In Russia, failed coups portend turmoil and collapse. They also herald greater repression, and a tightening of centralised control. This is because Russian history has swung back and forth between chaos and autocracy, which have become mutually reinforcing symptoms of the same historical condition.
Russians have a word for the periods of turmoil: smuta.
Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin has come to symbolise a new cycle of this history taking place in Russia today. While the fallout from his aborted mutiny in June and recent death remains uncertain, it is possible to see these events as the reverberations of a centuries-old power system grinding forward into new terrain.
