IS RUSSIA SLIPPING INTO TOTALITARIANISM?
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace almost exactly one year ago published the article Putin's War Has Moved Russia From Authoritarianism to Hybrid Totalitarianism by Andrei Kolesnikov. Until now, I have been reluctant to swallow wholesale this notion, having invested much of my adult life dealing with and living in the USSR and Russia. But now it's time to reassess this terrible thought.
We have personal friends with whom we can no longer communicate: their emails and posts on Facebook have disappeared. Contacting them would endanger their lives and liberty. We know two young couples there: both had two little boys when we left Russia 16 years ago who now are young men likely to be drafted or have already been. We ask ourselves: are they even still alive?
The mass slaughtering of civilians along with the soldiers holding out in the huge Azovstal factory a year ago left the city of Mariupol in total ruins. Bakhmut, a beautiful city two years ago, has likewise been reduced to rubble and ashes: compare the first video of Bakhmut in 2021 with the second one of today: destruction beyond comprehension. Russian elite paratroopers there are now using hyperbaric artillery and bombs (air-gas weapons) which create a wave of fire that sears the lungs of victims as it ignites the oxygen in the air, consigning them to a slow, torturous death by suffocation. The largest hyperbaric bombs are equivalent to a small nuclear bomb.
Another article, Putin’s not a fascist, totalitarian or revolutionary – he’s a reactionary tyrant, discounts the idea that Russia is becoming totalitarian, but quashing dissent and imprisoning those who speak out are signs of both totalitarian and reactionary regimes. Raping, pillaging, and destroying infrastructure is called "denazifying" Ukraine. Russia has more than enough Nazis itself – I've seen them in action there, stifling free religious expression.
The Foreign Policy website features a recent article Staring Down the Black Hole of Russia’s Future by a Russian emigree that questions whether "A Ukrainian victory may be the country’s only chance at long-term salvation." and points out that Ukraine will almost inevitably emerge from this war to become a member of NATO and the European Union – just the opposite of what Putin started this war to prevent, while Russia will descend into a black hole of miltary, economic, and social collapse. My wife and I lived through the times of one-million-percent hyperinflation there in the early 1990s and know personally how devastating it was for the Russian people.
Dr. Jade McGlynn, a Russian analyst, rebuts the argument in her article "Do ordinary Russians support Putin’s war?" that most Russians oppose this war: "If you were a Russian mother, would you rather believe that your son gave his life heroically fighting Ukrainian Nazis, or that he died butchering innocent civilians? The former, most likely. It is not easy to admit – to oneself or to others – that you live in a country that has murdered tens of thousands of Ukrainians, or that has pointlessly sacrificed the lives of its own people." The masses of Russian citizens are conditioned to believe that their country is fighting a just war because its very existence is threatened by an encroaching NATO and European Union. It's not the country that is being threatened, though, it is the totalitarian state.
In late February of this year, Prospect Magazine published "A year after it invaded Ukraine, Russia is weakened and humiliated" that explains – "The war has been catastrophic for both sides. But Putin's 'special military operation' has been a strategic disaster." It states – "Already an authoritarian state, it has descended with frightening speed into something approaching totalitarianism, where military training is compulsory for schoolchildren, peaceful protest against the war is punished by 15 years in prison and TV pundits threaten Ukraine-supporting states with nuclear annihilation." I can only hope that Russia will be defeated, will throw off the yoke of totalitarian dictatorship, and somehow emerge again as a free and prosperous country. But will it? Rumors of Putin's failing health are just that – rumors, and hopes that his regime might be replaced by a benign, freedom-loving Jeffersonian republic may be merely wishful thinking.
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