Search for "90s in Russia." [1] 20+ years under Putin's control brought it from that back to an undisputed superpower. Benevolent and effective dictatorship is probably the most effective form of government in terms of producing results. The problem is that when you end up with self centered, incompetent, or malicious dictators (all which somehow often go together at all at once) it's also the most effective form of government in terms of collapsing countries.
The same is true all the way back to the Ancient Empires which were also usually ruled by dictators. The era of Marcus Aurelius was an absolute Golden Age in Rome. Yet the era of his son all but ensured the collapse of Rome. Of course the same is becoming increasingly true of democracies where political messaging has become effective enough to regularly make people vote in highly irrational ways.
"Undisputed superpower"? That seems like a stretch for a description of modern Russia. Outside of having a stockpile of nukes, does anyone actually think that modern Russia is a superpower, with a failed space program, a flailing military, and rather questionable economy? It's not exactly a bastion of political power, either, beyond a rallying point for "nations who hate the US/west" or "nations who can take advantage of its power economic position to their own advantage and don't care about US opinions" (India), neither of which are really an indication of innate power for Russia.
Honestly, regression to the mean is a stronger explanation here than "benevolent and effective dictatorship".
It is ridiculous to state that Putin made Russia great again. Russia, by all economic metrics, is moribund. By social metrics, the birth rate is one of the worst in the world and they don't even have the privilege of dealing with the problems of massive immigration because no one wants to move there. By military metrics, it can't even fucking beat its weaker neighbour without devolving to outdated meat-grinder tactics with drones sprinkled on top. Putin does that because he's collectively punishing the military for failing the initial invasion. Russia can't even have a functioning civil society because everyone is too scared to do anything for fear of upsetting the regime.
I'm flabbergasted that you look at 2025 Russia and consider the word undisputed apt. How ... narrow-minded.
Which economic metrics do you mean? Here [1] is a large series of economic metrics on Russia. I linked to real wage growth because it's one of the most important, and it's been sharply increasing for decades, like most economic metrics. I completely agree on the fertility rate issue. That will be their primary challenge over the coming decades, though I am curious what it would be if we exclude the 'missed decades' generations from the 90s and early 00s. A quick search turned up little. In any case this will also be the main challenge for most of the developed world over the coming decades.
And I think Ukraine is obviously going to be a major turning point in history. Ukraine created an absolutely massive army by combining massive scale forced conscription alongside preventing men of "fighting age" (18-60) from leaving the country, and they're similarly being armed with hundreds of billions of dollars in Western arms - far more than we even supported the USSR with during WW2. And yet Russia, a country that could barely hold itself together in the 90s, and is under severe sanctions, is winning. We're looking at the absolute end of any concept of a unipolar world, and I think that's a great thing for everybody.
[1] - https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/wage-growth
The problem with real wage growth, or real anything, in general, is it's tied to inflation metrics, which are often gamed, but especially gamed in dictatorships.
Let's say nominal wages in a dictatorship have tripled since it started a war, and the official exchange rate hasn't moved. Then real wages have tripled. But since you can't exchange currency at the official rate (it's fiction) it's more realistic to say inflation is at least 200% and real wages have not increased.
Most economic figures are easy to externally verify, including these. Inflation is based on CPI which, in turn, is based on the price of a fixed basket of goods. You can literally go buy this basket of goods and verify its change in cost (inflation) over time. And real wages are similarly easy to ballpark to a high degree of confidence by simply looking at the aggregate wages offered in job postings.
As a side note this is also the point of things like IMF, World Bank, etc also publishing their own numbers. They don't simply ask each government what their numbers are, but independently work to determine the numbers themselves using as reliable of source as they can find.
I'd also add that when the mega sanctions bomb initially hit, the official numbers from Russia were actually more grim than those being published by the IMF/World Bank. That was exactly the time when the motivation to lie would have been, by far, at its greatest for Russia since consumer confidence (and confidence in the currency itself) play an ostensibly significant role in such scenarios. Yet they continued to publish honest, and even pessimistic, numbers.
> And yet Russia, a country that could barely hold itself together in the 90s, and is under severe sanctions, is winning.
I am not aware of any group, other than internet trolls and the gullible people who fall for them, claiming that Russia is winning. Territorially, Russia holds far less of Ukraine in the fourth year of the war than it did in the first month: https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/3qbcv/16/?wmode=opaque Russia still hasn't even recovered from the Ukrainian counteroffensive of 2022.
The huge Soviet-era stockpiles have been depleted. Yesterday, the loss of one Russian tank was reported. The day before that: zero. The day before that: also zero. The shortage of vehicles and other equipment has forced Russians to fight using dirt bikes and minivans, leading to record losses that continue to climb month after month: https://i.imgur.com/PrPvQd8.png
Russian losses in fighting for just 1/10 of Ukraine have long surpassed German losses during their World War II offensive in Ukraine. They are now on track to exceed Soviet losses during their own offensive, with very little to show for it. One of the main axes of fighting is Pokrovsk, which lies just 25 miles outside Donetsk, a city Russia already held in 2022. After four years, Russian forces have still not reached Pokrovsk.
Is this what victory is supposed to look like? Is this what you call an "undisputed superpower"? For Russia, this is not just a defeat: it is one of the greatest military disasters in their entire history.
> Russian losses in fighting for just 1/10 of Ukraine have long surpassed German losses
You should be careful with this numbers because Western media reported numbers seem to be inflated and not agree with other statistics. And obviously nobody who knows real numbers will publish them.
Also you should remember that many of those who died were convicted criminals. So if you count only non-convicts the numbers would be even lower.
Take your name. Subtract 1 from the first letter. Add "ot".
> You should be careful with this numbers because Western media reported numbers seem to be inflated and not agree with other statistics.
This is a desperate cope. Russian losses in the fight for just 10% of Ukraine now exceed even the independently collected and individually verified Russian losses, where every name is known and confirmed.
The German Army Group South captured Ukraine between June and November 1941, suffering an estimated 80 000 to 100 000 killed in action. In contrast, Mediazona has verified the deaths of 121 507 Russian soldiers, with the current estimate around 165 000, because their count is based on sources like obituaries and lags behind events. There is no way to spin it into anything even remotely resembling a "victory." Germans lost 27 000 soldiers in the battle of Kyiv. Russia loses that many for each small tiny provinical town, with Kyiv being hopelessly out of reach.
> Also you should remember that many of those who died were convicted criminals. So if you count only non-convicts the numbers would be even lower.
And if we count only those who own property in Rublyovka, would the number be zero?
Editing error. I meant to say that even independently verified Russian losses for the 10% of Ukraine exceed comparable German figures fighting for the entire country by nearly double.
>they don't even have the privilege of dealing with the problems of massive immigration because no one wants to move there
"11,640,559 of international immigrants live in Russian Federation, which represents 8% of Russian Federation's population"[0]
I'd recommend to critically examine your sources of information about Russia.
[0] https://seeecadata.iom.int/msite/seeecadata/country/russian-...
Is that including the hundreds of thousands of kids that Putin kidnapped? They may be immigrants, but it's hardly fair to say that they wanted to move to Russia.
Those are mainly people from ex-Soviet countries, who come to Russia for better job opportunities because almost every ex-Soviet country is poorer than Russia.
I don't think that massive immigration from ex-Soviet countries is the win you think it is. Those are still the same gang of nations still interconnected since the early Middle Ages.
> By social metrics, the birth rate is one of the worst in the world
1.44 for Russia is sadly in line with the west. Better than many European countries (Italy/'Spain 1.2), only a bit worse than US (1.6).
Are these the same russians that tow their aircraft carrier around.
They have a very shit time projecting power across their border, let alone across the ocean.