JRL NEWSWATCH: “How Russians Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the War; The Pliant Majority Sustaining Putin’s Rule” – Foreign Affairs/ Andrei Kolesnikov

Aerial View of Kremlin and Environs

“… Those who fear Putin have either fled the country or are silent. The regime has a formidable arsenal of instruments to deploy against anyone who speaks out or otherwise expresses opposition. It has used the legal system to crush any dissent, handing down Stalinist prison terms to antiwar activists. It has invented its own equivalent of yellow stars to harass, threaten, and intimidate those deemed ‘foreign agents.’ (I had the honor of receiving such a designation in late December.) It has closed down or blocked access to virtually all independent media. And it has pinned the unofficial label of ‘national traitor’ on anyone who does not express delight at the state’s ramping up of repression, the war, and the increasingly personal military-police-state regime … driving it. … A significant part of the population has all but overlooked Putin’s violation of the very social contract that he laid down years before …. Given the scale of the repression, it is unrealistic to expect a mass uprising … especially since most ordinary Russians prefer to bury their heads in the sand and find some bizarre rationality and truth in the regime’s logic. People do not want to be on the side of evil, so they designate evil as good, thereby forcing themselves to believe that Putin is bringing peace. …”

Click here for: “How Russians Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the War; The Pliant Majority Sustaining Putin’s Rule” – Foreign Affairs/ Andrei Kolesnikov


 

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