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Comment by simiones | Hacker News Reader

> The Russian people are completely controlled. They have no way, even if they knew exactly what was going on and understood it for what it is, to rally, no one to lead them, no way to resist.

You say that while thousands if not more Russians are protesting on the streets each night against this war, despite brutal repression. In any kind of regime, the consent of the people does matter - the way that consent is obtained just varies. Russia is not the USSR or China and it is certainly not North Korea - it is an authoritarian country, but nowhere near the level of dictatorial control where they can completely ignore their populace.

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> Russia is not the USSR or China and it is certainly not North Korea - it is an authoritarian country, but nowhere near the level of dictatorial control where they can completely ignore their populace.

You are extremely, even naively optimistic. The gap between what you understand under the term democracy and what is "Russian democracy" is several times bigger than the difference between Russia's and N.Korea's "democracies".

> what you understand under the term democracy

You're the only one using the term "democracy".

Even under an authoritarian dictatorship without any pretense of democracy, the consent (or at least acquiescence) of the populace is necessary for the dictator to rule. Civilians far outnumber the rulers, after all, or even the military. Even if the entire Russian military sided with Putin—and against their own friends and relatives—there is no way he could stay in power in the face of a mass civilian uprising.

There is no question that there is no "Russian democracy". Putin is a dictator - just not one as powerful (inside his own country) as Kim or the Chinese ruling elite or Stalin/Brejnev/Hrusciov etc. For an example of this, there is public opposition to Putin in Russia (Navalny, Kasparov some years ago), and even though it is repressed (imprisoned, covertly poisoned), it is not brutally obliterated like it would be in, say, N Korea, or in Stalin's USSR.

And even in the worst dictatorships, mass public protests will almost always lead to the regime being toppled (perhaps only to be replaced by a worse regime, unfortunately, but still toppled). The population of any country is simply too huge to completely ignore, if it turns against the regime en masse.

If you don't believe any of this, then tell me - why do you think Russia is investing so much resources in internal propaganda? Why are they pretending to hold free elections? Why does Putin pretend he has a noble goal in Ukraine? It's certainly not fooling world leaders, so if his own population can't do anything about it, why even bother?

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