The Wagner Group's race toward the Kremlin last week, a so-called "March for Justice", calls to mind Benito Mussolini's infamous March on Rome in October 1922, the insurrection in which the soon-to-be fascist dictator came to power. The analogy is not perfect, but it is instructive.
The main difference is of course that Mussolini succeeded where Yevgeny Prigozhin failed.
Another is that Mussolini assaulted a debilitated parliamentary regime, hopelessly fragilized by violent party conflicts whereas Prigozhin's insurrection faced a brutal presidential regime whose leader, Vladimir Putin, had been ensconced in power for two decades, seemingly untouchable.
Mussolini's Blackshirts on the road to Rome had already captured several cities and towns across the country with little resistance from the government's army or police. Similarly, the Wagner Group took over Rostov-on-Don with remarkably little resistance and seemed likely to continue. In Rostov the population shrugged, and some people, especially young people, greeted Prigozhin's men with unexpected enthusiasm.
The Italian government of prime minister Luigi Facta resigned but remained in office as a caretaker administration awaiting action by the king. Italy's king, Victor Emmanuel III, had, according to the constitution, to name a new candidate prime minister.
The King could have called out the army to oppose Mussolini's Blackshirts: but he didn't. His reasoning is still debated. The simplest explanation is that he feared he'd be deposed if he took on the fascists and they won--as seemed likely.
Mussolini in any case now controlled events. On October 29 the King asked him to form a new government in which he would be prime minister. On October 30 Mussolini arrived in Rome by train from Milan and the rest was history.
The point to remember is that Mussolini came to power not by conquest, as he later liked to say, but in a literally constitutional transfer of power overseen by the King in Italy's parliamentary monarchy. Soon however the King was cast aside and Mussolini was soon called Il Duce. Italy became Europe's first fascist regime.
Similarly, in Germany, Hitler's National Socialist party came to power legally in a plurality victory. in the parliamentary elections in 1932. On January 30, 1933, the Weimar Republic's president, Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler chancellor. Hitler soon became the Fuhrer and Germany became the fascist Third Reich.
In Russia last week, what happened, really? Commentators were flummoxed. The proposition that Prigozhin was in fact launched in an attempted coup d'etat always made more sense than any other explanation. Calling the Wagner Group's march on Moscow a "protest" or, ridiculously, a plan to capture generals Shoigu and Gerasimov, or any other small bore explanation, couldn't possibly justify the risk. Prigozhin put everything at stake.
The missing piece that has become clear over the past few days was that the march on Moscow was one side of a vise in which President Putin was to be squeezed. The Wagner Group was to close the vise from the outside, a coup inside the Kremlin whose organizers we don't know yet for sure, would close the capture from within.
But the inside coup didn't materialize. Why this happened is not yet clear. Nor do we know for certain who will be punished for planning it. There's even a possibility that Putin himself is not yet firmly in control, that his own position is not secure, and more adventures are in store.
In any case, when the Kremlin coup failed to take place, the Wagner Group--and Prigozhin--found itself en route but totally exposed. Prigozhin, threatened with capture or death, abruptly abandoned his troops, accepted a deal with Putin negotiated through Belarus's president Alexander Lukashenko, and fled to Belarus.
How would the coup have proceeded? The Kremlin plotters would not have eliminated Putin. They would have forced him--as a condition of his own survival--to name Prigozhin as prime minister, replacing Mikhail Mishustin. Prigozhin, like Mussolini or Hitler, would take power legally and Putin, like Victor Emmanuel or von Hindenburg, would be politically trapped, neutered, left to face his fate.
Would the new leader have been Prigozhin himself or someone else? We can't say for certain but most likely it would have been him, just as Mussolini and Hitler took over the political driver's seat in Italy and Germany.
We can only speculate (as many commentators have for months) what a post-Putin regime would turn out to be. Worse than Putin's nationalist kleptocracy or better? Meaning what were Prigozhin's real intentions on the chance that his coup had succeeded? Here is where I stop.
History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes. What just happened in Russia is a rhyme that failed.
