... attempts to remedy the fundamental problems underlying Soviet-type regimes.
It was a typical tragic situation. What Stalin had done to the Soviet Union and its allied states could not be repaired without the kinds of severe bumps and crises that Russia and the other former Soviet republics have been experiencing since the Soviet collapse. The collapse of the Soviet Union and Soviet-type regimes resulted in severe problems, some of which might well be called disastrous. Nevertheless, the fall ...
... inside the country.” One might argue seriously that the situation has improved greatly since Matlock and Holmes gave these assessments.
If Putin had wanted to establish a genuine dictatorship, he has had sixteen years to do so. By “genuine dictatorship,” I mean something like the regimes of Pinochet in Chile, the Greek Colonels, or the Argentinian military, where tens of thousands disappeared, were tortured, and/or killed. Are Russians really less free than they were under Yeltsin? Are they terrified of the FSB (one of the successors to the KGB)? Do Russians today have less influence on government than they did under Yeltsin? It is widely believed that freedom of the press ...
... role the development of liberal democracy in Britain. Since it was a dictatorship it angered people, but since it was a mild dictatorship, people were not afraid to criticize it openly. As a result, the British were inoculated with a lasting distaste ... ... have been beaten and arrested, but they were not often killed, terrorized, or tortured in process.
The current situation in Russia bears similarities to such experiences of developing democracies. Though it would be hard to deny that the regime in Russia ...
