The Wikipedia article on Putin is quite balanced, and gives a brief summary of his career. It should help you understand what kind of leader Putin is.
Whether or not Putin can reasonably be called a “dictator” is a more difficult question to answer. The concept “dictator” is vague, used in many different senses, and its meaning is in large part in the mind of the beholder.
You can read the Wikipedia article on dictatorship, but it won’t help you much. Some dictatorships...
- Опубликовано:
- 25.09.2016 03:39:00
In totalitarian countries . .
The government tortures, kills and suppresses unions and the press.
Whereas in authoritarian countries . .
These functions are left to the private sector.
Jules Feiffer cartoon on statement by former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Jean Kirkpatrick
In order to judge whether there has been a “rollback of democracy” in Russia, we need to be clear about what is meant by the democratic state of affairs believed to exist before democracy was “rolled back.”...
- Опубликовано:
- 16.02.2016 05:08:00
... obedience is obligatory, that disobedience is blasphemy. Even a ruler who seeks to secure compliance by holding guns at the heads of all subjects needs the cooperation of at least those holding the guns and those managing the gun-holders.
Foundations of legitimacy have varied greatly across the many kinds of regimes that have existed throughout history. Foundations of legitimacy change, sometimes slowly and imperceptibly. It is instructive that the monarchs who established modern centralized states in ...
- Опубликовано:
- 22.10.2015 02:36:00