More quotes by Paul A. Goble
What political analysts commonly call newspeak is in fact a “formative” language that provides its audience with meaningless phrases so that people will not think about what they are hearing but simply accept what they are hearing, according to Moscow anthropologist Aleksandra Arkhipova.
At the end of Soviet times, some talked about creating “socialism with a human face.”. But now, Russia instead has created “capitalism with an inhuman face,” a system in which the worst features of capitalism have been exacerbated and its best minimized or eliminated, [economist] Igor Nikolayev says.
One of the distinctive features of Stalinist totalitarianism was that no one was safe from persecution and arrest. Even those who were the most supportive were suspected of opposition because it was assumed that these “wreckers” were trying to rise further up the ladder of power and thus be in a position to wreck more.
On November 5, Ruslan Perelygin, [an] opposition legislator in Oryol, used AI to create a clip showing protesters denouncing the local mayor for a variety of crimes and demanding his ouster, a creative use of new technology to protest at a time when genuine demonstrations are almost invariably illegal and subject to harsh punishments.
The ways in which Stalinism is returning to Russia are truly insidious. Among the worst is this: In Stalin’s time, Russians denounced others to get their apartments [and jobs]; now, in Putin’s, they claim doctors have said something against the war in Ukraine if they want them fired and replaced with someone who’ll give them the care they want.
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