Two poisonings and almost a year of solitary confinement in one of Russia’s harshest prison camps have not shaken Vladimir Kara-Murza’s unwavering belief that Vladimir Putin’s days in the Kremlin are numbered.

Putin presently seems in total control of Russia, a country that appears to have the upper hand in the Ukraine war. But Kara-Murza, a leading voice among Russian dissidents and a historian by training, is convinced the regime is brittle.

“The future belongs to democracy, not dictatorship,” Kara-Murza said during a presentation at Columbia University’s Harriman Institute. “He [Putin] cannot stop history.”

Kara-Murza provided a short course on two centuries of the Russian experience, highlighting how bloated autocratic and authoritarian systems inevitably and repeatedly have collapsed due to a preoccupation with retaining power, instead of prioritizing general prosperity.

Losing wars of aggression has proven especially perilous for authoritarian regimes in Russia, Kara-Murza said, citing the Crimean War of the 1850s, the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05, World War I and the 1979-89 occupation of Afghanistan as events that catalyzed radical, liberalizing changes. 

Putin’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine has great potential to fit into the pattern of previous military failures that provoked reform, even revolution in Russia. Kara-Murza said there is no predicting exactly when the end times for Putin might come, but he emphasized that when political systems collapse in Russia, they do so with stunning speed. 

“Change in Russia will come suddenly, swiftly and unexpectedly,” he said.

He described Putin as at a critical political crossroads in Ukraine, saying the Russian leader “hasn’t lost, but he hasn’t won.” If public consensus in Russia comes to view the war as a loss, Putin’s image could suffer irreparable damage and the totalitarian system he has created could start unraveling. 

Kara-Murza assailed not just the Trump administration, but also prominent American corporations for taking actions that reinforce Putin’s regime. He cited as an example Apple’s reported decision to block access for Russians to dozens of apps that could help them evade Russian government censorship. “A part of the Western world is helping Putin,” he said. “This is shameful.”

Policy planners, Kara-Murza urged, should take time now to develop a post-Putin blueprint for Russia that learns from the mistakes made in the early 1990s, when ill-considered and contradictory reforms pursued amid the collapse of the Soviet system resulted in economic dysfunction that prompted many citizens to equate democratization with chaos. 

“We need to be prepared for the next window of opportunity,” he said.

After receiving a 25-year prison sentence in the spring of 2023 at the conclusion of what he said was a Stalin-era-like show trial, Kara-Murza believed he was doomed to die behind bars. But last August he was part of a Cold War-style prisoner exchange brokered by the United States, European Union and Russia that also included Americans Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan.

Much of his time now is spent on trying to secure the release of political prisoners still languishing in Russian prisons. “Today’s Russia has more political prisoners that the entire USSR in the mid-1980s,” he said.