<andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> wrote: No, sorry, I meant to write an _IN_effective police state. The Soviets were pretty corrupt too. That didn't stop their police state from being effective. They were sticklers on the key points, like who's in charge. Now, it's Chicago rules, Ubi mea, as Mike Royko used to say, Where's Mine?
-- I think Russia has basically reverted to its histoical default mode of being authoritarian in form but anarchic in content. Really the extent to which Russia in 2004 resembles Russia in 1834 is uncanny (this struck me while reading Dead Souls recently). I mean, there's no tsar and no serfs, and people are driving around in Ladas and not troikas, but it's still recognizably a variant on the same model. Despite three revolutions and two complete overhauls in social relations in 100 years! Amazing.
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