What will happen to Russia in the next 30 years?

In 30 years’ time, Russia will have become part of the great international consumer society, whatever that has become, writes Mary Dejevsky

Russia will never again be effectively cut off from international advance in the way it once was (Getty)

In the days of the Soviet Union, the KGB kept a very special Christmas present in reserve for Moscow-based correspondents from western countries. It would give very late notice of an urgent press conference to be held on the afternoon of 25 December, just in time to ruin everyone’s Christmas dinner, but it was just about plausible because 25 December was – and is – an ordinary working day in Russia. Then, only New Year’s Day was a public holiday; Russian Orthodox Christmas is celebrated on 7 January.

The Christmas of 1991 passed without any emergency summons from the KGB, but any hopes of an undisturbed festive meal were banished by the solemn announcement of a nationwide presidential broadcast. This turned out to be Mikhail Gorbachev’s regretful last address from the Kremlin, in which he announced the dissolution of the USSR. The red flag with its hammer and sickle was replaced over the Kremlin by the Russian tricolour that very night.

Thirty years have passed since that day, and nearly two generations of Russians have grown up with no memory of Soviet times. Anyone under 40 will have only the haziest idea of the constraints and deprivations of Soviet life, and what they do know will mostly have been gleaned from older relatives and friends, TV documentaries, and books. They have grown up as Russians, in a state called the Russian Federation that, despite being Russia long before it was Soviet, is still struggling to find its identity in the world as it is today.