The second question is: how long will Russians tolerate this? The answer: longer than you expect. The common Western assumption that "people will only endure up to a certain limit" is based on societies with horizontal relations, independent institutions, and a sense of agency. Russia is not such a society. It is a society that has gone through multiple waves of atomization and has learned a single reliable rule: survive individually and don't expose yourself in public.

What could destabilize the situation for the regime is not an economic crisis alone, but a combination of crisis and symbolic defeat - a sharp deterioration in financial conditions together with the feeling that "it was all for nothing," that sacrifice and hardship did not lead to the "victory" promised by the authorities. But even in this scenario, there will be no organized protest. Rather, there will be disorientation and paralysis.

📷: Queues in the USSR