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> How does it get to this point? I live in a country with a fairly corrupt government with a free media(South Africa) and most people rank corruption as the biggest problem facing SA after crime.

(I'm speaking from an Arabic background)

The cost of speaking up is too High, you know what happens when someone speaks up, and its not worth it. Nothing will change, and your life will be ruined, and your family will be affected too.

In my experience(not Russian), people talk about the goverments action privately and with trusted relatives, just don't expect any action because no body is going to risk it.

> But for the general population to really not care about censorship,war&corrupt government, surely these are basic values we take for granted as humans? &So long as we have encryption, tor & VPNs at our disposal, citizens of all nations can transcend the self serving narrative pushed by governments.

A lot of people can see what happens when you speak against the government, and what happened in other nations when the people rose up, it ends up in a civil war or a never ending cycle of corruption.

They see they have food, they have a good or acceptable life, they have electricity. That's enough, and its not worth it to risk dying in prison for speaking against the government.

Its mostly happens when people have nothing to lose.

And dont dismiss that a lot of people support the government, they see the positives, see change, and just simply ignore the bad things, for them rising against the government is how you end up in a destroyed country.

All the things you said apply to the Russian government. It's honestly sad to know that this situation isn't remotely unique.

>How does it get to this point?

I would imagine because, going back to even before Soviet times, all the people who do care are either disappeared or flee, leaving behind only the people who are too jaded to effectively resist.

Russian absolutism is generally more, well, absolute than other places. Though it's imperfect, a video[1] by Kraut gets the gist across.

[1]https://youtu.be/f8ZqBLcIvw0

> How does it get to this point?

Russian society has always been at this point, at least, according to the trend of 19th century literature and foreign accounts I've read going back to the (I think) 17th century.

If you are willing to spend a little time to better understand Russian society, search out the online videos with Mark Galeotti. He is a political scientist specializing in the politics, military, and organized crime of Russia and Ukraine. His discussion of the history of the parallel criminal social structure of Russia/Ukraine is quite interesting.

> How does it get to this point?

Most Russians just assume that's how things got to be run everywhere and just perceive it as a normal state of affairs: whoever has the biggest stick, has the privileges. Many just openly say that if they were in a position of power they would do the same.

Russians respect brute force, but they don't respect money; so they are much more irritated by privilege and extravagance displayed by businessmen, even if it's earned in a legal and ethical way, than by someone in a position of power, especially (as in cases of police, fsb and other sikovikis) if it's power rooted in violence.

When communism and ussr fell, criminality in Russia skyrocketted. It also had huge economic problems. All post communist countries had these problems, but it much worst in Russia.

Quite a lot of people concluded democracy is a mess ruled by uncontrolled mafia. And the rest focused on own life, because they needed to.

And then obviously slow crackdown on opposition destroyed organized political groups.

That's not entirely true; criminality was very high in USSR as well, even though it was swept under the rug, and USSR as a country was built in large part by criminal syndicates and structures that were victorious in crime wars of chaotic 1920s. Most of 1930s NKVD came directly, or were coordinated by, former gangsters, starting with Stalin himself.

Crime skyrocketed in 1990 as state lost power, as people lost jobs and quality of life went down for a lot of them. In Russia even more then in satelite republics. That is true both in statistics and in experience of living there. The mafia bombing attacks were the thing of 1990ties and after. They were not a thing before. They are not a thing now, it calmed. People did not even locked doors prior 1990 in quite a lot of places. Things started to be stolen they started to lock.

1920s is extremely far in history. There was whole WWII after that. There were purges after that. So much happened and power changed hands so many times in between, that it does not matter all that much.

Claim that criminality was comparably high in USSR is false.