About 20 years after the downfall of the Soviet Union, Russia is again entering interesting times that can lift it up or bring it down.

What happens in the world's second-largest nuclear state will be determined by events spurred by two developments.

The World Trade Organization's decision to finally admit Russia after about 18 years of negotiations is one. Prime Minister Putin's determination to cling to power at any cost is the other.

Russia's accession to the WTO could bring more foreign investment to the country's economy, stimulate trade and competition, help modernize the country, and help lift its population out of poverty.

Conversely, it could further antagonize millions of Russian who depend on their jobs at obsolete production plants to survive until the next paycheck, causing massive unrest. That's unless they are retrained and find new jobs within the several years left before all trade tariffs are lifted and they face competition from their more advanced Western counterparts.

But such a wide-scale retraining program would take a major priorities shift on the part of the Putin regime, which instead continues to loot the country by funneling revenues from the export of fossil fuels, metals, timber, and weapons into Kremlin-affiliated, privately run corporations, which in turn hide the money in offshore tax havens. What remains is largely looted by midlevel and low-level bureaucrats through a comprehensive system of kickbacks, without which few, if any, business deals go through in Russia.

To think that a kleptocratic plutocracy would reform itself for the benefit of people is naive -- simply because everyone in it from top to bottom depends on maintaining the status quo to avoid prosecution or worse. Therefore, they are averse to the idea of economic liberalization and would do everything in their power to fight it.

For this reason, it is highly unlikely that WTO membership would bring Russia into the fold of civilized nations by sparking a process that would reform the spoilsport regime, notorious for its practice of using energy supplies, engaging in trade wars, and not stopping at military intervention to exert political influence on its neighbors, such as Ukraine and Georgia.

For that to happen, the Putin regime would have to go first.

At least one expert with hands-on experience in reforming Russia seems to think so.

Enter Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Soviet president who is widely credited with starting a democratic reform that sped up the 1991 demise of the country known as the Soviet Union and the emergence of an independent state now known as the Russian Federation, or Russia for short.

In an article he published this fall in Novaya Gazeta, Russia's opposition newspaper, which he partly owns, Mr. Gorbachev quite simply called for a regime change in Russia. It was written once the news was made public that Prime Minister Putin would seek "election" as president for a six-year term in a country where rigged elections are the norm.

He points out that more than half of the population believes the country is heading in the wrong direction, that the regime does not guarantee either the citizens' personal safety or an acceptable livelihood, and that this time around it wouldn't be reforms that would lead to the country's disintegration, but their absence.

It appears he was issuing a warning to the Kremlin that its refusal to hold a democratic election -- read "cede power" -- may bring about an Arab Spring scenario in Russia.

Because of a relative political and economic stability brought about by several years of high fuel prices and the resulting relative well-being in that fuel-exporting country, this prognosis is more of a long-term nature.

What is pretty clear at this point is that the survival of the Putin regime for another several years would result in a stagnation that-- should the world economic crisis continue -- may bankrupt the Putin regime and bring about public unrest.

The Kremlin would promptly blame it on the WTO membership for opening up inroads into Russia for "the Western agents of change," its famous scapegoats.

Mike Sigov, a former Russian journalist in Moscow, is a U.S. citizen and a staff writer fro The Blade.

Contact him at: sigov@theblade,com or 419-724-6089.

First Published December 4, 2011, 6:07 a.m.