Losing Russia

There have been a lot of signs that Russia is rapidly sliding back into the old, totalitarian ways. It may not exactly be the old Soviet style, instead being a weird mixture of communistic ideas, oligarchy, cronyism and outright gangsterism. But it is becoming a very tyrannical country. Artemy Troitsky writes about the Russia he lost and what the world is rapidly gaining. It is not a pretty picture.

 At least in Brezhnev's time you knew where you stood. We had no illusions. Public life was black and white. Censorship was overwhelming. Journalists wrote under instruction and according to the social and political orders of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Now, in the new Russia of sushi bars and oligarchs, the situation is more shameful and rotten than it was then. The attempted assassination of Alexander Litvinenko might not be all that it seems, and yet it does fit a pattern. It follows only a few weeks after the murder of my good friend, the campaigning journalist Anna Politkovskaya. There have since been other, less publicised, cases. Another investigative reporter, Fatima Tlisova, was poisoned two weeks ago in north Caucasus; on 18 November the former head of security in Chechnya, who had fallen out with the region's prime minister, was gunned down in the centre of Moscow in broad daylight by Chechen and Russian police. And then this . . . the mysterious poisoning of Litvinenko (in a sushi restaurant, naturally), but this time in the centre of Russia's second city, London.

…. 

Democracy is on the retreat in Russia, from the nationalistic rhetoric and sub-superpower gestures of its leaders to the energy threats of Gazprom, to the millions poured into European soccer clubs. Now, instead of black and white, we have different shades of grey. In the media, self-censorship is in vogue. Journalists know what is good for them to write, and what is not. In an increasingly materialist society, they depend on the authorities' goodwill to keep them in their luxury lifestyles. They deliver the goods, convincing themselves that Putin - in the face of threats from afar - is the lesser of evils.

Troitsky believes the murder of Alexander Litvinenko is an act of revenge by the FSB, pure and simple. That Russia is taking a huge step backward is evident just from that return to Cold War behavior. Wet work is back in fashion in the new Russia. Old monsters are very hard to kill, aren't they?