It has become commonplace to perceive Vladimir Putin as reverting to Soviet ways. So it seemed natural, shortly after the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich was arrested in Russia, that when I ran into a woman I’d known in Moscow back in the Soviet days, I lamented that things were more and more as they had been in those bad old days.
“No,” she said, “they’re worse.”
She had been a rebel and had left Moscow as soon as she was able to, so I was struck by her response. But I’ve heard it from other Russians as well, both those who live inside and outside the country. And the more I look back on my days as a reporter in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia, and the longer the terrible savaging of Ukraine continues, the more I understand what they mean.
In light of what their country is inflicting on Ukraine, it is difficult to speak of Russians as victims. That, in fact, may be one major reason many decent Russians feel that Mr. Putin’s Russia — their Russia — is worse than the Soviet state whose demise he laments. They had thought their nation free of the horrible tyranny of its past, and Mr. Putin is not only reviving that but also bringing shame and alienation to their nation.
