The maddening thing about Russian politics is that people like Kasparov, who make so much sense to us, are marginal. All of the opposition parties together only made 5% in the last Duma elections.
But, the slivoviki don’t have a party!
I guess that the Communist Party has left a really bad taste in Russia’s mouth, but this cult of personality is so much worse.
(Don’t forget, the Polish Communist Party reformed itself into a Social Democratic party in the European mold and even held the presidency from 1995 – 2005: Kwasniewski. The Russian Communist Party has become truly fascist.)
Putin’s Russia isn’t totalitarian, it doesn’t have an idea beyond paranoia and delusions of grandeur. It is authoritarian in a cheesy Latin American way. Putin has more in common with Juan Peron than Stalin. If he had a son old enough, we never would have heard of this Medvedev fellow.
When Putin dies or is overthrown, it’s going to be ugly. There are no institutions that aren’t puppets for the dictatorship. With the current adventure even the army cedes any national authority, analogous with Turkey’s military, that it might have had.