European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS)

Report Part Title: INTRODUCTION

Report Part Author(s): SINIKUKKA SAARI and STANISLAV SECRIERU

Report Title: RUSSIAN FUTURES 2030

Report Subtitle: The shape of things to come
Report Editor(s): Sinikukka Saari, Stanislav Secrieru
Published by: European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS) (2020)
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep26053.4

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS) is collaborating with JSTOR to
digitize, preserve and extend access to this content.

This content downloaded from 113.178.2.218 on Tue, 11 Apr 2023 06:20:58 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Introduction
INTRODUCTION
by
SINIKUKKA SAARI AND STANISLAV SECRIERU*
‘The only certain thing about the future is that it
will surprise even those who have seen furthest
into it.’1
The historian Eric Hobsbawm ended his semi-
nal work The Age of Empire with a sentence that
many might assume to be discouraging for re-
searchers engaged in foresight. However, this
maxim has served as an inspiration for this
Chaillot Paper: it is taken as an encouragement
to avoid the trap of the conventional extrapo-
lation of current developments and trends, and
instead to combine structural analysis with the
power of imagination to produce a series of
plausible future scenarios for Russia in 2030.
The contributors to this collective volume have
aimed to see as far as possible into the future
by analysing the available data on changes tak-
ing place in Russia, but they have also invoked
‘wild card’ elements of surprise and weaved
them into the analysis. The element of surprise
is particularly important in a country like Rus-
sia whose leadership has dedicated much effort
and resources to eliminating factors of con-
tingency and unpredictability internally, yet
that attempts to leverage effects of surprise in
the foreign and security policy arena. Further-
more, as the history of Russia would suggest,
attempts to stonewall change may eventually
lead to even more dramatic – and often violent
– surprises.
In fact, not only did Hobsbawm’s reflection
guide this research – it also summarises rather
* The authors are grateful to Karol Luczka for his invaluable assistance in carrying out the research for this publication.
1 Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Empire 1875-1914 (New York: Vintage Books, 1989), p. 340.
This content downloaded from 113.178.2.218 on Tue, 11 Apr 2023 06:20:58 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
3
nicely the essence of foresight. Strategic fore-
sight is not about forecasting or making exact
predictions about future events but, rather, it
is about building our capacity to deal with fu-
ture surprises. While there is no way of knowing
exactly what kinds of political decisions future
leaders will make – nor, indeed, who those
leaders will be – it is nevertheless possible to
identify and analyse the critical uncertainties
related to future developments, and pinpoint
the variation between potential futures that
those drivers of change enable.
The point of this publication is not to predict if
Putin will be replaced and by whom in 2024 or
some other date – in fact the scenarios in this
Chaillot Paper include eight possible outcomes
to this question. The emphasis of this publi-
cation is on more fundamental and long-term
uncertainties that will matter regardless of
whether Putin remains in power or not. This
is what this publication is all about: scanning
the horizon, identifying the key uncertainties
and preparing for the surprises that the future
holds in store.
The complexity and the number of social sci-
entific variables should not be underestimated,
however. For instance, back in 2010 several an-
alysts were pointing out – and rightly so – that
Russia’s leadership would very likely be unable
to carry out significant reforms and diversify
the resource-dependent economy, which led
the analysts to predict some kind of political
4 Russian Futures 2030 | The shape of things to come

instability arising from economic stagnation.
What the 2010s actually brought was economic
decline (as predicted), non-reform (as predict-
ed), the annexation of Crimea and the war in
Donbas (unpredicted) and the highest popular-
ity ratings that Putin had ever enjoyed during
his presidency (unpredicted).2 The anticipated
political upheaval did not materialise, due to
the consolidation of patriotic sentiment and
the ‘Crimean consensus’ – which now seems
to be weakening. Interestingly, the annexation
of Crimea was not commonly expected or pre-
dicted ten years ago but it was sometimes in-
cluded in analyses as a possible although not
likely future scenario.3 One can only wish that
more countries and organisations – such as the
EU – would have planned and prepared for this
wild-card scenario before it actually unfold-
ed in 2014.
This Chaillot Paper sets the scene in the opening
chapter by highlighting a set of key megatrends
that will shape and influence Russia’s evolution
in various ways in the 2020s. The publication
then delves deeper into how these trends may
play out in selected key areas in the years lead-
ing up to 2030. The following chapters examine
the possible future trajectories of state-society
relations in Russia, perspectives for Russia’s
economic development, how Russia’s military
power could be employed in the future, and how
Russia’s relations with the EU’s eastern neigh-
bours and China may evolve by 2030. Each of
these chapters present three possible future
scenarios and explain the drivers of change
underpinning those scenarios. While these
chapters focus in detail on specific themes and
sectors, the concluding chapter offers a pano-
ramic view of Russia’s potential future trajecto-
ry – combining elements of all of the thematic
chapters to create three contrasting snapshots
of Russia in 2030. Furthermore, the conclusions
point towards the ways in which the publica-
tion can be used to nurture thinking about and
policymaking on Russia-related issues and – in
particular – how to be prepared for the surpris-
es that Russia’s future will inevitably deliver.

2 See e.g. transcript of the event, “Russia in 2020”, Carnegie Moscow Center, November 21, 2011, https://carnegie.ru/2011/11/21/
russia-in-2020-event-3464.

3 “EVAn globaalit skenaariot: Tulevaisuuden pelikentät” [EVA’s global scenarios: Playing fields of the future], Finnish Business
and Policy Forum, April 7, 2009, https://www.eva.fi/wp-content/uploads/files/2442_Tulevaisuuden_pelikentat.pdf; “Russia’s
invasion of Georgia in August 2008 and its de facto occupation of two separatist enclaves – South Ossetia and Abkhazia – set
a potential precedent for the annexation of other separatist enclaves in the former USSR, such as the Crimea”: Taras Kuzio,
“The Crimea: Europe’s Next Flashpoint?”, Jamestown Foundation, November 2010, https://www.peacepalacelibrary.nl/ebooks/
files/372451918.pdf.

This content downloaded from 113.178.2.218 on Tue, 11 Apr 2023 06:20:58 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms