What Prigozhin's end says about Russia

Prigozhin was the latest in a long line of court favorites

-  SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE

WHEN A JET CARRYING YEVGENY PRIGOZHINthe 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.