Every time a high-powered Russian gets arrested, the same questions surface: why them, why now, who is next?
a high-powered Russian official, oligarch or governor gets arrested, the same questions surface: why him, why now, who’s next? In recent months these questions have become more frequent as former and current ministers, governors, high officials and an American investor have ended up in Moscow’s high-security Lefortovo jail.
The nature of Mr Putin’s rule fuels this suspicion. The regime is both obsessed with the letter of the law and totally disrespectful of its spirit. Corruption holds the system together. Courts rubber-stamp decisions made by the Kremlin or its security services. An investigation almost always results in a charge, and the percentage of jury acquittals is less than 2%. All this creates the conditions for the use of repression as an instrument of government.
It is hardly surprising, therefore, that Mr Putin’s regime is increasingly reliant on fear and coercion, morphing into what Mr Rogov calls “repressive populism”. So far, the aim of the current wave of repression is not to put down protest, since it does not yet threaten the system, but to forestall its growth by boosting the waning legitimacy of the regime. This is why repression against the opposition, though it has been gradually increasing since 2012, remains fairly mild.
Given Russia’s tragic history, any such repression inevitably triggers memories of Stalin’s purges and show trials. But unlike those great terrors of the 1930s, which liquidated entire social classes and most of the old Bolshevik party, the current moves are limited in scale. Another difference, says Ekaterina Schulmann, a political scientist based in Moscow, is that today’s campaign, unlike Stalin’s, is neither underpinned by an ideology nor accompanied by overt propaganda.
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