Today
Paul Goble blogs about a recent article in
the New Times by Valery Panyushkin, which argues that Russia under Vladimir Putin is rapidly beginning to look like the Russia of Leonid Brezhnev. A few years back, Bob also wrote that sovereign democracy is, in essence,
the Brezhnev Doctrine revisited.
In many ways, Panyushkin says, "the Brezhnev paradigm" is being
repeated as Karl Marx predicted, first as tragedy and then as farce. As
then, Russians don't like corruption but learn to use it. As then, they
don't approve of the privileges of the elite but instead seek to
acquire some for themselves.
One of the many examples he gives of
this farcical return of the past is the role of the Internet, which
Panyushkin suggests is "now playing the role of samizdat in Brezhnev's
times." Just as with samizdat, so too with the Internet, "it is still
impossible to separate the wheat from the chaff."
I bet they will also look quite physically similar when Putin is Brezhnev's age and still clinging pathetically to power, assuming Russia lasts that long. Putin's eyes are not as slanty perhaps, but they are beadier and that makes up for it.