeth there where the state ceaseth to arrive regularly.

And This, Perchance, is Not an Exclusively Russian Tale

Here we return to the original problem.

If the state of the modern type truly grew from the necessity to mobilise vast masses of men for industrial war, then the robotisation of war, unmanned systems, artificial intelligence, and autonomous weaponry may alter the very logic of the relationship between the state and the citizen.

Today, living infantry remaineth absolutely necessary, and to speak of its imminent disappearance is premature.

But the technological direction is evident.

An ever-greater portion of human functions upon the field of battle shall be assumed by machines.

If the state of the future hath no need for ten million soldiers, it hath no need to nurture ten million citizen-soldiers.

If a man, for education, labour, communion, trade, information, and cultural life, hath less and less need for national infrastructure, then he too becometh less dependent upon the state.

An unpleasant symmetry emergeeth.

The citizen becometh less necessary to the state.

The state becometh less necessary to the citizen.

Russia may simply find itself among those nations where this historical process is overlaid upon its own administrative decay, demographic crisis, vast territory, and extreme political centralisation.

And therefore, it manifesteth with particular sharpness.

The Collapse Beginneth Not with a Declaration of Independence

When men speak of the possible collapse of Russia, they usually await some great event.

A defeat in war.

An economic catastrophe.

The death of the leader.

A coup d'état.

A mutiny of governors.

A new 1991.

But a state may well collapse in a wholly different manner.

Without solemn declarations.

First, the post office closeth.

Then, the district officer vanisheth.

Then, five districts are served by one administrative structure.

Then, a court decision becometh ever more difficult to execute.

Then, infrastructure is repaired only after an accident.

Then, a federal programme transformeth primarily into the distribution of coin.

Then, the citizen discovereth that most of life's questions he resolveth either independently, or through the market, or through personal connections, or through regional authority—but ever less frequently through the federal state.

And in the critical moment, one more thing is discovered: the state knoweth itself insufficiently well, is not always capable of providing its own army without the aid of society, and attempteth to replace the real motivation of citizens with an artificially produced ideology.

The flag remaineth.

The anthem remaineth.

The President remaineth.

The federal television channels remain.

And the state gradually departeth.

'Tis for this reason that the possible collapse of Russia need not necessarily begin with a defeat in war or the error of a specific political leader.

Far more perilous is this: it may prove to be the objective result of the disappearance of the very model of the state upon which Russia was built for several centuries.

Empires are held not only by armies.

They are held by roads, schools, post offices, police stations, courts, physicians, functionaries, and thousands of entirely tedious institutions, daily proving to the man that between the capital and his small town there truly existeth one country.

When this network breaketh, the empire may yet look vast upon the map for a long while.

But the political map always laggeth behind reality.

And, perchance, the chief Russian political process of our time is occurring precisely now—quietly, mundanely, and almost imperceptibly:

the state is gradually leaving its own territory.