Just as the Third Reich cannot be imagined without concentration camps, it is impossible to imagine Putin’s regime without its network of ever-expanding and increasingly surreal repressions. The imprisonment of people who fail to toe the official line, or reject it altogether, is held up as a warning to anyone who might get ideas of their own.

Having duped a significant part of people with propaganda straight from the Nazi playbook – that we Russians are the best, the envy of the world because no one else can be like us, and so on – the authorities were left with the question about what to do about the minority that has turned out to be insensitive to this propaganda.

Without propaganda and fear creating a fertile bed for them to grow, the regime's ideological theses cause a rejection as violent as if by gag reflex. They remind me of the science-fiction novel "The Inhabited Island" in which the Strugatskys wrote about a planet where the authorities suppressed the population with broadcasts that made them susceptible to propaganda. But two percent of the population – the freaks – were immune to the authorities’ messages and reacted to the broadcasts with attacks of unbearable headaches.

Among Russians who have not succumbed to propaganda, there are two groups that are dangerous for the authorities. Firstly, they are writers and orators. Their command of words makes their assessments of the authorities and their policies murderous for the regime, as there is nothing the system can do to prove them wrong. This is not only because these people are telling the truth, but because Putin's government, like Putin himself, is inherently incapable of engaging in discussion.

The second dangerous group is political activists. The people who go out on pickets and try, despite everything, to participate in elections, and so on. What frightens the authorities about these people is not losing control over some municipal assembly. Rather, the courage, selflessness and clarity of the position of these (most often) young people have the power to awaken sympathy even among a significant number of........

© The Moscow Times