837
Russia Clones Wikipedia, Censors It, Bans Original
(www.404media.co)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
That last detail...wow. They really don't want to leave any doubt about what they're doing, do they?
I have to wonder, don't the majority of Russians pretty much know that their government is full of shit? There's enough of the population old enough to see the fall of the USSR, the time between the fall and the rise of Putin, and then every bit of Putin's transition to autocracy, to the point that there's enough word of mouth in private to counter the majority propaganda. Granted, the younger generations will grow up not knowing anything else, especially with older generations dying off or getting killed either via war or suicided by falling out of windows.
It doesn't really matter because Russians have never really had a mature democracy and so, I think, do not really know how it should/could be different. They are used to various forms of authoritarian rule; whether the leader is called a Tsar, or a General Secretary of the Communist Party, or a President of the Russian Federation doesn't make that much difference.
Well, that was also true in Korea and Japan before WW2, yet both are shining examples of democracy (with a healthy amount of chaebol/Keiretsu/oligopoly to round it out). Likewise in Germany.
So it's not impossible, just foreign.
Of course it is possible and I hope they eventually develop into a mature democracy. Point is, it has not happened yet.
"Mature democracies" buy Russian gas and support Azerbaijan.
Nothing in the past makes an existing democracy more stable.
What does is culture of bravery\heroics AND fairness AND individualism. Bravery AND fairness without individualism get you communism. Bravery AND individualism without fairness get you either the British Empire or Somalia. Bravery without fairness and individualism get you fascism. Individualism AND fairness without bravery lead to something like most "mature democracies" of today.
Now, Russia has problems in culture with every one of these. Each of them pops up locally here and there in the social fabric, but the lumpen layers don't like the idea of fairness and bravery, while the worker class, so to say, doesn't like the idea of individualism, and the "well off" people are similar to the lumpen class sometimes in this. Bravery is the one most lacking, though.