From Red To Brown

Masha Gessen, writing in New Republic Online, has an inside view of what the future is likely to hold for the Russian Federation:


Countries, like people, do not cope well with fear. But countries, unlike people, cannot run away when they are frightened. So they act like people in other ways. They reach for totems they hope will protect them, such as the flag; they become withdrawn, barricading themselves with visas and security checks; they get aggressive; often, they panic. Frightened countries can be extremely dangerous to themselves and to others. Russia right now is a frightened country embarking on steps that gravely threaten its own people and, most likely, the people of other countries.

To be blunt, Russia is about to turn itself into a dictatorship. Using as a pretext the fear that has gripped his country, President Vladimir Putin has announced sweeping political reforms that will eliminate all direct elections except those for president, who, through a convoluted process, will effectively appoint members of parliament. With the state in control of all broadcast media and increasingly dominating print media, the presidential election will also be orchestrated by the Kremlin. Still, as the new political system takes shape, the person at the helm--the actual dictator--might not be Putin. The new leader could actually be a fascist head of an aggressive, nationalistic, war-mongering Russia.

The rest of her article, with its assertion that

fascism is what Russians want. They tell pollsters they are willing to sacrifice their freedoms. They say they want all Chechens to be evicted from Moscow and other large cities. They crave an extreme crackdown. "A totalitarian state cannot be blackmailed by the threat of death of civilians," said Mikhail Leontyev, one of Russia's most prominent pundits, in his nightly commentary on federal Channel One, the most-watched network. "Terrorism happens only in democracies." Leontyev's words express both the Kremlin's and the public's agenda: Polls show that a majority of Russians will readily cede their civil liberties to security services. The security services, in turn, are behaving accordingly. Last week, Moscow police beat up a Chechen man, famed cosmonaut Magomed Tolboyev. Human rights advocates say beatings of ordinary Chechens and other Muslims are now commonplace occurrences in Russia.

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