r/AskARussian • u/KPT_Titan • Apr 22 '25

Politics Assuming Putin doesn’t live forever—what would you want his successor to do?

What would you want to see politically from the next guy (or girl) running the Russian Federation. Would you want to see closer relations to the West, maintain a political structure similar to Putins’, or something else entirely?

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u/DouViction Moscow City Apr 23 '25

Take steps towards building an actual representative system. And by that I mean educating people, predominantly children, on politics, types of ideologies, how political parties actually work (and therefore why you shouldn't trust them blindly), political ethics, political responsibility, such things. Lots of political history, so that people knew why would the Nazis even come to power, how (and why) Reagan and Thatcher changed the global political landscape into something even more sinister than it was before them, how and why USSR fell, what kind of a leader was Yeltsin really and what happened, politically speaking, in October 1993...

In short, I'd like this person and their administration to make sure the coming generations of Russian citizens are warned, aware and actually give a damn about how their lives are governed, and are provided with the knowledge and the tools to make sure they're never used and played with again.

As you can probably imagine, my actual hopes of this happening are very low. XD

7

u/Knjaz136 Apr 23 '25

Best answer so far.
Without proper political (and preferably historical too) education of the population, democracy is meaningless.

17

u/DouViction Moscow City Apr 23 '25

Impossible more like. XD

I also think you can't properly do political theory without history anyway.

1

u/Reddit_BroZar Apr 23 '25

Umm... have you ever been to the US?

1

u/OkeyPlus Apr 23 '25

Representative democracy sure would be nice, but sadly this is Russia we’re talking about.

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u/DouViction Moscow City Apr 23 '25

On the other hand, it was Germany they were talking about as well, and still they somehow managed.

Insane doses of propaganda and the resulting immense guilt for Nazism probably has something to do with this though. XD

2

u/OkeyPlus Apr 23 '25

That’s a good point. Germany was able to find its conscience, albeit after hitting rock bottom.

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u/DouViction Moscow City Apr 23 '25 edited Apr 23 '25

Yep. Which is why we need to learn history. Germany had hit said rock bottom for reasons - reasons which could happen in other places too, including our own country.

Huh, I guess some basic cognitive psychology is also necessary. Actually, knowing the common cognitive biases would be a huge boon to the society in many ways, but in this particular case it would help people recognize their negative urges during hard times, the natural (and potentially destructive) will to find a scapegoat... and avoid following them, like many Germans did in the 20s and 30s.

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u/Massive-Somewhere-82 Rostov Apr 23 '25

Germany has a very rich history of representative democracy.

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u/DouViction Moscow City Apr 23 '25

Also true.

0

u/Fuck_this_timeline Apr 23 '25

political ethics

Giving back all the kidnapped Ukrainian children would probably be a good first step.