alt Hacker News> Russia is totalitarian today.
It's really not. There is no ideology. There are no mass rallies in support of the government. No official sets of books, there's no "My Struggle" by Putin that everyone in the country needs to have.
> That is the point. In a contrast to being just a kleptocracy for the first ~15 years of Putin, Russia does have such an ideology at the state level today - "Russian world"
Not really. It's trying to do that, but it looks comical even for people inside Russia. Even true believers in "Russian World" are now either dead or silenced. Russian government systematically punishes _any_ true belief.
Another example to watch is Venezuela. I predict that it'll slowly transform into being a more open country, with at least some electoral freedom. It won't become a liberal democracy overnight, but it won't be completely authoritarian for long.
>There are no mass rallies in support of the government.
for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzaoHPWfkbE
>No official sets of books,
new unified history textbook. The "Talks about Important" school ideology lessons. Putin's propaganda article on Ukraine history (of course no relation to real history).
>It's really not. There is no ideology.
the foundational ideology of a fascist state is "interests of state trump any and all rights/freedoms/interests of an individual". One can see that in Franco's Spain, Salazar's Portugal, Mussolini's Italy, and in Putin's Russia these days. Of course that was also the case in Germany in 1933-1945, yet the Germany went further - it was a fascism where state had a political nationalism as an official ideology. Similarly Russian state in recent years took "Russian world" as its official ideology, and thus now you see Lebensraum, Volksgemeinschaft, Blut and Boden and Dolchstoßlegende in the words and actions of Russian state.
>Not really. It's trying to do that, but it looks comical even for people inside Russia.
There is nothing comical here. One of the cornerstone of "Russian world" ideology is Russians being the master-nation (and by the way the words to pretty much that effect were even put into the Russian Constitution in 2020) while Ukranians are declared "inferior". The state TV openly talks about "Ukrainess" being a brain decease needing eradication (reminds a lot how "Jewishness" was talked about back then in Germany). It definitely lost any chance of being even remotely comical when they actually declared and started that eradication in 2022.
>Even true believers in "Russian World" are now either dead or silenced. Russian government systematically punishes _any_ true belief.
State ideology never requires true believers. Even more - true believer may happen to follow his/her beliefs even when state orders the other way - that of course would conflict with the basic tenets of totalitarian state.