06-25-2021, 05:49 PM
Russia has had a sophisticated cultural life for almost two centuries and a strong scientific community for a century and a half. To be sure, Russian and Soviet politics have largely been a cesspool during that time. Amoral leaders in politics typically bring disaster at some point, often a war for profits of war-mongering interests and the glorification of the Leader. If not war, they usually foster a top-heavy economic order, whatever the stated ideology, that means indulgence without restraint for the elites and grinding poverty for the masses. (Just look at how neocon foreign policy and neoliberal economics have served America in the last four decades).
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.