Russia and Tyranny

Russia has this thing with dictatorships. They can’t get rid of them. They come, one after another, and the Russians do nothing about it.

Russians have this fatalist attitude toward hardship in their lives. They just accept it, and don’t do anything about it (besides maybe drowning it in vodka). They allow strongman after strongman to dominate their lives. The Russian Orthodox Church also has much to do with this mentality. Its form of church government is largely a dictatorship. That system is impressed upon the people’s minds day after day. The Russian Orthodox Church is very influential in government as well. Have you ever noticed that the Kremlin is filled with Russian Orthodox cathedrals?

So let’s look at the history. Russia was a group of freezing, pagan Slavs all through history until 988; when their ruler, Vladimir I, adopted Eastern Orthodoxy as the official religion. There’s nothing like getting off to a bad start.

In 1237, Mongolian raiders invaded and destroyed Kiev, the capital of Russia at that time. The Russians continued under that occupation for a long time until some forward-thinking man decided that it was possible to overthrow an oppressive government. So they rebelled, succeeded in recapturing Kiev, and established a monarchy with the capital at Moscow.

The Czars (the Russian word for Caesar) ruled the land until 1917. They were extremely oppressive. They ruled the people (who were reduced to serfs) as feudal lords for about 450 years. They kept power by stifling all opposition, and periodically using pogroms (massacres and deportations) to keep the population free of radicals and ethnic minorities.

In 1917, Vladimir Lenin, influenced by Marx’s communism, organized a revolt that ousted the czars and set up a communist state in Russia. He used the same tactics as the czars to stifle opposition. The USSR continued for 80 years, exporting its communism to Eastern Europe and Asia, killing off or sending to the gulag all dissenters, and doing all the things that a proper tyrannical state should.

Then, in 1989, the Poles stood firm against their Communist oppressors, starting a chain of events that lead to the liberation of Eastern Europe, and the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Now, we have Vladimir (a very popular name among Russians) Putin, who is systematically wiping out all antagonism to his “administration.” The government now owns all of the TV stations, and is forcing the radio stations to not broadcast The Voice of America, The Voice of Free Europe, or other free media outlets. They control the newspapers, and are advancing their agenda in a way that we have seen is very popular among Russian rulers.

Get ready for Russia to become totalitarian again.