DThirty years after the disintegration of the Soviet Union in a nonviolent manner, the potential for peaceful revolution in most parts of the world seems to have been exhausted. This year, first Myanmar and then Tunisia, fragile democracies ended due to a military or presidential coup, and independence movement activists and opposition journalists were sentenced to severe imprisonment in Hong Kong. The top-down revolutions in Belarus and Russia are part of the trend, and the presidents compensated for their lost popularity through repression and systematic destruction of civil society. Lukashenko, hated by many Belarusians, and Putin, supported by the majority, made himself largely independent of voters.
In the eyes of the Moscow political scientist Tatiana Stanovaya, Putin’s system has changed from—in a sense Max Weber -Passed partly rational and partly charismatic legalization of power during his first term. According to Stanovaya, since the annexation of Crimea, in view of Syria’s military success and the modernization of the Russian army, there has been a “self-heroicization” of the head of state, which was achieved in last year’s constitutional reform. reflect. Putin’s rule is now meritocracy, and its legitimacy is based on his extraordinary merits, although he is not responsible to the people, but only to history. Therefore, Putin no longer commented on the main concerns of his compatriots, such as the decline in income and the general rise in prices, but instead fed reporters with children’s return trips and jungle book quotes.
