Andrei Zubov: Russia won’t live through 2015 in its present form

A Russian historian Andrei Zubov thinks that the prospects of his country for 2015 are gloomy.

He told about that in his interview to Radio Svoboda, “Obozrevatel” writes.

“Throughout 2014 Russia managed to find itself in hostile relations with the rest of the world, including its closest allies, like Belarus and Kazakhstan, not to speak about Europe, and the US. Even the relations with China are far from being relations between allies. Recently China stated that they would not have allies, but partners in the future. And Russia has a very unfavourable position in this partnership,” the scientist said.

“Russia has become completely isolated from the entire world. There is no precedent for that. And in this case a country with a very weak economy has become isolated, it’s economy is much weaker than the economy of the USSR in the last decades of its existence. There was a kind of diversified economy in the Soviet Union. It had production of very many things, though they were of poor quality, much worse than European analogues. However, TV sets, cars, refrigerators were manufactured. And now Russia is completely dependent on imports in the sphere of food products, in seeds reserves for agriculture, for instance. And it is addicted to oil totally, it sells oil mostly to the countries it has the worst relations with, I mean Europe and the US. And oil prices have dropped,” the historian said.

“And consequently, Russia faces poverty and a wide system-level crisis, which is naturally to trigger social disturbances after years of doubtful financial security Russia had before 2014. According to the law of Alexis de Tocqueville, revolutions do not happen when life is bad, but when life had been fine and then suddenly it became worse. That’s exactly what has happened in Russia,” he explained.

“So the prospects for the year 2015 seem very gloomy to me. I am not a prophet certainly, I cannot say anything about in which form it is going to take place. But undoubtedly, in its present form Russia cannot exist in its present form long, it won’t live through the year 2015 in its present condition. It is either to open itself to the world again, or to collapse in some profound social unrest,” the scientist stated.

Photo: RIA “Novosti”