Putin rules Russia like an asylum

Farida Rustamova

“SINCE the 16th century,” wrote the dissident Russian journalist Valeria Novodvorskaya, “we have existed according to the laws of manic depressive psychosis.”

Published two years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ms Novodvorskaya’s article captured a particularly chaotic, deranged period of Russian history. But it also makes a long-term argument about Russian society. Since the time of Ivan the Terrible, Novodvorskaya argued, Russia has suffered from manic depressive psychosis — “flaying” the weak government and “kissing the whip” of the fierce autocrat. The result was a country “hanging between fascism and communism”, and citizens unable to live like normal people.