This Isn’t 1991: Why Putin’s Russia is Facing a Different Kind of Collapse

PUBLISHED on August 18, 2025, 9:40 AM EDT, Key Points and Summary – While the theory that Russia could collapse under the strain of the Ukraine war is popular, a direct comparison to the fall of the USSR is flawed.

-Unlike the Soviet Union’s final years, which saw a rapid turnover of leadership and liberalizing reforms under Gorbachev, Putin’s Russia is a stable, repressive regime.

-However, this analysis argues that the current system faces its own unique pressures: major state-owned companies like Gazprom are hemorrhaging money, and a rising tide of violent crime from returning convicts is creating deep social instability that could lead to a different kind of collapse.

The Russia Collapse Theory: What We Know 

One of the popular theories connected to Russia’s war in Ukraine is that this could cause the collapse of the regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin—and that Russia as a nation-state could even splinter into numerous, new independent nations.

The theory in this instance is that under the weight of massive military spending that is growing at the expense of scores of vital government services, the economy begins to come apart, and the system no longer functions.

Three times in modern history—1905, 1917, and then again in 1990—Russian governments collapsed due to unsustainable military spending. The current war with Ukraine is creating numerous shocks to the economy that are chipping away at internal stability.

Therefore, there are those who believe that Putin’s regime could fall apart at any moment. These predictions are based on the thesis that “the USSR was a powerful and totalitarian system, no one thought it would collapse.” The difficulty with this scenario is that today’s situation is a far cry from the circumstances that existed in the waning years of the USSR.

One of the major differences was that the Soviet Union experienced a dramatic turnover in personnel. In the period December 1980 to March 1985, seven key leadership figures of the regime died within a year or two of each other: Aleksei Kosygin, Mikhail Suslov, Leonid Brezhnev, Arvid Pelshe, Yuri Andropov, Dmitri Ustinov, and Konstantin Chernenko.

Within a year, at least four more senior leaders—Nikolai Tikhonov, Grigory Romanov, Viktor Grishin, Andrei Gromyko—were removed from real power by the group around the new Soviet Communist Party General Secretary, Mikhail Gorbachev. A comparable current-day equivalent would be if long-time Putin loyalists like Nikolai Patrushev, Mikhail Mishustin, Valentina Matvienko, Aleksandr Bortnikov, Andrei Belousov, Sergei Lavrov, Sergei Chemezov, Igor Sechin, and Putin were all deposed and replaced within a short time.

But such a comprehensive turnover in personnel is not happening—and is not likely to transpire—in today’s Russia.

Change Is Not on The Agenda

When Gorbachev came to power, he instituted major changes across the board in policy that transformed the Soviet Union. Many of these new policies were not thought through and failed to achieve their objectives. But those changes did open up society in a way that allowed for freedom of expression and open political activities, which in their aggregate led to the collapse of the USSR. In contrast, Putin’s regime has worked overtime to create a repressive system that even surpasses that of the Soviet era in numerous respects and brooks no criticism from any quarter.

In foreign policy, Gorbachev had worked to normalize relations with the West. When the Soviet bloc nations—Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary—began to revolt and leave Moscow’s orbit, no Soviet troops were sent in to enforce Moscow’s will. Again, Putin has taken the exact opposite course by invading his neighbors on multiple occasions and has used the rationale that justifies foreign intervention to bolster a dictatorial regime at home.

In short, more aspects of today’s Russia are the polar opposite of what existed in the last years of the Soviet Union than there are parallels between then and now. If there is a pattern of events that would lead to Putin’s regime cracking and breaking, it would not be a repeat of the late 1980s.

Indications of Decline

But just because Putin and the country’s troubles bear no relation to what transpired in the USSR does not mean that there is no instability and no prospect of the state disintegrating. For one, the impact of the war in Ukraine continues to create economic disruptions to the point where the once mighty revenue producer of Gazprom, the natural gas consortium, became Russia’s least profitable company in 2023.

At one time, the company was responsible for more than 5 percent of Russia’s total GDP, but it is now not expected to be profitable until 2035. This is largely due to the loss of customers resulting from Ukraine war sanctions and the failure of major export projects, such as the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, to come to fruition.

The gas giant has plenty of company in the form of other major corporate giants that are also in the red. The Russian e-commerce firm Ozon suffered $450 million in net losses in 2023, as did the state aerospace and defense industrial corporation Rostec with losses of $360 million, and the social network VK, which is Russia’s answer to Facebook, at $360 million. These firms were among the five most unprofitable Russian companies in 2023—and the red ink continues.

Russia is also facing a mounting security threat from within. The tens of thousands of veterans returning home from the Ukraine war include considerable numbers of convicted criminals. They are causing a spike in violence, social instability, and organized crime, the latter of which utilizes their skills with weaponry and battlefield experience.

In a December 2024 article from Russia’s Novaya Gazeta reports from one municipality in Russia that “not a day goes by without an ‘incident’ with a former Wagnerite [mercenary] or just a former serviceman returning from battle who beat, cut or even killed someone.”

The head of Transparency International, Ilya Shumanov, told the same newspaper on another date, “I think that with the weakening of the state apparatus and all state bodies, there will be more violence. The reasons are the growing number of people who have experienced military action, the illegal flow of weapons, and the degradation of the justice system.”

In short, Russia faces numerous serious problems that are likely to worsen in the future compared to its current state. If Putin’s regime continues on its present course, sooner or later these trends will intersect and exacerbate one another—and with potentially seriously destabilizing consequences.

About the Author: Reuben F. Johnson

Reuben F. Johnson has thirty-six years of experience analyzing and reporting on foreign weapons systems, defense technologies, and international arms export policy. Johnson is the Director of Research at the Casimir Pulaski Foundation. He is also a survivor of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He worked for years in the American defense industry as a foreign technology analyst and later as a consultant for the U.S. Department of Defense, the Departments of the Navy and Air Force, and the governments of the United Kingdom and Australia. In 2022-2023, he won two awards in a row for his defense reporting. He holds a bachelor’s degree from DePauw University and a master’s degree from Miami University in Ohio, specializing in Soviet and Russian studies. He lives in Warsaw.

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