Prior to and throughout the 2014 Winter Games this blog looked at the parallels between the 1936 Summer Games in Hitler's Berlin and what was taking place in Sochi, Russia. Again, I repeat that I have no problem with the Russian people who have been betrayed time and time again by foul, corrupt and murderous leaders, most recently since the 1917 revolutions. Now, with the 2014 Winter Games over, like Hitler who intensified repression and murder after the end of the 1936 Summer Games, Vladimir Putin is clamping down and intensify repression. Worse yet, like Hitler, he is using claims of ethnic ties and commonality to justify Russia's intrusion into Ukraine. A main page editorial in the Washington Post looks at the renewed repression in Russia. Here are highlights:
RUSSIAN PRESIDENT Vladimir Putin hoped to win the world’s respect with his staging of the Winter Olympics. But a ruler who does not respect his own people will never be truly respected. One day after the Olympics ended, Mr. Putin showed, with the sentencing of eight protesters in Moscow, that he fears his people more than he respects them.
The protesters took part in a demonstration at Bolotnaya Square on May 6, 2012, the day before Mr. Putin’s inauguration. They now face imprisonment for the crime of expressing their opinions. What is striking is that the objects of Mr. Putin’s repression this time are not leaders but ordinary people, selected from the demonstration apparently at random. As in Soviet times, the law is used in an arbitrary and capricious way.
[T]he sentencing of the Bolotnaya protesters carries a haunting reminder of past repression. On Aug. 25, 1968, days after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and the crushing of the Prague Spring, eight people dared to protest in Red Square. They were arrested, and most were tried and sentenced to prison.
What’s the difference between then and now? Today’s Russian Federation professes to uphold constitutional guarantees of human rights and dignity. The words are in Article 29 of the Russian constitution: “Everyone shall be guaranteed the freedom of ideas and speech.” It does not say that everyone shall agree with the president. It does not say that those who protest the president shall be imprisoned. But two decades after its adoption, that constitution is fraying under Mr. Putin’s rule.
There is no better way to understand the Bolotnaya sentences than with the words of Stella Anton, the mother of defendant Denis Lutskevich. Fighting tears on the courthouse steps, she told the New York Times, “Why did they sentence him? To frighten people, so that they won’t go to demonstrations, so that they won’t protest, to put them on their knees and so they’ll put up with everything that’s happening in the country.”
Again, the parallel's between Germany in the 1930's and Putin's Russia are frightening. Putin calls protestors in Ukraine fascists but it is he and his horrible sycophants who are the fascists. The Russian people deserve better. I look forward to the day when Putin is deposed and hopefully gets what tyrants like him deserve.
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