The name Yermak Timofeyevich means little to Western ears, but he is a legendary Russian figure, found in countless poems, novels, movies, and plays. Yermak, a Cossack, was a brigand and river pirate for much of his life, robbing and murdering Russian citizens up and down the Volga river for decades. However, none of his villainous past mattered when, in 1582, he wrote his name onto the fabric of Russia.

Thirty-five years after Ivan the Terrible founded the Tsardom of Russia, Yermak was hired by an affluent merchant family to invade Asia on behalf of the tsar. After less than a year at the front of a preposterously small army of 840 men, he succeeded in defeating Kuchum, the fearsome Khan of Sibir, in battle and took the capital city of Qashliq. Although it eventually cost him his life, Yermak is credited in folklore with winning the “conquest of Siberia,” and as such, is beloved by the Russian people. Why? Because this pragmatic strongman, by acting boldly, violently, and with a political savvy not dissimilar to the realpolitik of the modern era, grew the lands of the Rus by more than a third. He gambled and won, and for it, Yermak was all but canonized in the Russian mythos.

This story, however, is not about a Russian hero of old. It is not about a great Russian victory known to every schoolchild in Russia. This story takes place over 450 years later. Long after those same Siberian lands conquered by Yermak were found to contain the most bountiful oilfieds in all of Russia. This story is about the fate of that oil.

This is History Hiccups with Vas Melnyck!

So, how did the world’s largest exporter of natural gas and the second largest exporter of oil collapse, almost overnight? This is the story of The January Collapse. Today you will learn about the secret dealings that conspired to bring about the collapse of the last vestiges of Soviet-era Russia.

We all remember from KhanU history class that the end of fossil fuels in the 2030s, shook things up around the world. Right? We all know this. We also all know that some of the biggest losers from this change were the fossil fuel bigwigs, Saudi Arabia, Australia, and even the United States. But of course, one of the biggest, Russia, had in some ways the farthest to fall.

But why? Here we unpack how a handful of very consequential decisions by Russia’s president during the first half of the 21st century, Vladimir Putin, failed to anticipate where the rest of the world was headed.

First, you probably remember the Russian attacks on Ukraine in the 2010s and 2020s. Now, even though a bunch of countries around the world said Russia should stop, and even deployed economic sanctions, Russia didn’t stop. Right? Why would it? It wanted Crimea, so it took Crimea. It wanted access to the land that would allow it to transport natural gas through Ukraine without any problems, so it took the land. This is no surprise. Nor is it disputed.

And most of these decisions can be traced to the Kremlin in Moscow, and specifically to Vladimir Putin’s inner circle.

What this inner circle did not anticipate was how in a matter of a decade starting in 2021, the entire fossil fuel based economy would begin its inevitable death spiral. Now of course hindsight is 20/10, but the signing into law of the Glasgow Global Climate Treaty among the biggest economies in the world at the time, that is the United States and China, sent metaphorical earthquakes and aftershocks throughout the global economy. Namely, it signaled to fossil fuels that their time was over and that the plug was about to be pulled on the highly profitable subsidies and legal allowances the industry had received pretty much forever.

Despite this, Putin and his crew were looking the other way, perhaps backwards, hoping that this was just a blip, and the world would come crawling back to fossil fuels.

History doesn’t always have a specific definitive event that separates the past very cleanly from the future. In this case however history is amenable, and the Prirazlomnoye Incident is this punctuation mark that ends one era. What was the Prirazlomnoye Incident? Find out after this message from our sponsors…

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Welcome back. So, Prirazlomnoye. A name that ought to live in infamy, but really doesn’t, right? How many of you actually know this name? Like that ancient shot heard around the world, Prirazlomnoye ought to inspire a sense of dread in all those who seek to cling to false hopes. In July, 2051, long after the Glasgow treaty was well into effect in America and China, let alone the rest of the world, Russia was still clinging to fossil fuel extraction. Decades of economic losses, abetted by corruption throughout the government, came to a figurative and literal head in the Arctic oil field, Prirazlomnoye. Originally hailed as Russia’s first Arctic oil platform, but not the last, this field was remarkably productive during its lifetime. But, most of the fuel that it extracted languished in extensive remote storage sites throughout Siberia. This was only revealed, after decades of false sales and manipulation of trade information that had buoyed Russia’s economy while all the other oil exporters collapsed.

Surprisingly, much of the military establishment had been tricked into thinking that Russia’s economy persisted despite all other signals globally that oil was dead. As such, in July of 2051, as China’s attempts to purchase the Arctic oil and gas fields from Russia — for its own accelerated space program — the Russian military amassed one of the largest concentrations of destructive capacity at that time. And where was it amassed? None other than Prirazlomnoye.

Why, in the world, would Russia cling to something when China was willing to pay for it? Again, this is a surprising subject of vociferous historical debate. In retrospect, it seems clear that people who had been in power for an entire generation, were simply incredibly deluded. These were people, who liked being in power, who had extended their lives with their wealth, and who were not used to being told that their worldview, indeed their entire way of life, was dead in the water.

Here at History Hiccups we look for the weak signals in history, the evidence of nuance and surprise. And this is why we call this episode Putin’s Gambit. We, here at History Hiccups, think that Putin really did know what was happening, and had to put on a show. Why? Well everyone around him depended on Russia, that is to say the fossil fuel world, the old world, the world of the 20th century, to make a game-winning play in the last 5 seconds. So even Putin, maybe, was hopeful that the game was still in play.

You know, and I know that the game had ended two decades prior.

So, we have warships and missiles armed and ready to go to defend Russia’s interest in the Prirazlomnoye field. Who were they aiming this enormous concentration of military might at? That is the billion yuan question. Now, I am not an expert. I’m not a professor at KhanU, and I have never written a history book. But my guess is that Putin and his group of Kremlin cronies realized that a show of military force could rally his nation around this idea of oil, gas, and the whole fossil fuel world. That a show of might and aggression would somehow produce a reaction in the rest of the world like it used to. This was Putin’s Grand Stand.

So what happened? Why doesn’t Prirazlomnoye ring out in everyone’s mind as a turning point in our global future?

Stay tuned after a message from our sponsors…

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So. Here we are at a dramatic climax of this story – or is it actually an anti-climax? As global news outlets reported on the amassing of Russian firepower around the Prirazlomnoye Field, three significant things happened.

First, two anonymous leaks, one each from Gazprom at Rossneft, showed the companies were both not only bankrupt, but had been hemorrhaging their wealth for more than a decade. Only in a country governed by denial would an economic phenomenon like this be possible. Regardless, the global perception of these two anomalous companies somehow clinging to wealth, immediately evaporated.

Second, after these two anonymous leaks, the military establishment in charge of operations, not the oligarchic leadership far away in Moscow, realized they were helming a collection of worthless paper tigers. Immediately, the will to fight evaporated. Apparently there was a limit for too many lies, and Putin’s Gambit flew past it.

Third, the subsidiary companies in charge of the Arctic fossil fuel extraction platforms, made a snap decision to sell to the Chinese government buyers. Given the geopolitical, economic, and social clout the Chinese already enjoyed in the 2050s, there was no way the Russian government could backtrack or overrule the final sales.

Thus, three strikes to the core of the Russian state. Economic, military, and reputational.

It is interesting in retrospect, that no one still knows what happened to Putin. That is, an entirely different story, that we sadly do not have time for.

As an aside, here at History Hiccups, it is always shocking how fleeting our memory is of the past. This event, a short 25 years ago, has led to an utter reshaping of the Arctic. Chinese hegemony of the Arctic space economy. A fractured former Russian Federation, with the wildly successful new Eastern states including the Sakha Republic. All stemming from the collapse that occurred during the Prirazlomnoye Incident.

That’s it for this week, join us next week for Part 6 of our series, Rise of the Zeks! In this installment we will detail the 2061 student strikes in Murmansk and Saint Petersburg! What happened? Join us to find out!