“One tends to imagine life in an autocratic regime
as dominated by fear and oppression: armed men in the street, total
surveillance, chanted slogans, and whispered secrets. It is probably a version
of that picture that has been flitting lately through the nightmares of
American liberals fretting about the damage a potential autocrat might do to an
open society. But residents of a hybrid regime such as Russia’s — that is, an
autocratic one that retains the façade of a democracy — know the Orwellian
notion is needlessly romantic. Russian life, I soon found out, was marked less
by fear than by cynicism: the all-pervasive idea that no institution is to be
trusted, because no institution is bigger than the avarice of the person in
charge. This cynicism, coupled with endless conspiracy theories about
everything, was at its core defensive (it’s hard to be disappointed if you
expect the worst). But it amounted to defeatism. And, interestingly, the higher
up the food chain you moved, the more you encountered it.”— Michael
Idov, “Russia: Life After Trust,”
New York
Magazine, Jan. 23, 2017
The image accompanying this post shows Russia’s
Vladimir Putin—not only the dictator of his country’s own autocracy, but also a model
for would-be strongmen elsewhere. This article was published three years ago, but it is no less relevant now--and probably more so.
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