Jamming/Spoofing GPS:
“In unrelated news, Moscow police report that Sergei Ivanovich, a 32-year old ice arena employee in charge of carpeting and rugs has died of natural causes in his home tonight. No members of the family could comment, as they too had coincidentally also all passed away in recent moments.”
Not sure if that’s a joke, but this isn’t
Putin’s support is real. He brought Russia back from failed state status, living standards rose, and key metrics, like life expectancy have improved.
Russian liberals may not like him, but they’re a small and discredited force in society, after the carnage they inflicted on society in the 90s.
They also made bad bets in the last years of the Empire. So there’s a tragic consistency there.
The other thing to mention, Russia simply doesn’t work with weak central rule. It’s too vast, too diverse, and the Federal Subjects will turn into their own corrupt little kingdoms. It was a disaster for everyone when it happened in the 90s.
Is Russia getting worse? I think it probably hasn’t changed. It’s still fundamentally the same country it was at the beginning of the 20th century.
Browder made his fortune by exploiting the lawlessness, the ineptitude, and the corruption of the post Soviet era. Not a good guy.
Andrei Nekrasov directed a film about Magnitsky, that explores his death, and pokes serious holes in Browder’s ultimately self serving story.
Nekrasov is from St. Petersburg, and is a European Russian, a liberal. One of his first major films alleged that the FSB orchestrated the apartment bombings to create a casus belli for the second Chechen war. This is not a man who voted for Putin, or someone who is quick to defend the state.
I was leaving Pushkinskaya station, it was two in the morning, it was a clear, warm, beautiful September night. The statue of Pushkin is right there as you leave, it was decorated with mementos this time, from election day. Standing at a little distance, were a few stray cops, waiting, watching.
Protesting is a sport, getting into fights with police, brawling. The police were there, waiting for some dumb fool to give them trouble. They enjoy the fighting too.
Russians don’t fear Putin, or the state really. Liberals will tell you Putin is just a pawn of the rich. I’m an outsider, and I’m aware of that, but I don’t think that’s true. He appears to be his own man. He did force the oligarchs out of politics.
A friend of mine had a little computer company in Kazan. It started taking off. So some local officio came knocking and gave him an offer. I’ll buy you out, or I’ll take it. Your choice. Moscow is the only check on this behavior, and Moscow was very far away.
He took the money.
It’s a kleptocracy. Thieves in law sit in equal status in cabinet meetings alongside ministers and take Putins orders. The siloviki control the propaganda and the system and as we all know, people are easy to control in todays media environment.
Journalists who want to criticize Putin are very scared of him. That’s why so many disappear or die. It’s also why those who criticize end up needing asylum in other countries.
Putin can rule like a dictator, but it doesn’t mean he has to destroy the lives of gay people, he doesn’t need to destroy the Democracies of other nations, he doesn’t need to trample on people’s human rights, he doesn’t need to murder people in other countries…
A man’s gotta have hobbies.
Oh wait you’re talking about Russia 😂.
Russia is a traditional Orthodox Christian country. The states position on homosexuality is a reflection of societies position on homosexuality. It’s not Putin, it’s Russia. And that’s generally true. Putin just ends up personifying the things we don’t like about Russian culture.
Regarding democracy, you’d have to give me examples, I don’t know what you’re thinking of specifically. If it’s Ukraine, there’s a deep divide between east and west in Ukraine. The people of Ukraine fought on opposite sides of WW2. The revolt in the east was supported by Russia, but it was a popular revolt, and it was a result of the coup in Kiev.
The definition of a human right is cultural. What we consider basic rights differ from the Chinese, and they differ from the Russians. In Russia’s case, there are strict limits on acceptable social and political activities. You can’t hold an obscene protest at a church for example. That will get you arrested. And arrested for two reasons, it’s a breach of public order, and it offends their basic religious values. And that’s true it you’re Christian or Muslim. The two headed eagle? One head represented the Tsar, the other the church, and they share the same body. Russians still think that way.
Politically, there is limited room for disagreement, and this is an area where things just haven’t changed from the Tsarist era. Public protests, and western style discussions, the Russians see those as potentially revolutionary activities. Threats to the state, and thus the life and welfare of the people. If there are going to be divisive policy discussions, they are held behind closed doors, in Moscow. Russia never had a Magna Carta moment, and it will take them a long time, and slow cultural change, to get there, if they do. They are more like the Chinese when it comes to their experience with governance.
I remember writing a note to a friend once, I was going to be in Spain, and she had invited me to extend my trip and spend the summer with her in Moscow. I told her it probably wasn’t doable, and unfortunately with work, I probably wouldn’t be able to make the trip at all.
But my situation changed unexpectedly, and so I called her, telling her I would be able to visit Europe which in my mind included Russia.
She was crestfallen. I was going to Europe. Not Russia. It took me a moment but I realized she didn’t consider Russia a European country at all. And culturally it isn’t. Some stretches are, St Petersburg is European, but most of the country is not.
Ultimately, you can certainly judge them for not being “us” but I think it’s more useful to understand why they’re the way they are. That allows us to build more realistic expectations.
It’s a chicken and egg scenario. Because institutions are weak, freedom is dangerous, but how do you grow culturally to where you can tolerate dissent without destabilizing the country?
The new men who emerged in the 90s were often just ruthless criminals who exploited the chaos to build fortunes. And that’s an issue Russia will be dealing with for a long time. It’s the impact they still have on society, and the culture that created them, which still exists. There’s little if any sense or noblesse oblige with those people.
I take your point to some extent, but really, the whole idea of human rights is that they aren’t defined culturally. Everyone is supposed to have them regardless of the culture in which the happen to be immersed.
But that’s not how it works out though, no?
In the States we considered being transgendered a normal condition. In China it’s a mental illness to be treated.
Russia had the beginnings of a functioning democracy and Putin methodically snuffed them out. His first steps were to destroy the independent media and judiciary. The demonization of gays was a tool used in this process. It was not some historical/cultural inevitability; it was a concerted effort by men who knew what they were doing to destroy the nascent institutions of a democratic society. Putin is now exporting the same model of authoritarianism to countries around the world- where it is being applied purposefully by the same sort of men.
For example, opinion polling shows that tolerance for gays was increasing in the post-Soviet period, until Putin put his weight behind an anti-homosexual campaign.
Russian Democracy was a group of rival oligarchs running the country for their personal benefit. And at its peak, in the last years of Yelstin, poor unfortunate drunk that he was, the state almost collapsed on itself.
And I’m sure that’s what they’ll say about American democracy, one the collapse that the Trumpists have initiated is complete.
In 1988 there were 6,674 priests.
In 2016, there were 35,171.
Russia is returning to what it was, and the church is resuming its role as the moral center of society.
Healing the damage of the civil war and Bolshevism is a major theme of Putin’s presidency. He’s made a point of recognizing White Russian hero’s, as well as the usual cast of Soviets. His embrace of the church is also part of this process.