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Incredibly sad. Navalny had balls of steel to stand up to a murderous dictator like he did. It feels like it was all for nought. Putin kills another opposition

by cedws 3y ago

Incredibly sad. Navalny had balls of steel to stand up to a murderous dictator like he did. It feels like it was all for nought. Putin kills another opposition figure and nobody bats an eye.

falcor84 3y ago
> nobody bats an eye That's not the problem. Here we are all batting our eyes, but that doesn't help. Thousands of Russians went out to the streets to protest the war and got arrested without making a difference. I'm very unclear on what kind of sacrifice would be required at this stage to change the situation in Russia.
- kranke155 3y ago
  A full general strike of some kind. But Putin is popular and so is the war. Russia is a top 10 world economy, rivalling Germany in GDP PPP. This article "The Majority Never Had It So Good", was enlightening for me about the situation in interior Russia: https://russiapost.info/regions/majority https://russiapost.info/regions/majority Effectively a lot of stuff we talk about (no more travel, hard to get money outside of Russia) is meaningless to many Russians, many of which are getting good money to go fight in the war.
  - arp242 3y ago
    Do you remember what happened with the large general strikes in Syria a decade ago? You don't "just" protest these kind of authoritarian regimes; there's tons of examples for this. In Nazi-occupied Netherlands there was a large general strike to oppose the Jewish deportations ("February strike"). This worked out about as well as one would imagine. It was stopped in about a day by force, with several casualties. Most of the organizers were summarily executed days later without much of a trail, dozens others were sent to prison for a decade, and the Germans warned "we let you off easy this time, but next time the consequences will be serious". So that was the end of that kind of protest for the rest of the war. There's an old Iraqi joke from the 90s (controversy surrounding Bush's Iraq war notwithstanding, it genuinely was an authoritarian regime and atrocious by any standard): "Congratulations mister President, 99.98% of the people voted for you in the election! Only 0.02% of the people voted against you; a fantastic result! What more could you want? The President growls: "their names". It's pretty funny, and also describes the kind of fears people have. Often these fears are very realistic. Lots of things you and I can "just" do in free democracies just don't apply to authoritarian regimes. I never lived in those kind of circumstances, and I think it takes some amount of effort to really understand what it's like.
    - kranke155 3y ago
      You’re right
- JohnBooty 3y ago
  It just seems hopeless. An enormous country (with a tremendous cultural history) that has never known a healthy democracy. It's just not in their DNA. I think the US will give up capitalism before Russia adopts anything resembling a healthy democracy. (Not the the US' democracy is in perfect health) Even if Putin dies, whatever replaces him will certainly be just as bad. There will be a power vacuum, then a power struggle among oligarchs etc, and then the next Putin will emerge.
  - cedws 3y ago
    When Putin dies things will get ugly. He's spent the last 20 years building a power structure where he holds all the keys. I doubt he has any kind of successor in mind, he seems himself as the only one capable of leading Russia. The one to replace him will probably not have the same backing from the citizens nor the Kremlin itself. And although I hate to say it, Putin is quite intelligent, which is one of the factors that has enabled him to stay in power. His replacement may not be.

by cedws 3y ago

Incredibly sad. Navalny had balls of steel to stand up to a murderous dictator like he did. It feels like it was all for nought. Putin kills another opposition figure and nobody bats an eye.

falcor84 3y ago

> nobody bats an eye That's not the problem. Here we are all batting our eyes, but that doesn't help. Thousands of Russians went out to the streets to protest the war and got arrested without making a difference. I'm very unclear on what kind of sacrifice would be required at this stage to change the situation in Russia.

kranke155 3y ago
A full general strike of some kind. But Putin is popular and so is the war. Russia is a top 10 world economy, rivalling Germany in GDP PPP. This article "The Majority Never Had It So Good", was enlightening for me about the situation in interior Russia: https://russiapost.info/regions/majority https://russiapost.info/regions/majority Effectively a lot of stuff we talk about (no more travel, hard to get money outside of Russia) is meaningless to many Russians, many of which are getting good money to go fight in the war.
- arp242 3y ago
  Do you remember what happened with the large general strikes in Syria a decade ago? You don't "just" protest these kind of authoritarian regimes; there's tons of examples for this. In Nazi-occupied Netherlands there was a large general strike to oppose the Jewish deportations ("February strike"). This worked out about as well as one would imagine. It was stopped in about a day by force, with several casualties. Most of the organizers were summarily executed days later without much of a trail, dozens others were sent to prison for a decade, and the Germans warned "we let you off easy this time, but next time the consequences will be serious". So that was the end of that kind of protest for the rest of the war. There's an old Iraqi joke from the 90s (controversy surrounding Bush's Iraq war notwithstanding, it genuinely was an authoritarian regime and atrocious by any standard): "Congratulations mister President, 99.98% of the people voted for you in the election! Only 0.02% of the people voted against you; a fantastic result! What more could you want? The President growls: "their names". It's pretty funny, and also describes the kind of fears people have. Often these fears are very realistic. Lots of things you and I can "just" do in free democracies just don't apply to authoritarian regimes. I never lived in those kind of circumstances, and I think it takes some amount of effort to really understand what it's like.
  - kranke155 3y ago
    You’re right
JohnBooty 3y ago
It just seems hopeless. An enormous country (with a tremendous cultural history) that has never known a healthy democracy. It's just not in their DNA. I think the US will give up capitalism before Russia adopts anything resembling a healthy democracy. (Not the the US' democracy is in perfect health) Even if Putin dies, whatever replaces him will certainly be just as bad. There will be a power vacuum, then a power struggle among oligarchs etc, and then the next Putin will emerge.
- cedws 3y ago
  When Putin dies things will get ugly. He's spent the last 20 years building a power structure where he holds all the keys. I doubt he has any kind of successor in mind, he seems himself as the only one capable of leading Russia. The one to replace him will probably not have the same backing from the citizens nor the Kremlin itself. And although I hate to say it, Putin is quite intelligent, which is one of the factors that has enabled him to stay in power. His replacement may not be.