Historically, not much. A lot of killing if they happen to have a tsar and a lot of complaining to go along with a whole lot of behind the scenes feuding until someone finally becomes the new leader. Yay, milk and cookies, and a few decades of oppression. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Seriously, the last five hundred years of Russian history is pretty much an unending cycle of revolt, strong man government, economic prosperity, economic downturn and a new revolt. Corruption, bad geography and really bad governance all play a role in the Russian downward spiral but it’s probably the bad governance that does the trick.

Russia hasn’t had a decent government since Peter the Great. And Pete wasn’t that great. To be fair, he did a heck of a lot to make Russia into an actual nation-state but figuring out the how to govern without a constant death spiral wasn’t one of the things Pete managed to do.

Since Peter, Russia really hasn’t ever gotten the ‘good governance’ thing done. Partially, that’s because corruption is baked into the Russian system. No, that doesn’t mean all Russians are corrupt – but their governments are a weird combination of paranoia and cynicism that breeds corruption.

They have a system to it – you have to know who you can steal what from. It’s class based – never steal from the guy a rung higher than you. And it is absolutely endemic. Not surprisingly, in an authoritarian system, it is also from the top down.

This is how your fuel and parts go walkies before your invasion. This is also how your manufacturing sector never innovates and never gets particularly good – why innovate if your idea is going to get stolen and why build high quality if your competitor is going to undercut you? This is why your major industry depends on other nations to provide technical support – and parts that actually work.

Now, before you assume that Russians are all vitamin D deficient and that explains their poor work ethic, there are a couple problems. First, normal Russians don’t have a work ethic problem – they have a getting employment problem thanks to the over dependence on the oil industry (among other things). Second, Finland, Sweden, Norway and Iceland all live at the same latitude or higher and don’t have militaries that steal everything not nailed down.

Russia’s other and probably worse problem with governance is in its warfighting. Sadly, yes, this is part of governance and yes, we prefer to skip it whenever possible. But over use of military intervention isn’t the issue – Russia just really sucks at fighting wars.

Yes, yes, I remember WWII – that’s part of the point. Not only were the Russians (then the Soviet Union) highly dependent on American aid (weapons and food, especially food) they were so bad at tactics and strategy that they lost more fighting men than all other nations combined and suffered heavy causalities (estimated around 27 million).

They lost millions in WWI as well. They lost tens of thousands in Afghanistan, Chechnya, and pretty much anywhere Russian boots hit the ground. Russian causalities are always high, hideously so.

Those are the young men that never came home and never had children. In a monogamous society, that’s a good way to make sure your population decreases over time. Yay, no pesky dissidents. No pesky workers, no pesky entrepreneurs, no pesky economic growth…

Oh, yeah, that could be a problem.

It’s a problem that becomes a self fulfilling prophesy.

So what happens this time around if Russia collapses? I mean, they have nukes and Putin is crazy and WWIII and mass panic and …

Chill.

The Soviet Union collapsed without firing a shot. Putin is a very Russian leader but showing no signs of total madness. If Russia hasn’t lobbed a nuke yet, it likely won’t ever. Russia is badly governed, not a total nut house. Russian collapses are usually really bad for Russians, and not so much for the nations around them. Usually.

Russia isn’t doing a great job in a conventional war. Their media may think that they can win a nuclear war but none of their leadership does. Especially not the leadership.

Because even if they aren’t killed by the nukes in a full out war, none of the leadership have much chance of surviving after that. Strangely, people get ticked when all their loved ones die because you threw a hissy fit and a nuclear bomb. This includes your personal security – you know, the guys with guns? Even if they remain loyal, eventually you have to crawl out of the bunker to face all those rural peons who now want you very dead. This does not end well, even if you were sociopathic enough to start a nuclear war in the first place.

And the same bunch of peons that couldn’t rotate tires are responsible for keeping your big, expensive, somewhat finicky nuclear delivery systems in working order. Tactical nukes can be launched from a lot of Russian systems – ICBMS and other strategic ones, not so much. The US may have fewer warheads but they also have working delivery systems – maybe we should just skip the whole thing, huh, Igor?

So no, Russia won’t go out with that big of a bang. Probably a lot of smaller bangs, much fussing and at least one revolt, but not WWIII.

The real question is this: does Russia fragment? Russia is made up of a massive number of ethnicities and a bunch of groups that don’t actually like each other that much and don’t like Moscow at all. The Soviet Union fragmented but mostly along previous nation-state borders. However, it may be the model for the next collapse. Because the Soviet Union collapsed pretty peacefully, it didn’t balkanize. But the Russian Federation may not be so lucky. Its states may just start declaring independence as the federal government collapses.

How likely is it? No way to know. But I think higher than would normally be expected. Using troops primarily from eastern regions may backfire long term – these are the guys that scrape by on nothing and think of the Ukrainians as rich. They are likely to go home much less enamored with the Russian Federation and that could spell trouble.

There’s already been some trouble with state governors. Now, it’s all been very minor but it is still out of the ordinary and may mean that the states aren’t all that happy with the federal government. That, too, could be real trouble when the collapse comes.

Yes, I think it more likely than not that Russia’s government will collapse in the coming months. Even if it survives the next year or so, and sanctions are lifted – unlikely as that is – Europe is not going to go back to dependence on Russia. One way or another, they will move to other suppliers and other sources of energy. That happens within two years¹. Russia is extremely dependent on oil and gas revenue and that is going away.

China can’t pick up the slack and probably wouldn’t anyway. Regardless, China is in a world of hurt of its own and won’t be able to foot the bill for the infrastructure necessary to pipe Russian oil into their country – at least not fast enough to matter. China will buy some Russian oil – but it won’t pay high prices when it so obviously doesn’t have to.

India will scoop up what it can of the cheap oil without ticking off the Americans too much – but that won’t replace Europe. India isn’t wealthy enough for that.

Eventually, the economy implodes. This is when you need all those cops, spies, soldiers and whatever else to defend the government from the now revolting people – only guess who you can’t pay anymore?

So maybe a coup will save the day before that happens? A coup is unlikely but even if it happened, it’s dubious that it could prevent an economic collapse. Sure, the West will play nice – but Europe still isn’t going to ever trust Russia with that many of its energy eggs ever again. It might lessen the blow – it might not. But a coup could only stop the war, not the economic snowball hurtling down the Russian hill.

And the West doesn’t want to play too nice. We’re kinda over this nuclear saber rattling – letting Russia collapse and then helping pick up the pieces is in the West’s interest. The US will be happy to help all the little Russian states get rid of those nasty nukes – and then and only then provide more than humanitarian aid.

The Russian government is on borrowed time. Here’s hoping that this is the end of the Russian downward spiral, not the beginning of a new one.

¹ Likely less than 2 years given the ban on Russian oil