Russia is worth looking at right now for a number of reasons, not least of which is the sheer spectacle of watching an entire culture being slowly broken apart by a maniac with iron eyes.
The sheer breadth of Putin's actions in 2014 shouldn't have come as a surprise to the western world. He always had the convenience of a rubber-stamp Duma. His invasion of Crimea and eastern Ukraine was foreshadowed by his invasion of Georgia in 2008. His powerful personal friends all but ensure that he can stay comfortable no matter how much economic pressure the U.S. puts on him.
These are easy sentences to write in the U.S. in the safety of my own dorm. To call Putin a maniac is less dangerous than cutting a bagel in two. (Which, now that I think about it, is more dangerous than it seems.)
This is not the case in Russia. Like everything, the "free press" is and is not "free." On one hand, you can access newspapers like Novaya Gazeta, which could be called a "dissident" publication. On the other hand, Russia is still a state in which the phrase "journalistic death toll" can be used without any irony. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 56 reporters have been killed under suspicious circumstances since Putin came to power.
In 2006, the FSB (Russia's secret police) killed Anna Politkovskaya, a reporter who made her name uncovering the crimes of the Russian government. While Politskovskaya's case is the most famous, the story is the same again and again: if you speak out, it is possible that you will be shot in your driveway. This is standard.
Post-USSR Russia has also come out as one of the countries most hostile to gay rights. The motivation behind this widespread homophobia is less religious than political. Gay rights are seen as a "western" invention, meant to corrupt Russia's culture and corrupt the minds of impressionable children.
This is disquieting in more ways than one. The retreat from a society of acceptance toward one dominated by the idea of cultural "purity" is the sure sign of bad times ahead. There is no better meta-narrative one can use to seize power than "protecting the minds of the young from corrupting influences."
This kind of censorship mandates that all information available to adults must be fit for children in case it "falls into the hands of the young."
Putin's anti-gay law means that the Russian people can't publicly countenance the idea that gay people might, somewhere, exist.
The clearest example of this mixture of anti-Americanism and homophobia took place in St. Petersburg: an interactive monument to the late Steve Jobs was taken down in part because of current Apple CEO Tim Cook's decision to come out as gay.
There is no question, this is an act of a society afraid and angry at the idea of gay people. But the decision to take the monument down was also a political one. Apple is an American company with wide international appeal. The monument was taken down for the same reason that McDonalds are now being shut down all over Russia: Putin is enacting a cultural purge of any company with origins in the U.S.
What all of this points to is something that has taken over a decade to become clear: that the USSR has never really left the Russian soul.
The culture of isolation, of purity from foreign ideas, of impotent anger, still beats through the streets of Moscow.
And, now more than ever, the silhouette of Stalin is becoming more and more visible in his maniac disciple, as a shadow lengthens over Russia like a great ape looming and gloating over paralyzed prey.