Russia’s Technocrats Embraced the West, Then Enabled Putin’s War

The kinds of individuals who are willing to do what it takes to rise through the ranks in a bureaucracy -- i.e., bureaucrats -- have a long history of staying in line, following orders, and engaging in mental gymnastics to rationalize their behavior when their bureaucracy is run by an authoritarian who pushes it in evil directions. (People who have a strong ethical core or non-negotiable principles tend to leave early on, either resigning or getting fired.) Every abominable "strong man" and authoritarian dictator throughout history has presided over an impersonal bureaucracy that follows orders.

By the way, the "Harry Potter" books do a remarkably good job of showing how this happens -- it describes with examples the process via which otherwise normal, decent people who need a job end up falling in line -- at a large bureaucracy called "The Ministry of Magic," when an evil, authoritarian, xenophobic leader called "Voldemort" takes over. The movies based on the books don't do as good a job, because they skip over most of the bureaucratic details.