BY SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE Montefiore is the author of The World: A Family History of Humanity and Stalin: Court of the Red Tsar
WORLD
WHEN A JET CARRYING YEVGENY PRIGOZHIN—the billionaire oligarch, catering tycoon, mercenary chieftain, and recent mutineer—crashed in August, the only surprise was that the interval between his June mutiny and his death was so long. But the predictability of baroque violence in Russian court politics does not make it less shocking when it actually happens.
We know very little about what goes on within the tiny inner circle of Russian President Vladimir Putin. A Kremlin spokesperson has admitted the crash could have been the result of “deliberate wrongdoing,” and it is clear that so far even supposed “security experts” are just reading the same Telegram accounts as the rest of us. But the rise and fall of Prigozhin reveals many threads that run throughout Russian history and remain relevant now. It also chronicles the depletion of autocratic prestige, state power, and competent management—and thus raises the threat of the disintegration of Russia itself.
First, all of this is a symptom of one-man rule, the habitual system in Russia throughout its long history. Prigozhin was the latest in a long line of court favorites whose ascendancies are the inevitable result of personal power. Some imperial favorites were amazingly talented (Catherine the Great’s co-ruler Prince Potemkin was the greatest statesman of the Romanov dynasty) and some not (Nicholas II’s Rasputin was the most talentless). When these favorites lose the protection of their patrons, their falls are vertiginous.
Prigozhin, one of Putin’s St. Peterburg circle, received massive financial prizes: catering and later military contracts worth billions. He was one of the more competent managers whom Putin trusted; by helping to create the Wagner mercenary group, he allowed Russia to run an aggressive but deniable foreign policy. When Putin launched his wars against Ukraine and the military turned out to be ill-led and ill-supplied, Prigozhin’s storm troopers distinguished themselves with their resilience and atrocities.
But sometime in the meat grinder of Bakhmut, the desperate fray turned his head: Prigozhin started to identify himself and his Wagner troops as blood-spattered heroes of Russia’s war against Ukraine, and anyone who held them back as traitors—maybe even the President himself.
It is a sign of Russia’s weakening state
