Associate Dean Nina Khrushcheva made waves in the Russian media last week, after Quartz published her piece on the bold social experiment she recently conducted at the Kremlin. As part of her continuous research/social experiments on Dicktators and autocrats, Khrushcheva aimed to challenge the fear and apprehension that keeps so many Russians from being critical of -or outspoken against- president Vladimir Putin’s government. On that fear Khrushcheva writes,
“The Kremlin thrives on this almost genetic fear. An overwhelming vigilance that we assign to the state—given Russia’s KGB-controlling history understandable but hardly excusable—saves the government a lot of actual scrutinizing. […] I went to Red Square to test my theory: that we should be afraid, but that we are even more afraid than we should be.”
For the full article, click here: “Here’s what happened when I held up a Putin is a Dick sign in Red Square.”
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“a resilient style of top-to-bottom leadership: the “managed democracy.” In it, rights and freedoms are available even if diminished; protests and criticism of the Kremlin are publicly allowed, thus giving an impression of strong but not unreasonable power. What’s more, it’s necessary to kill and arrest only a few. The rest will control itself in the name of stability, fearing chaos and disarray.”
In 1988 I attended a theater festival in Colombia when a Chilean troupe performed. After the performance there was a Q&A and someone asked about the latitude for political action under Pinochet who was still in power at that time. A performer replied that Pinochet was very clever, that he allowed room for you to lift you head up and talk, it was only if you raised it too high that it would get chopped off. But you didn’t know what was too high, so you policed yourself. Dicks of a feather…