Patrushev, secretary of Russia’s Security Council
and a longtime director of the Federal Security
Service (FSB), has described color revolutions
as an American scheme to bring down governments
through the financing of opposition
groups and economic sanctions “under the pretext
of human rights protection and the necessity
to form civil society institutions.” 2 Russian
officials in 2015 warned that Electric Yerevan, an
Armenian protest movement against electricity
price hikes, could be a provocation by the West
dedicated to toppling a Moscow-friendly administration.
3
2. The threat of military action is an integral part of
the strategy. While color revolutions by definition
employ nonviolent tactics, Russian strategists
claim that the military dimension can be indirect,
embedded in democratic governments’ warnings
not to use force against protesters. In other words,
according to the Kremlin, the United States and
its allies stoke uprisings and then threaten to intervene
if the authorities defend themselves. Russia’s
own response to the Maidan revolution was a
reflection of this distorted image: It orchestrated
separatist revolts in parts of Ukraine and then
used its military to defend them. 4
3. Color revolutions pose a danger to Russia’s allies
around the world. To communicate its concerns
on this front, the Kremlin has invited military
delegations from China, Iran, Egypt, and other
authoritarian regimes for meetings at which
countering color revolutions is an important
theme. 5 Russian propaganda encourages governments
to do what is necessary to put down
civil society challenges, and praises incumbents
who succeed.
4. Russia itself is under threat. “The aim is obvious,”
Putin said of protests and social media activity
in 2015, “to provoke civil conflict and strike
a blow at our country’s constitutional foundations,
and ultimately even at our sovereignty.” 6
5. Incumbents are ‘legitimate’ rulers. Russian officials
have stressed the legal and constitutional
legitimacy of authoritarian leaders facing major
protests, regardless of their crimes and blatant
abuses of human rights and democratic norms.
Moscow insisted that Yanukovych remained the
“legitimate” president even after he had abandoned
his post to escape punishment for his
role in the crackdown on demonstrators.
6. Russia reserves the right to intervene in defense
of ethnic Russians. By asserting this right, the
Kremlin is effectively saying that any color revolutions
in neighboring states—many of which
have Russian-speaking minorities—could trigger
a Russian invasion, as in Ukraine. It could also
become a self-fulfilling prophecy, whereby the
governments of neighboring countries come
to mistrust and mistreat their ethnic Russian
citizens, providing the Kremlin with an excuse to
get involved. 7
The Russian leadership’s reaction to the color revolutions,
with its paranoid obsession with sinister outside
forces, is a clear indication of the lack of self-confidence
that is shared by all authoritarian powers. Whether the
state is led by a strongman, a politburo, or a supreme
religious leader, the world’s most repressive regimes
understand that their systems offer few regular outlets
for public frustration with government performance.
Fear of color revolutions has intensified since the 2014
events in Ukraine, with a particular focus on the alleged
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Authoritarians on Color Revolutions
“In my opinion, everything that happened in
Ukraine shook Russia.… Young people began
to discuss and think about Russia’s direction.”
—Ivan Mostovich, press secretary of the pro-Kremlin youth
organization Nashi, April 2005
“We’re only afraid these changes will be chaotic.…
It’ll be a banana republic where the one
who shouts loudest is the one who wins.”
—Vladimir Putin, President of Russia,
September 2005
“We have sympathy with [Arab governments]
because they did not read warnings that
they should have read. That things were
changing because of the wishes of their
people, and because of machinations of the
imperialists.”
—Robert Mugabe, President of Zimbabwe, June 2011
“It is hardly likely that the US will admit to
manipulating [Hong Kong’s] ‘Occupy Central’
movement, just as it will not admit to manipulating
other anti-China forces. It sees such
activities as justified by ‘democracy,’ ‘freedom,’
‘human rights’ and other values.”
—People’s Daily commentary, October 2014
“Hostile forces have always attempted to
make Hong Kong the bridgehead for subverting
and infiltrating mainland China…. The illegal
Occupy Central activities in 2014 came
as minority radical groups in Hong Kong,
under the instigation and support of external
forces … orchestrated a Hong Kong version of
a color revolution.”
—Gen. Sun Jianguo, deputy chief of general staff, People’s
Liberation Army, March 2015
“Various human rights organizations, think
tanks, and simple NGOs of the U.S. and its
allies in Europe, concealing their true goals,
have established a huge network of affiliates
around the world.… It is they who act as the
‘fifth column.’”
—Ramiz Mehdiyev, head of presidential administration,
Azerbaijan, December 2014
“The sides noted that Russia and China had
a common approach to the key problems
of regional and international security and
expressed readiness to counteract ‘color
revolutions.’… Russia and China suffered the
biggest losses during WWII and should be
resolutely opposed to any attempts to revive
fascism and falsify the results of the bloodiest
conflict in human history.”
—Russian Security Council, statement on security consultations
with China, May 2015
role of the United States as puppet master. Yet neither
the Kremlin nor likeminded regimes have advanced
credible evidence that the various civic movements
were inauthentic. The American role in the Orange Revolution
of 2004–5, for example, was limited to funding
for voter training, upgrading of election technology,
and other measures designed to assist authorities in
ensuring fair balloting. There is no evidence of direct
American government help to the Orange forces. If the
United States influenced the eventual outcome, it did
so by making it more difficult for the Ukrainian authorities
to rig the election results. 8
Strangled by law
Over the past decade there has been a steady stream
of laws that restrict the funding and operations of
NGOs. While more than 50 countries have passed
such legislation, the most aggressive campaign to
bring civil society to heel through legal constraints
has been carried out by the Russian authorities.
There are 11 laws on the books in Russia that deal
solely with civil society organizations and another 35
that mention NGOs. Yet nowhere are NGOs defined.
This vagueness is deliberate. It gives officials the
discretion to decide which civil society organizations
should be prosecuted and harassed and which should
be left alone or encouraged. It enables them to penalize,
for example, a foundation that supports scientific
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BREAKING DOWN DEMOCRACY: Goals, Strategies, and Methods of Modern Authoritarians
research due to alleged foreign funding, while ignoring
foreign funding for a quasi-political charity sponsored
by the Orthodox Church. 9
In fact, most of these laws are unnecessary. In a state
like Russia, China, or Iran, the authorities already have
ample latitude to deregister and ban any organization,
and to prevent foreign organizations from doing
business with domestic partners. A legal system that
is flexible enough to serve the evolving needs of the
regime and target virtually any adversary is a hallmark
of modern authoritarianism. But the NGO measures
give an added veneer of legality to what is essentially
arbitrary rule.
The repeated adoption of new laws also gives the
leadership the opportunity to showcase emotional
propaganda that stresses the subversive nature of
foreign or independent domestic civil society organizations,
reinforcing the idea that the motherland
is threatened by hostile encirclement and political
infiltration. 10
Foreign agents
In 2012, Russia adopted the so-called foreign agents
law. It requires NGOs that receive foreign funding and
engage in what the authorities define as political work
to register as “foreign agents,” a term that, in Russian,
is synonymous with foreign spy. Subsequent amendments
allow the Justice Ministry to register groups as
foreign agents without their consent. As with many
other Russian laws, the standards for enforcement are
entirely political. The designation is applied principally
to NGOs that seek political reforms or criticize
the Kremlin’s antidemocratic direction, though the
authorities’ reasoning in many cases is difficult to
fathom. State-friendly organizations have generally
been left alone.
Memorial, the human rights organization founded
to carry forward the ideals associated with Andrey
Sakharov, was one of the first groups to be unilaterally
registered as a foreign agent by the Justice Ministry
in 2014. In 2015, the ministry accused Memorial of
“undermining the foundations of constitutional order”
by describing the Russian invasion of Ukraine as
aggression and by asserting, correctly, that active duty
Russian troops were taking part in the conflict. 11
As in most countries, including some democracies,
civil society organizations in authoritarian climates
are largely funded by governmental or foreign entities.
There is little tradition of private philanthropic funding
for NGOs, and even if there were, few wealthy Russians
or Iranians would risk reprisal from the authorities
by donating to regime critics. Consequently, organizations
that lose access to foreign funding typically
have no domestic alternative and must curtail their
operations or give up their political independence.
In Russia, even NGOs with politically anodyne missions
have been targeted as foreign agents, as the
regime seeks to deter any civil society activity that
could challenge official policies or foster international
ties without state approval. One such organization
was the Northern Nature Coalition, which protects
old-growth forests and had protested certain development
projects. Another was Young Karelia, which
sponsors puppet shows for children in Karelian—a
language closely related to that spoken in neighboring
Finland. The latter group was declared a foreign agent
in part because of a $10,000 grant from the United
Nations. 12
The undesirables
Once it was the CIA that dictatorships reflexively
blamed when under pressure. More recently, the target
of attack is a group of prodemocracy foundations,
mostly American, that encourage political reform
through nonviolent methods. According to the denunciations
of officials from Russia, China, Venezuela,
and other repressive states, the National Endowment
for Democracy and the organizations associated with
philanthropist George Soros present a danger to the
status quo that rivals NATO or Western intelligence
agencies. 13
In 2015, Putin signed a law that allowed the prosecutor
general to declare foreign organizations “undesirable”
if they are deemed to pose a threat to the
country’s security, defense capability, or public order.
The measure empowered the authorities to shut such
entities’ offices in Russia, ban Russian groups from
working with them, and freeze their assets.
While the law has been used to expel foreign prodemocracy
organizations, the real targets are Russian
citizens. This is made clear by a section of the law
that calls for heavy fines and jail terms of up to six
years for Russians who collaborate with organizations
on the undesirable list. Conceivably, a Russia human
rights advocate who attends a seminar in Poland or
Germany sponsored by the International Republican
Institute—one of the groups added to the list in
2016—could be prosecuted once back in Russia. 14
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Freedom House
Sharing worst practices
During the 1990s there was much discussion in the
major democracies regarding the export of “best practices,”
meaning the institutions, policies, and ways
of doing things that had strengthened democratic
governance in some of the more successful post-authoritarian
societies, especially in Central Europe.
More recently, modern authoritarian regimes have
turned this concept on its head by sharing their own
experiences with laws and tactics that have the effect
of retarding democratic development.
Laws restricting the autonomy and funding of NGOs
have been widely copied around the world. Many of
the affected countries tolerated civil society activism
in the period after the Cold War, only to move in a
more repressive direction after the most prominent
color revolutions alerted incumbent leaders to potential
threat posed by civic activism. Once Russia had
demonstrated a willingness to adopt legislation and
then enforce it, other countries followed suit, first in
Eurasia but subsequently in Africa, Asia, the Middle
East, and Latin America.
Governments that adopt such laws seldom if ever
shut down the civil society sector entirely. Instead,
they deal with NGOs selectively, tolerating those that
present no threat to the status quo, monitoring others,
and repressing those that the leadership regards
as a potential focus of opposition activity. Even some
democracies, such as India, Indonesia, and Kenya,
have enacted laws to strengthen state control over
NGOs. But the most serious restrictions have been
imposed by authoritarian regimes. 15
According to a 2013 report, 12 countries had prohibited
foreign funding for NGOs outright while another
49 placed restrictions on foreign donations. 16 For
authoritarian leaders, the imposition of foreign funding
restrictions is a convenient tactic in that it makes
it difficult for the organization to function effectively
but falls short of an outright ban, which could attract
sharper criticism. Furthermore, governments can justify
their action on grounds of protecting sovereignty
against foreign interference—a potent argument in
an era when nationalist ideas have garnered greater
public support. Thus in rejecting an appeal to government
policies that restrict NGO work, the Venezuelan
Supreme Court spoke of foreign assistance as “a
typical manifestation of the interventionist policies of
a foreign power to influence the internal affairs of the
Venezuelan state.” 17
China piles on
In early 2016, joining its authoritarian colleagues,
China adopted its first formal law meant to regulate
the country’s rapidly expanding NGO sector. Previously,
foreign NGOs registered as commercial enterprises
and conducted their advocacy work “off the books.”
Under the new law, foreign NGOs are subject to a series
of additional bureaucratic hurdles, some of which
could seriously impinge on their work.
For example, foreign NGOs are now required to join in
partnership with a Chinese organization. In practice,
this could make it difficult for NGOs that work on sensitive
issues like the rule of law to function, as Chinese
organizations would be hesitant to join a foreign entity
in pursuing such a politically explosive mission.
Moreover, foreign NGOs will be compelled to register
with the police rather than the Ministry of Civil Affairs,
as had been the case. 18 The law gives the police
sweeping powers to detain staff, restrict activities or
events, or regulate an NGO’s ability to open an office. 19
An NGO’s registration can be revoked under a vague
clause that forbids spreading rumors, engaging in
defamation, or publishing “other harmful information
that endangers state security or damages the national
interest.” 20
The new law was passed in the context of intensified
repression, an economic slowdown, and a drive by
the Xi Jinping leadership to suppress discussion of
“Western ideas” in the media and at universities. Even
as the country’s leadership boasted of China’s role as
a world power, the country’s education minister, Yuan
Guiren, felt compelled in 2015 to warn against the use
of “textbooks promoting Western values” in Chinese
classrooms.
Indeed, the authorities had carried out a series of
arrests, focusing on precisely the sort of independent-minded
activists with whom reform-oriented
international NGOs would expect to collaborate: human
rights lawyers, advocates for minority rights and
religious freedom, and women’s rights campaigners. 21
Around the time of the law’s adoption, the government
took the unusual step of showcasing a televised
confession by a Swedish citizen who had worked with
legal reform groups in China. Xinhua claimed that
the activist, Peter Dahlin, had served a human rights
organization that “hired and trained others to gather,
fabricate, and distort information about China.” 22
The adoption of formal restrictions on NGOs is one
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BREAKING DOWN DEMOCRACY: Goals, Strategies, and Methods of Modern Authoritarians
sign among many that China is rolling up the welcome
mat for the outside world. The leadership’s exertion
of pressure on reform-minded foreigners parallels its
increasingly skeptical attitude toward the international
press, certain foreign technology firms, Christian
churches, and especially “Western” ideas like democracy,
the rule of law, and press freedom. The hostility to
NGOs is particularly troubling, however, given the total
absence of national elections and opposition political
parties in China. The NGO sector was one of the few
outlets available to Chinese citizens who seek political
change. The Xi Jinping leadership, in adopting the new
law, is communicating its determination to shut off all
possible avenues for independent political action.
1. Roger McDermott, “Protecting the Motherland: Russia’s Counter–Color Revolution Military Doctrine,” Eurasia Daily Monitor, November
14, 2014, https://jamestown.org/program/protecting-the-motherland-russias-counter-color-revolution-military-doctrine/.
2. Leon Aron, “Drivers of Putin’s Foreign Policy,” American Enterprise Institute, June 14, 2016, https://www.aei.org/publication/
drivers-of-putins-foreign-policy/; Dennis Lynch, “Russian Security Council Warns US Seeks ‘Color Revolution’ against Kremlin,”
International Business Times, March 25, 2015, http://www.ibtimes.com/russian-security-council-warns-us-seeks-color-revolution-against-kremlin-1859808.
3. Howard Amos, “Russian Officials See ‘Color Revolution’ in Armenia,” Moscow Times, June 24, 2015, https://themoscowtimes.com/
articles/russian-officials-see-color-revolution-in-armenia-47670.
4. Alexander Golts, “Are Color Revolutions a New Form of War?” Moscow Times, June 2, 2014, https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/
are-color-revolutions-a-new-form-of-war-36093.
5. Dmitry Gorenburg, “Countering Color Revolutions: Russia’s New Security Strategy and Its Implications for U.S. Policy,” Ponars Eurasia,
September 2014, http://www.ponarseurasia.org/memo/countering-color-revolutions-russia%E2%80%99s-new-security-strategy-and-its-implications-us-policy.
6. Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber, “Putin Sounds the Alarm over Budding ‘Color Revolutions’ in Russia,” Moscow Times, March 4, 2015,
https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/putin-sounds-the-alarm-over-budding-color-revolutions-in-russia-44473.
7. Dmitry Gorenburg, “Countering Color Revolutions: Russia’s New Security Strategy and Its Implications for U.S. Policy.”
8. Anders Aslund and Michael McFaul, eds., Revolution in Orange: The Origins of Ukraine’s Democratic Breakthrough (Washington:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2006).
9. “Briefing on Shrinking Space for Civil Society in Russia,” Human Rights Watch, February 24, 2017, https://www.hrw.org/
news/2017/02/24/briefing-shrinking-space-civil-society-russia.
10. Tanya Lokshina, “Russia Civil Society Deemed ‘Undesirable,’” Open Democracy, May 20, 2015, https://www.hrw.org/
news/2015/05/20/russian-civil-society-deemed-undesirable.
11. Heather McGill, “Russian NGOs Cynically Treated Like Enemies of the State,” Amnesty International, November 13, 2015, https://
www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/11/russian-ngos-cynically-treated-like-enemies-of-the-state/.
12. Thomas Grove, “Russia Squeezes Critics at Home by Declaring Them ‘Foreign Agents,’” Wall Street Journal, August 16, 2015, http://
www.wsj.com/articles/russia-squeezes-critics-at-home-by-declaring-them-foreign-agents-1439778187.
13. Fred Weir, “Russia Moves to Silence Civil Society and Its ‘Undesirable’ Contacts,” Christian Science Monitor, May 27, 2015, http://
www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2015/0527/Russia-moves-to-silence-civil-society-and-its-undesirable-contacts.
14. “Russia Deems Two U.S.-Based NGOs ‘Undesirable,’” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, August 18, 2016, http://www.rferl.org/a/russia-u-s-ngos-undesirable/27931869.html.
15. Thomas Carothers, “Closing Space: Democracy and Human Rights Support Under Fire,” Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace, February 20, 2014, http://carnegieendowment.org/2014/02/20/closing-space-democracy-and-human-rights-support-under-fire-pub-54503.
16. Civicus 2013: Enabling Environment Index (Civicus), http://civicus.org/downloads/2013EEI%20REPORT.pdf.
17. Carothers, “Closing Space.”
18. Josh Chin, “China Gives Police Broad Powers over Foreign Nonprofits,” Wall Street Journal, April 28, 2016, http://www.wsj.com/
articles/china-passes-law-clamping-down-on-foreign-ngos-1461853978.
19. Charlie Campbell, “China’s New Foreign NGO Law Is Threatening Vital Advocacy Work,” Time, April 26, 2016, http://time.
com/4307516/china-ngo-law-foreign-human-rights/.
20. Stanley Lubman, “China’s New Law on International NGOs—And Questions about Legal Reform,” Wall Street Journal, May 25, 2016,
http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2016/05/25/chinas-new-law-on-international-ngos-and-questions-about-legal-reform/.
21. “China’s Strange Fear of a Colour Revolution,” Financial Times, February 9, 2015, https://www.ft.com/content/9b5a2ed2-af96-11e4-
b42e-00144feab7de.
22. Tom Phillips, “Swedish Activist Peter Dahlin Paraded on China State TV for ‘Scripted Confession,’” Guardian, January 19, 2016,
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/20/swedish-activist-peter-dahlin-paraded-on-china-state-tv-for-scripted-confession.
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Chapter 4
The Ministry of Truth in Peace and War
An early and telling sign that Vladimir Putin planned
something more ambitious than a mere tightening
of state control over political life was his decision to
return Joseph Stalin to his position in the pantheon
of great Russian leaders. Stalin’s rehabilitation was
formalized in 2007, with the publication of a new curriculum
guide for teachers of Russian history. 1
The manual’s content dovetailed with Putin’s broader
promotion of a narrative in which Russia is a great
power that recovered from the chaos and weakness
of the Yeltsin era and overcame the hostility of determined
enemies, especially the United States. According
to the manual, Russia’s dark chapters—its domination
of Eastern Europe, internal repression, Stalinist
purges—were the regrettable but understandable
responses to the country’s underdevelopment and
encirclement by foreign enemies. The new history
paints a picture of an all-wise Russian state, under
both Stalin and Putin, whose requirements always
take precedence over the needs of the individual. 2
Putin took unusual interest in the preparation of the
history manual. The idea that history should be written
by historians, not political leaders, was never voiced in
public discussion. Putin later called for history textbooks
“written in proper Russian, free of internal contradictions
and double interpretation.” 3 He said the manual
was needed to clear up “the muddle” in teachers’ heads.
And in unveiling the new guide, he struck a theme
that runs through Russian propaganda in the Putin
era: Russian history “did contain some problematic
pages,” he said. “But so did other states’ histories.
We have fewer of them than in other countries. And
they were less terrible than in some other countries.”
Putin’s basic message was that “we can’t allow anyone
to impose a sense of guilt on us.” 4 More broadly, Putin
was saying that a sovereign state has the right to
interpret its history in whatever way it wants, to ignore
or distort the tragic chapters, and to burnish the reputations
of mass murderers and thugs.
Whereas other countries simply avoid serious study
of the most shameful episodes of their histories, as
Indonesia has done with the epidemic of political
killings during the 1960s, or as China has done with
the Cultural Revolution, Russia treats the Stalin era
“It’s easy predicting the future;
what’s difficult is predicting the
past.”
—Soviet joke
“A lie isn’t an alternative
point of view.”
—Linus Linkevičius, Lithuanian foreign minister
“The implied objective of this line
of thought is a nightmare world in
which the Leader, or some ruling
clique, controls not only the future
but the past…. This prospect frightens
me much more than bombs.”
—George Orwell, Looking Back on the Spanish War
as a time of progress during which the foundation for
modern Russian greatness was laid. 5
To build a case that Russia’s dark pages were “less
terrible” than those of other countries, Russia’s official
history depicts Stalin as a strong leader who was capable
of acts of cruelty but whose rough tactics were
necessary for the defense of the homeland, which was
besieged militarily by the Nazis and politically by the
capitalist powers.
Excusing the Soviet empire
The Russian leadership is especially tenacious in
defending Stalin’s World War II diplomacy. Putin, for
example, has defended the Hitler-Stalin pact, the
1939 nonaggression agreement that opened the door
to Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland and carved up
much of Eastern Europe between the two totalitarian
states. 6 While Putin called the pact “immoral” during
a 2009 visit to Poland, he defended the agreement
during a joint press conference with Angela Merkel in
2015, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
He did so in a fashion typical of current Russian propaganda
methods. He accused the West of trying to “hush
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BREAKING DOWN DEMOCRACY: Goals, Strategies, and Methods of Modern Authoritarians
up” the agreement between British prime minister
Neville Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler that resulted in
Germany’s seizure of parts and eventually all of Czechoslovakia.
This clearly falsified the historical record. Far
from suppressing Chamberlain’s actions, historians and
politicians alike have held up the Munich agreement
as a symbol of all that went wrong due to the European
democracies’ appeasement of Hitler. 7
Putin has also justified the Hitler-Stalin pact on the
grounds that it kept the Soviet Union out of war for a
time and was in keeping with the amoral power politics
practiced in that era. As for the divvying up of Eastern
Europe, he repeated the hoary lie that the record was
unclear as to whether the pact’s secret protocols—in
which the two parties agreed on which territories each
would subsequently control—were genuine. 8 Predictably,
Putin did not go into the unwritten parts of the
agreement that caused Stalin to forcibly repatriate a
group of German dissidents, mostly Communists, who
had sought refuge in the Soviet Union.
Both the history manual and the political leadership
justify the transformation of postwar Eastern Europe
into a Soviet-controlled bloc—in which the economy
came under state control, religious belief was
persecuted, civil society was destroyed, the press was
converted into a monolithic instrument of propaganda,
and opposition political parties were crushed—by
claiming that Moscow needed a layer of territorial
security to protect it from the hostile West. “Historical
necessity” is how Putin’s spokesman described Soviet
domination of the region. Putin likewise blames the
democracies for the Iron Curtain: “We understand the
fatality of an ‘iron curtain’ for us. We will not go down
this path. No one will build a wall around us.” 9
The manual recalls Mikhail Gorbachev not for his
attempts to reform and liberalize the Communist
system, but instead for his having permitted the
unraveling of the European security belt in 1989 and
the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Moving into
the 21st century, the manual denounces the color
revolutions in neighboring countries like Georgia
and Ukraine as Western-backed schemes to replace
pro-Russian leaders with pro-American usurpers. In
this view, the centuries may change and the Soviet
empire may fade into history, but Russia’s geopolitical
predicament remains constant.
Sakharov as nonperson
Because Putin is intent on blaming the West for Russia’s
problems, both past and present, he has worked
to ensure that critical domestic voices are removed
from Russian history. This explains the near total absence
of Andrey Sakharov from any discussion of the
Soviet past or Russia’s future course.
Today Sakharov is recalled abroad as a dissident and
Nobel Peace Prize laureate. In Russia, however, he
has been relegated to the status of nonperson. Putin
and other leaders never refer to him, his legacy, or
his views. The organizations that were launched to
promote his principles are harassed and placed on the
“foreign agents” list. 10 In an age of flourishing digital
media, Russians are ironically less likely to know what
Sakharov stood for than was the case under Soviet
censorship, when underground samizdat literature
was reproduced on manual typewriters to reach an
audience of a few hundred. 11
In fact, Sakharov was an imposing global presence
from the mid-1960s until his death in 1989. His stature
derived from his prominent role in the development
of the Soviet nuclear arsenal. He was sometimes
called the “father of the hydrogen bomb,” and because
of the respect he enjoyed in the global scientific community,
his views on arms control carried enormous
weight.
His initial forays into political dissent consisted of cautious
statements about the importance of weapons
treaties between Washington and Moscow. But the
more he thought about arms control, the more closely
he looked at his own society. And soon he was making
caustic comments about the yawning gap between
Soviet boasts on the achievements of socialism and
the reality of Soviet backwardness.
He eventually came to see the system that prevailed
in the Soviet Union as inherently repressive. Sakharov
attributed Russia’s epidemic of alcoholism to the
leadership’s having purged the governing system of
moral considerations. He said it was “important that
our society gradually emerge from the dead end of
unspirituality.” He spoke of the need for the “systematic
defense of human rights and ideals, and not a
political struggle, which would inevitably incite people
to violence, sectarianism, and frenzy.” 12
The Kremlin has worked hard to make Russians forget
that he once ranked among the eminent figures of
global political protest. The current leadership is
especially determined to ensure that Sakharov’s core
goals disappear from the debate: a Russia committed
to humane and democratic values, a government that
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deals honestly with the people, and a country that
lives at peace with its neighbors.
The Ukraine factor
The falsification of history that began during the early
years of Putin’s leadership has been intensified in the
wake of the invasion of Ukraine and seizure of Crimea
in 2014. To convince the Russian people that waging
a form of low-intensity warfare against a neighbor was
justified, Putin has stepped up efforts to depict the
West as antagonistic to Russian interests, launched
a campaign to label those responsible for Ukraine’s
Maidan uprising as fascists, driven home the idea that
ethnic Russians living outside the Russian Federation
were under relentless persecution, and identified
Russian critics of aggression against Ukraine as a
treasonous fifth column.
A recurring theme of post-Crimea propaganda is the
notion that Russia faces the same threats from the
West today as it did during the Cold War. To make this
point, Russian television aired a documentary meant to
justify one of the more shameful events of the Soviet
period, the 1968 Soviet-led Warsaw Pact intervention in
Czechoslovakia. The invasion was undertaken to crush
the reformist Prague Spring movement, whose leaders
were moving increasingly in the direction of jettisoning
state socialism, embracing democratic reforms, and
seeking a kind of neutral geopolitical status much like
that enjoyed at the time by Austria. The documentary
used archival footage to build a concocted case that
the invasion was necessary to thwart a NATO-inspired
coup in Prague. 13 The clear purpose of the film was to
portray NATO as a permanent threat to Russian interests,
as much in 2014 as in 1968. 14
Another television documentary focused on the seizure
of Crimea, a year after the event. As Lucian Kim
has noted, the program is something of a celebration
of the tactics of dictatorship. The filmmakers offer no
conflicting opinions and present American leaders
as puppet masters. Among other claims, the documentary
asserts that Washington gave the Maidan
forces information about Ukrainian security methods
that American officials had obtained during bilateral
exchange programs with the Kyiv government. 15
To further bolster the case for the invasion of Ukraine,
the Russian propaganda machinery devoted great
energy to demonstrating the fascist nature of the
Maidan, relying heavily on invocations of Soviet
history. The Ukrainian protesters and activists who
helped drive out corrupt president Viktor Yanukovych,
and the European-oriented politicians who replaced
him, were repeatedly labeled as present-day followers
of Stepan Bandera, a controversial nationalist leader
who fought the Soviets and at times cooperated with
the Nazis in a doomed campaign for an independent
Ukraine during World War II. Russian media presented
Bandera and his followers as unambiguous allies of
the Nazis, and highlighted their wartime atrocities.
Russian media also featured a number of documentaries
that emphasized Russian, as opposed to Soviet,
resistance to Hitler. The objective was to equate
contemporary Ukrainians who favored full sovereignty
and independence from Russian influence with Nazi
collaborators and pogromists. This served not only
to explain Moscow’s response, but also to deter any
emulation of the Maidan protests in Russia itself.
The assault on academic freedom
Since the occupation of Crimea and invasion of eastern
Ukraine, it has become increasingly dangerous
to express dissenting views on Russian foreign policy
in Russia’s schools and universities. Putin made the
point quite clearly in a speech before the parliament
in March 2014, when he referred to a “fifth column”
and a “disparate bunch of national traitors” sowing
discord within Russia. 16
In the ensuing months, anyone criticizing Russian policy
risked the label of foreign agent, which in Russian
usage is tantamount to being called a spy. Around
this time a new website called Predatel (traitor) began
listing alleged traitors, specifically those who had
criticized Russia’s annexation of Crimea or supported
sanctions against Russian officials. The site encouraged
Russians to send in the names of other traitors.
Meanwhile, a number of educators fell afoul of the
new policies on the teaching of history. In March 2014,
Andrey Zubov, who held a position at the Moscow State
Institute of International Relations, was fired for “an immoral
act”—namely an article he published in the newspaper
Vedomosti that criticized the seizure of Crimea
and compared it to Hitler’s annexation of Austria. “We
must not behave the way the Germans once behaved,
based on the promises of Goebbels and Hitler,” he
wrote. The university’s explanation claimed that Zubov’s
writings “contradict Russia’s foreign policy and inflict
careless, irresponsible criticism on the actions of the
state.” 17 In a similar incident, senior sociologist Aleksandr
Konkov was let go by Sakhalin State University after
declaring that Russia had seized Crimea opportunistically
because Ukraine was weak, not because Crimeans
themselves had clamored for the takeover. 18
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BREAKING DOWN DEMOCRACY: Goals, Strategies, and Methods of Modern Authoritarians
In May 2014, Putin signed a new law that criminalized
the purposeful distortion of the Soviet Union’s role in
World War II. It could easily be applied to historians
who, for example, criticize Stalin’s Great Terror and
its decimation of the military leadership in the years
before the war. 19 Historians who make the “wrong”
interpretations of the Hitler-Stalin pact, the huge
casualties suffered by the Red Army, or the rape and
plunder committed by Soviet troops as they marched
toward Berlin might also risk criminal penalties.
In late 2016 the Russian Security Council discussed
the establishment of a new center to counter the
“falsification” of history. The council placed the proposal
in the context of the country’s national security,
pointing to “deliberate destructive activity by foreign
state structures and international organizations to
realize geopolitical interests by means of carrying out
anti-Russian policies.”
A group of experts identified six topics from Russia’s
past that they claimed were being actively distorted
as part of an anti-Russia strategy. Among the topics:
the Soviet Union’s ethnic policies, the Hitler-Stalin
pact, the Soviet Union’s conduct during World War II,
the 1917 Russian Revolution, and the Soviet Union’s
suppression of uprisings in Hungary, Czechoslovakia,
and East Germany during the Cold War. 20 In each case,
the most serious and respected historical accounts
have been written by foreign scholars, due largely to
the pressures, including outright censorship, brought
to bear on Russian historians during Soviet times and
more recently during the Putin era.
China: Evading the past
Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward ranks among
the most deadly politically inspired catastrophes in
human history. From 1958 to 1962, Communist Party
authorities, under strict orders from Beijing, forcibly
herded millions of farmers into communes and then
proceeded to seize grain harvested in the countryside
to feed the urban population. The result, according to
long-standing estimates, was the death of some 30 million
people in the provinces. Historian Frank Dikötter,
who studied the archives in some of the most seriously
affected regions, has argued that the number of deaths
was at least 45 million, and others have cited higher
numbers. While most died of starvation, many were
tortured to death or murdered by local Communists. 21
To this day, Communist Party officials have refused to
acknowledge anything approaching the full dimensions
of the tragedy. Nor have they admitted that the
party, and especially Mao, were responsible. Often
they blame the weather. There are no official monuments
to the victims, no days of commemoration, no
serious histories available to the general public, and
most significantly, no effort to place accountability
where it belonged.
Chinese leaders may be even more concerned about
presenting the “correct” interpretation of history
than their Russian counterparts. An updated official
version of the party history that was released in
2011 took 16 years to draft, including four extensive
rewrites. It was vetted by 64 state and party bodies,
including the People’s Liberation Army. In telling the
story of the Great Leap Forward, the history admits
that the project brought great suffering, but credits
Mao with wanting to “change a picture of poverty and
backwardness and make China grow rich and strong
so that it could use its own strength to stand tall in
the forest of nations.” 22 In other words, one of the
century’s great politically driven famines was justified
because it supposedly contributed to China’s emergence
as a world power. The history also insists that
Mao tried to change course when he learned of the
growing rural suffering—an outright lie, as Mao actually
doubled down on the most disastrous policies.
The determination to suppress any real assessment
of the dark corners of Chinese history under the
Communist Party is also reflected in the exhibits at
the National Museum of China in Tiananmen Square.
Mao’s Cultural Revolution (1966–76), a period of political
terror and violent nationwide purges, is dispensed
with through one photograph and a brief caption,
located in an out-of-the-way part of the facility. As for
the famine, it is glossed over with the euphemistic
phrase, “the project of constructing socialism suffered
severe complications.” 23
Seven ‘don’t mentions’
In 2013, the General Office of the Communist Party
Central Committee issued a secret directive prohibiting
universities from permitting the discussion of
seven themes—the “Seven Don’t Mentions.” According
to the directive, lecturers were not allowed to take
up universal values, freedom of the press, civil society,
civic rights, elite cronyism, judicial independence, and
past mistakes of the Communist Party. 24
To independent-minded scholars, the most disturbing
item in the roster of Don’t Mentions was the leadership’s
mistakes. While the authorities have never come
close to permitting a serious investigation of either
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the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution,
these and other aspects of the party’s past were not
considered utterly taboo, as long as the discussion did
not lead to serious challenges to orthodox historical
interpretations. According to the policies set down
under Xi Jinping’s leadership, talking in classrooms
about Mao’s errors is now forbidden. 25
The drive to inculcate a national amnesia on the
worst abuses of the Communist era is not limited to
university courses. Commentary and discussion in the
media and on the internet are also heavily censored,
especially on anniversary days when, in normal
societies, problematic events of the past are remembered
and debated. 26 The most sensitive anniversary,
of course, falls on June 4, marking the deadly 1989
crackdown on prodemocracy protests in Tiananmen
Square. Even the most oblique or coded reference to
that date on social media is quickly censored.
There are no museums devoted the Cultural Revolution
or the Great Leap Forward. The archives of
the Cultural Revolution period are mainly closed to
researchers. Chinese historians have made some important
breakthroughs, but can discuss their findings
only with small groups of peers.
The Communist Party’s refusal to come to terms with
the crimes of the Mao era has enabled a revival of
the former leader’s personality cult that has captured
the support of millions of Chinese. As Jamil Anderlini
wrote in the Financial Times, Mao has come to be
seen as a symbol of a “simpler, fairer society—a time
when everyone was poorer but at least they were
equally poor.” 27 Xi and his colleagues have actively
promoted Maoist images, songs, and propaganda
themes as ornaments of Chinese nationalism, and
used Mao-style tactics and terminology in their drive
for ideological discipline and political loyalty.
The melding of nationalism and reverence for Mao is
no accident. According to the regime’s updated historical
narrative, China was subjugated by foreign powers
for more than a century until the party took power in
1949 and restored the country’s national greatness.
Admitting Mao’s abuses would mean admitting that
the first three decades of Communist rule left China
poor, isolated, and traumatized, and that only the
partial abandonment of party doctrine and control
allowed the country to prosper.
A side effect of the party’s appropriation of Chinese nationalism
is a renewed hostility toward the foreign powers
that kept China weak before Communist rule. Basic
history textbooks—in addition to omitting or distorting
the mistakes, failures, and criminal acts of the Communist
leadership—focus on China’s persecution at the
hands of outsiders, especially Japan. Some Chinese
critics worry that the teaching of history is cultivating
an alarming degree of xenophobia and jingoism. 28
History held hostage
In much of the world today, there are or have been
major efforts to confront uncomfortable truths
about the past. This is certainly true of Germany and
South Africa. Latin American countries like Chile and
Argentina have probed the histories of ugly conflicts
between military juntas and Marxist revolutionaries. In
China’s own backyard, South Korea and Taiwan have
moved to address the complex legacies, including
outright crimes, of dictators.
The process of accounting for the mistakes and
crimes of earlier decades can raise a tangle of ethical
and emotional challenges in any country. But resistance
to a full examination of the past is especially
bitter in societies where communism held sway. In
China, the heirs of Mao still control the state, and the
very legitimacy of the system is built on a veneration
of the Great Helmsman. In Russia, the Putin leadership
praises the achievements of Stalin and aspires to
the superpower status of the Soviet Union. A consequence
of this ahistorical nostalgia is that in Russia
today, 26 percent of those polled by Levada believe
that Stalinist repression was necessary; a decade
ago, the figure was just 9 percent. Likewise, only 45
percent told Levada that political persecution was a
crime; in 2007, the figure was 72 percent. 29
The communist system was responsible for four of
the most destructive episodes of the 20th century:
Stalin’s purges, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural
Revolution, and the Cambodian genocide. Add to this
the persecutions inflicted on the people of the Baltic
states, Eastern Europeans, Cubans, North Koreans,
and many others, and the population affected by mass
killings and misery swells even further. While few people
today admire totalitarian Marxism as a governing
system, there is a reluctance to reject it with the same
moral clarity as in assessments of Nazism. Scholars,
not to mention political figures, who express even modest
admiration for Hitler are immediately and properly
condemned. As long as Stalin and Mao, two of history’s
worst mass murderers, escape similar opprobrium in
their own countries, a reckoning with historical truth
and an understanding of its lessons will be postponed.
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BREAKING DOWN DEMOCRACY: Goals, Strategies, and Methods of Modern Authoritarians
1. Andrew E. Kramer, “New Russian History: Yes, People Died, but ...,” New York Times, August 15, 2007, http://www.nytimes.
com/2007/08/15/world/europe/15iht-letter.1.7122937.html.
2. “The Rewriting of History,” Economist, November 8, 2007, http://www.economist.com/node/10102921.
3. Gabriela Baczynska, “Putin Accused of Soviet Tactics in Drafting New History Book,” Reuters, November 18, 2013, http://www.
reuters.com/article/us-russia-history-idUSBRE9AH0JK20131118.
4. “The Rewriting of History,” Economist.
5. Ben Hoyle, “Putin Rewrites History for New School Textbook,” Times (London), November 20, 2013, http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/
news/world/europe/article3926546.ece.
6. Gabriela Baczynska, “Putin Accused of Soviet Tactics in Drafting New History Book.”
7. “​Merkel Listens as Putin Defends USSR’s Pact with Nazi Germany,” Kviv Post, May 10, 2015, https://www.kyivpost.com/article/content/war-against-ukraine/merkel-listens-as-putin-defends-ussrs-pact-with-nazi-germany-388241.html;
“Putin Defends Ribbentrop-Molotov
Pact in Press Conference with Merkel,” Moscow Times, May 11, 2015, https://themoscowtimes.com/news/putin-defends-ribbentrop-molotov-pact-in-press-conference-with-merkel-46441.
8. Linas Linkevičius, “Putin Has Defended the Nazi-Soviet Pact. Time for the West to Wake Up,” Guardian, November 7, 2014, https://
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/07/vladimir-putin-defended-nazi-soviet-pact-west-world-war-two; Tom Parfitt,
“Vladimir Putin Says There Was Nothing Wrong with Soviet Union’s Pact with Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany,” Telegraph, November 6,
2014, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/vladimir-putin/11213255/Vladimir-Putin-says-there-was-nothing-wrong-with-
Soviet-Unions-pact-with-Adolf-Hitlers-Nazi-Germany.html; Timothy Snyder, “Putin’s New Nostalgia,” New York Review of Books,
November 10, 2014, http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2014/11/10/putin-nostalgia-stalin-hitler/.
9. Reuters, “Putin: ‘We Understand the Fatality of an Iron Curtain,’” Business Insider, November 23, 2014, http://www.businessinsider.
com/r-putin-says-russia-is-not-isolated-tass-2014-11.
10. Fred Weir, “How a Liberal Bastion Is Persevering in an Increasingly Illiberal Moscow,” Christian Science Monitor, January 25, 2016,
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2016/0125/How-a-liberal-bastion-is-persevering-in-an-increasingly-illiberal-Moscow.
11. Serge Schmemann, “Sakharov, Little Remembered in Putin’s Russia,” New York Times, December 17, 2014, http://www.nytimes.
com/2014/12/18/opinion/sakharov-little-remembered-in-putins-russia.html.
12. Arch Puddington, “A Prophet Ignored in His Own Land: Andrey D. Sakharov,” Freedom at Issue, September 28, 2015, https://freedomhouse.org/blog/prophet-ignored-his-own-land-andrey-d-sakharov.
13. Tony Barber, “Russia Rewrites History of the Prague Spring,” Financial Times, June 3, 2015, https://www.ft.com/content/340a086c-
09df-11e5-b6bd-00144feabdc0.
14. Andrew Pulver, “New Russian Invasion Documentary Dismays Czech and Slovak Governments,” Guardian, June 2, 2015, https://
www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jun/02/new-russian-invasion-documentary-dismays-czech-slovak-governments; “Russian
Documentary on ‘Helpful’ 1968 Invasion Angers Czechs,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, June 1, 2015, http://www.rferl.org/a/
russian-documentary-on-helpful-1968-invasion-angers-czechs/27047867.html.
15. Lucian Kim, “Vladimir Putin’s New Faux Documentary Is Trying to Rewrite the History of His Own Aggression,” Slate, March 19, 2015,
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2015/03/vladimir_putin_s_documentary_is_trying_to_rewrite_history_crimea_the_way.html.
16. Joshua Yaffa, “Putin’s New War on ‘Traitors,’” New Yorker, March 28, 2014, http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/putins-newwar-on-traitors.
17. “Russian Professor Sacked over Criticism of Actions in Ukraine,” Reuters, March 24, 2014, http://www.reuters.com/article/
us-ukraine-crisis-professor-idUSBREA2N1BM20140324; “Russian Propaganda: 1984 in 2014,” Economist, March 29, 2014, http://
www.economist.com/news/europe/21599829-new-propaganda-war-underpins-kremlins-clash-west-1984-2014.
18. Sergey Berzin, “Russian Academics Spooked by Zubov’s Dismissal,” University World News, April 11, 2014, http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20140410172832334.
19. “Putin Signs Law Criminalizing Denial of Nazi War Crimes,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, May 5, 2014, http://www.rferl.org/a/
russia-criminalizes-nazi-denial/25373990.html.
20. Tom Balmforth, “Russia’s Security Council Turns Its Gaze to History and 1917,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, October 30, 2016.
http://www.rferl.org/a/russia-history-distortion-information-attacks/28087105.html.
21. Gao Wenqian, “China Must Purge Mao’s Ghost,” New York Times, December 25, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/26/opinion/china-must-purge-maos-ghost.html.
22. Andrew Higgins, “In China, a Long Path of Writing the Communist Party’s History,” Washington Post, May 26, 2011, https://www.
washingtonpost.com/world/in-china-a-long-path-of-writing-the-communist-partys-history/2011/05/16/AGDfMECH_story.html.
23. Ian Johnson, “At China’s New Museum, History Toes Party Line,” New York Times, April 3, 2011, http://www.nytimes.
com/2011/04/04/world/asia/04museum.html.
24. Anne Henochowicz, “Sensitive Words: Seven Don’t Mentions and More,” China Digital Times, May 11, 2013, http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2013/05/sensitive-words-seven-say-nots-and-more/.
25. Raymond Li, “Seven Subjects Off Limits for Teaching, Chinese Universities Told,” South China Morning Post, May 10, 2013, http://
www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1234453/seven-subjects-limits-teaching-chinese-universities-told.
26. Tom Mitchell, “China Deploys Amnesia on Fiftieth Anniversary of Cultural Revolution,” Financial Times, May 13, 2016, https://www.
ft.com/content/40b84132-18cf-11e6-b197-a4af20d5575e.
27. Jamil Anderlini, “The Return of Mao: A New Threat to China’s Politics,” Financial Times, September 29, 2016, https://www.ft.com/
content/63a5a9b2-85cd-11e6-8897-2359a58ac7a5.
28. Cameron White, “Beijing’s Textbook Hypocrisy,” Wall Street Journal, June 17, 2015, http://www.wsj.com/articles/beijings-textbook-h-1434555035.
29. Maxim Trudolyubov, “Putin Plays Politics with Russia’s Terrible Past,” Newsweek, November 3, 2016, http://www.newsweek.com/
putin-plays-politics-russias-terrible-past-515906.
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Chapter 5
The Rise of ‘Illiberal Democracy’
In July 2014, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán
gave what has come to be known as his “illiberal
democracy” speech before an ethnic Hungarian audience
in Băile Tuşnad, Romania. 1 Several points in his
remarks are worth noting:
• Orbán urged his listeners to no longer regard the
1989 triumph over communism as the reference
point for developments in Hungary. Instead of
measuring progress from the transition from
dictatorship and foreign domination to elections,
civil liberties, and sovereignty, Orbán said Hungary
should adopt a new point of departure, the onset
of the global financial crisis in 2008, which also
marked the European Union’s greatest setback.
• He cited U.S. president Barack Obama and various
unnamed sources on the West’s weakness,
including an “internationally recognized analyst”
who wrote that liberal values today “embody
corruption, sex, and violence.”
• He suggested that in the future it would be
systems that were “not Western, not liberal,
not liberal democracies, and perhaps not even
democracies” that would create successful and
competitive societies. He asserted that “the
stars of the international analysts today are
Singapore, China, India, Russia, and Turkey.”
• In a passage devoted to the obstacles facing his
own political party, Fidesz, as it seeks to build an
alternative to liberalism, Orbán singled out civil
society and the nongovernmental sector. Civil
society critics, he insisted, “are not nongovernmental
organizations” but “paid political activists
who are attempting to enforce foreign interests
here in Hungary.” (In a separate speech in early
2016, he referred to “hordes of implacable human
rights warriors” who “feel an unquenchable
desire to lecture and accuse us.” 2 )
In this relatively short address, Orbán neatly summarized
most of the key factors that distinguish a fully
democratic “Western” system based on liberal values
and accountability from what he calls an “Eastern”
approach based on a strong state, a weak opposition,
and emaciated checks and balances.
”There is a race underway to find the
method of community organization,
the state, which is most capable of
making a nation and a community
internationally competitive.… [T]he
most popular topic in thinking today
is trying to understand how systems
that are not Western, not liberal, not
liberal democracies, and perhaps not
even democracies, can nevertheless
make their nations successful.”
—Viktor Orbán, prime minister of Hungary
“If we want to organize our national
state to replace the liberal state, it is
very important that we make it clear
that we are not opposing nongovernmental
organizations here, and
it is not nongovernmental organizations
who are moving against us,
but paid political activists who are
attempting to enforce foreign interests
here in Hungary.”
—Viktor Orbán
First, his exhortation to no longer regard the events of
1989 as a seminal, even sacred, juncture in Hungarian
history is noteworthy given Orbán’s biography. While
he often cites his own role in the anticommunist
struggle and describes himself as a freedom fighter,
he now regards 1989—so redolent of liberal values,
ideas about individual freedom, and democratic
solidarity—as an intellectual impediment to his plans
for a Hungary that is skeptical of such ideals and of
European integration.
Second, Orbán included full-blown dictatorships
(Russia and China) in the roster of governments he
admires, along with quasi-democratic illiberal states
(Turkey and Singapore) and one genuine, if inconsistent,
democracy (India).
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BREAKING DOWN DEMOCRACY: Goals, Strategies, and Methods of Modern Authoritarians
Third, he signaled his support for majoritarianism,
with its disdain for checks and balances and civil
society, as opposed to the values of pluralism that are
enshrined in liberal democratic practice.
The message here is important. For many, illiberalism’s
defining feature is intolerance toward minority groups:
the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender)
community, Roma, Muslims, refugees and migrants
of all sorts. But in Hungary and elsewhere, illiberal
government signifies something much more comprehensive
than the prime minister asserting that “every
single migrant poses a public security and terror risk,” 3
and that refugees bring “gangs hunting down our
women and daughters” 4 —two of Orbán’s more incendiary
declarations.
The Hungarian leader is instead telling us that illiberalism
involves a wholesale rejection of liberal values and
democratic norms, with all that this implies for politics
and governance. Fidesz’s “reform” efforts have been less
concerned with the repression of unpopular minorities
than with the creation of a system in which the
institutions of pluralism are hollowed out and the ruling
party’s dominance is assured over the long term.
Having come to office with a two-thirds parliamentary
majority in 2010, Orbán was able to rewrite the
constitution without the consent of the opposition.
He rushed through a series of constitutional changes,
cardinal laws (requiring a two-thirds vote to change or
remove), and regular laws that had the effect of turning
the Hungarian political system upside down.
Among the steps taken by Fidesz after its 2010 triumph:
• The Constitutional Court was overhauled so that
Fidesz appointees became a majority and its
jurisdiction was narrowed. 5
• The government eliminated the independent
Fiscal Council, responsible for overseeing budgetary
policy, then replaced it with a new council
under Fidesz control.
• A new election law created gerrymandered legislative
districts that were favorable to Fidesz. 6
• Orbán gave voting rights to ethnic Hungarians
in neighboring countries, who were likely to
support Fidesz. 7
• The government created a new press authority
whose chair and members were Fidesz loyalists.
The authority was given wide-ranging powers to
fine media outlets. 8
While the measures listed above were some of the most
notorious of the Fidesz initiatives, in some cases drawing
critical attention from European oversight bodies,
they represent only part of the campaign that has transformed
Hungary into a full-fledged illiberal democracy.
Perhaps the more far-reaching measures introduced
under Orban have been in the economic sphere. Since
2010, Hungary has evolved into a crony capitalist state
par excellence. But unlike in outright kleptocracies
such as Russia, where the regime itself is organized
around the plunder of public wealth by the ruling
clique, Orbán has used state laws and procurement
contracts to create a wealthy Fidesz-affiliated business
constituency that can finance political campaigns, reward
party supporters, and operate friendly media outlets.
The enrichment of cronies is less an objective in
itself than a means of fortifying the dominant political
party against any future challenge from the opposition. 9
While Orbán is highly unpopular in European liberal
circles, he has gained a following among conservatives
in both Europe and the United States. At a 2015
congressional subcommittee hearing in Washington,
one Republican legislator after another defended the
Fidesz government, often in ways that demonstrated
blatant ignorance of political conditions in Budapest. 10
Conservatives praise Orbán for his commitment to
traditional values and decisive leadership, but they
ignore the course he has set for the economy.
Since taking power in 2010, the prime minister has
violated practically every principle of the free market
and prudent economic stewardship. Were Hungary a
developing state in Latin America or Africa, donor governments
would likely have imposed special conditions
on foreign assistance given the overt acts of corruption
and cronyism that Fidesz has embraced as a matter of
public policy. This includes a pattern of awarding government
contracts to businesses with Fidesz ties, the
adoption of special laws to benefit Fidesz supporters in
the business community, the use of punitive taxation
against foreign-owned corporations, tax concessions
for corporations controlled by Fidesz loyalists, and the
granting of control over nationalized sectors of the
economy to Fidesz supporters.
In its relentless drive to hand economic power to its
allies, Fidesz resembles the old-style political ma-
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chines, with their vast patronage networks, that presided
over American cities a half-century ago. Fidesz
is apparently seeking to ensure that rival parties will
never have access to the funds or influence necessary
to unseat the incumbent government.
Is Orbán a Central European version of Putin?
Orbán’s domestic critics have often compared his
governing style to that of Russian president Vladimir
Putin. On the surface, the comparison seems unfair.
Hungary is still rated Free by Freedom House. It still
has genuine opposition parties, however weak, in
parliament, a relatively unfettered civil society sector,
freedom of assembly, and other civil liberties. Hungary
has also been spared the routine violence that marks
Russian politics. 11
But Orbán also began his current tenure in an environment
very different from the Russia inherited by Putin.
Hungary had been a successful, if flawed, democracy
for two decades before Orbán took office in 2010.
It was a member of the European Union (EU) and
subject to that bloc’s norms and regulations. It was
also a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO). For Hungarians, the events of 1989 led to
democratic liberties and freedom from foreign domination.
For Russia, 1989 and 1991 meant the loss of a
vast empire and the beginning of a decade of political
and economic upheaval.
Given their different contexts, the striking feature in a
Putin-Orbán comparison is the similarities. The following
are some of the more obvious:
• Both have repeatedly expressed disdain for
“Western” liberal values.
• Both have employed a combination of control
over state broadcasters and crony ownership of
the private press to dominate the mainstream
media, though Hungary’s environment remains
notably more free than Russia’s.
• Both have hollowed out the institutions that
provide oversight and transparency regarding
actions by the executive branch.
• Both have made clear their dislike for civil
society organizations that pursue reformist or
human rights missions. While Orbán has yet to
enact Russian-style laws to declare such groups
“foreign agents” or ban them as “undesirable,” Fidesz
has announced the intention to introduce
parliamentary legislation designed to harass
NGOs and curb their funding. 12
• Both have seized political opportunities offered
by the presence of ethnic compatriots in surrounding
countries. Putin has exploited supposed
discrimination against ethnic Russians
and certain other minorities in Ukraine, Georgia,
Moldova, and the Baltic states as justification
for military intervention or hostile propaganda.
Orbán has brought nearby Hungarian minorities
into his political coalition by giving them the
right to vote in Hungarian national elections and
making it even easier for them to cast ballots
than it is for Hungarian citizens who are temporarily
working in Europe or elsewhere. 13
• As a matter of high priority, both Orbán and Putin
have secured domination over the judiciary
with the goal of removing its role as a check on
their power.
‘Law and Justice’ in Poland
Like Hungary, Poland was until recently regarded as
one of the chief success stories from the wave of democratization
that accompanied the end of the Cold
War. Poland’s democratic institutions were imperfect,
and the economic gains that were made possible by a
rapid changeover to free-market policies were spread
unevenly among the Polish people. But the achievements
seemed to outweigh the deficiencies. The
country’s rate of growth was impressive by European
standards; it was one of the few EU member states to
emerge relatively unscathed from the financial crisis
of 2008. Its leaders exercised influence within the EU
and NATO, and enjoyed global respect.
According to the leaders of the archconservative Law
and Justice (PiS) party, however, Poland was a deeply
troubled society whose system of government was in
need of a top-to-bottom overhaul.
Ahead of the 2015 elections, PiS appropriated a vocabulary
similar to that of Fidesz in its 2010 campaign.
It depicted the center-right government as the architect
of a failed economy. It denounced mainstream
leaders as more comfortable with the cosmopolitan
liberal values of Brussels and Berlin than with the
traditional Christian morality of rural Poland. And PiS
suggested that the liberal establishment that had governed
for most of the postcommunist period had “stowww.freedomhouse.org
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BREAKING DOWN DEMOCRACY: Goals, Strategies, and Methods of Modern Authoritarians
len” the democratic revolution from the Polish people
by failing to carry out a proper purge of communists
and their collaborators. 14 PiS even initiated a campaign
to sully the reputation of Lech Walesa, leader of
the anticommunist Solidarity movement in the 1980s,
by accusing him of working as a communist agent. 15
Since coming to power with a parliamentary majority
in October 2015, PiS has embarked on a course of
change that places it solidly in the illiberal camp, with
many of the initiatives mirroring those enacted by
Fidesz in Hungary.
As in Hungary, an initial focus for the new government
was securing control of the Constitutional Tribunal.
PiS has moved to pack the court with its own appointees,
using tactics that are blatantly illegal according
to Polish law and which have drawn criticism both
from the EU and the United States. 16 However, party
leader Jarosław Kaczyński, who holds a seat in the
parliament but no formal government position, has
much greater ambitions to refashion Poland along
culturally conservative and politically illiberal lines.
The media are a major target. The government quickly
asserted control over public broadcasters and purged
them of journalists whom it regarded as loyal to the opposition.
17 PiS officials have also spoken of the need to
“restore balance” to the private media by, among other
things, taking measures to reduce foreign ownership of
key outlets. Already, the new government has used its
power over the allocation of state advertising to reward
friendly media and punish its critics. 18
The new government has involved itself in a debate
over history. It proposed a law that would punish those
who use the phrase “Polish death camps” to refer to
sites established by Nazi Germany in Poland during
World War II. 19 PiS leaders have demonized scholars,
such as the eminent historian Jan Gross, who have
published research on the participation of Poles in
the persecution of Jews during the war. Gross was
questioned by a prosecutor on his research, and there
was talk of rescinding an award he had received. 20 The
government threatened to withdraw support from the
Museum of the Second World War, a project that was
near completion in Gdansk and enjoyed strong support
from such highly regarded scholars as Timothy Snyder
and Norman Davies. PiS complained that the museum
focused on all victims of the conflict rather than on
specifically Polish suffering. 21
Perhaps the most unsettling measure enacted under
the PiS government is an ambitious law that, in the
name of counterterrorism, gives the security services
sweeping powers over telecommunications and
personal information. With this legislation, Poland
became one of the first countries in the democratic
world to embrace the use of telecommunications
shutdowns in a particular area, a measure that
smacks of digital repression. 22
The law gives Poland’s domestic intelligence agency
unrestricted access to personal data without approval
from a court or any other body. Tax reports,
vehicle information, insurance information, financial
statements, and other records are all now available
to the intelligence service of a government that has
made a point of naming party loyalists to key security
positions. The legislation also grants the domestic
security agency the ability to shut down websites. The
action can be reviewed by a court within five days, but
this is far from reassuring in light of the government’s
efforts to exert political control over the judiciary.
The legislation is ostensibly needed to counter acts of
terrorism. But Poland has not experienced a terrorist
act since 1939, and has one of the smallest populations
of Muslim immigrants—often perceived as a risk
factor for terrorism—in Europe. Furthermore, the law
is written in vague terms that give the government
great latitude to decide what is and is not an act of
terrorism. 23 Given the PiS leadership’s penchant for
smearing its political adversaries as traitors to the
Polish nation, 24 it is not inconceivable that such a law
could one day be used against the opposition.
Illiberalism’s preconditions
The triumph of illiberal governments in countries like
Hungary and Poland raises the question of whether
the phenomenon will spread further. Might illiberalism
come to dominate a society with much deeper
democratic roots—Austria, France, or even the United
States?
From a practical standpoint, illiberal forces are unlikely
to transform countries where the political divide is relatively
equal and the established parties have strong,
loyal followings.
It is only when the mainstream parties suffer catastrophic
electoral setbacks that illiberal challengers
can rush into the breach.
The Socialist Party had governed Hungary for much of
the period since 1989, but it rapidly lost credibility due
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to economic mismanagement and political dishonesty.
It was devastated by the 2010 election results, and
has failed to reemerge as a viable opposition entity. In
Poland, the center-right Civic Platform had been the
dominant force until the 2015 PiS victory. It achieved
economic success and gained respect in Brussels,
but lost the support of the working class, the provinces,
and all those who felt bypassed by globalization.
Similarly, the elitist secular parties that had ruled
Turkey for most of the 20th century were swept aside
by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development
Party, which appealed to a rising Islamist middle class.
And in Venezuela, it took only a few years in power
for Hugo Chávez to win over the country’s poor and
marginalize the conservative mainstream parties that
had led the country for decades.
A second precondition for the emergence of illiberal regimes
is a fundamental weakness in democratic institutions
beyond the political sphere, including the media,
civil society, anticorruption agencies, and the judiciary.
In many newer democracies, these checks and balances
remain fragile: It is widely assumed that whoever
controls the parliament will also come to dominate the
judiciary and the security services, and the media are
vulnerable to intimidation or partisan capture.
Illiberalism seems less likely to gain traction in the
United States because the courts, for example, are
proudly independent, and freedom of the press is firmly
protected by statute and constitutional jurisprudence.
But if illiberal forces have sufficient political
will and the defenders of democratic institutions lack
conviction and public support, anything is possible.
Polls have shown that popular faith in Congress and
the Supreme Court are at historic lows. A growing
number of Americans question the effectiveness of
representative democracy and ask whether it would
be better to let the president make decisions unencumbered
by the legislative branch. An astonishing
one in six Americans believe it would be acceptable
to have the army rule. And with each passing generation,
a smaller share of U.S. citizens believe that living
under a democracy is important. 25
1. “Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Speech at the 25th Bálványos Summer Free University and Student Camp,” Website of the Hungarian
Government, July 26, 2014, http://www.kormany.hu/en/the-prime-minister/the-prime-minister-s-speeches/prime-minister-viktor-orban-s-speech-at-the-25th-balvanyos-summer-free-university-and-student-camp.
2. “Speech by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán on 15 March,” Website of the Hungarian Government, March 16, 2016, http://www.kormany.hu/en/the-prime-minister/the-prime-minister-s-speeches/speech-by-prime-minister-viktor-orban-on-15-march.
3. Cynthia Kroet, “Viktor Orbán: Migrants Are ‘a Poison,’” Politico, July 27, 2016, http://www.politico.eu/article/viktor-orban-migrants-are-a-poison-hungarian-prime-minister-europe-refugee-crisis/.
4. “Speech by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán on 15 March,” Website of the Hungarian Government, March 16, 2016, http://www.kormany.hu/en/the-prime-minister/the-prime-minister-s-speeches/speech-by-prime-minister-viktor-orban-on-15-march.
5. See for example “Hungary,” in Freedom in the World 2011 (New York: Freedom House, 2011), https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2011/hungary.
6. “Hungary,” in Freedom in the World 2015 (New York: Freedom House, 2015), https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2015/hungary.
7. Ibid.
8. “Hungary,” in Freedom of the Press 2012 (New York: Freedom House, 2012), https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-press/2012/
hungary.
9. “Bálint Magyar’s Latest Book: Post-Communist Mafia State: The Case of Hungary,” Hungarian Spectrum, February 19, 2016, http://
hungarianspectrum.org/2016/02/19/balint-magyars-latest-book-post-communist-mafia-state-the-case-of-hungary/.
10. “Kim Lane Scheppele: Hungary and the State of American Democracy,” Hungarian Spectrum, May 21, 2015, http://hungarianspectrum.org/2015/05/21/kim-lane-scheppele-hungary-and-the-state-of-american-democracy/.
11. “Hungary,” in Freedom in the World 2016 (New York: Freedom House, 2016), https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2016/hungary.
12. Pablo Gorondi, “Hungary Lawmakers Debate Bill Seen Meant to Intimidate NGOs,” Associated Press, April 19, 2017, https://apnews.
com/f70fa05a11fa4ec389d388b1f50aca19.
13. Mitchell A. Orenstein, Péter Krekó, and Attila Juhász. “The Hungarian Putin?” Foreign Affairs, February 8, 2015, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/hungary/2015-02-08/hungarian-putin.
14. “Poland: An Inconvenient Truth,” Financial Times, May 1, 2016, https://www.ft.com/content/4344ca44-0b94-11e6-9cd4-2be-
898308be3.
15. Dalibor Rohac, “’Illiberal Democracy’ Spreads to Poland,” Wall Street Journal, June 9, 2016, http://www.wsj.com/articles/illiberal-democracy-spreads-to-poland-1465413404.
16. Noah Feldman, “Poland’s New Leaders Take Aim at Democracy,” Bloomberg View, December 31, 2015, https://www.bloomberg.
com/view/articles/2015-12-31/poland-s-new-leaders-take-aim-at-democracy.
17. Alison Smale and Joanna Berendt, “Poland’s Conservative Government Puts Curbs on State TV News,” New York Times, July 3,
2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/04/world/europe/polands-conservative-government-puts-curbs-on-state-tv-news.html.
www.freedomhouse.org
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BREAKING DOWN DEMOCRACY: Goals, Strategies, and Methods of Modern Authoritarians
18. Jan Cienski, “Polish Media Veers Back to Pre-1989,” Politico, July 11, 2016, http://www.politico.eu/article/polish-tv-viewers-turnoff-tune-out-drop-out-poland-kaczynski/.
19. “Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s Party Is Rewriting the History of Poland,” Financial Times, March 11, 2016, https://www.ft.com/content/67532c78-e62d-11e5-a09b-1f8b0d268c39.
20. Ibid.
21. Vanessa Gera, “Polish Leaders Threaten Fate of Nearly Finished WWII Museum,” Washington Times, April 24, 2016, http://www.
washingtontimes.com/news/2016/apr/24/polish-leaders-threaten-fate-of-nearly-finished-ww/.
22. Jan Rydzak, “Now Poland’s Government Is Coming After the Internet,” Foreign Policy, June 10, 2016, http://foreignpolicy.
com/2016/06/10/now-polands-government-is-coming-after-the-internet/.
23. Ibid.
24. Henry Foy, “Poland’s New Majoritarians,” American Interest, June 7, 2016, http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/06/07/polands-new-majoritarians/.
25. Roberto Foa and Yascha Mounk, “Across the Globe, a Growing Disillusionment with Democracy,” New York Times, September 15,
2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/15/opinion/across-the-globe-a-growing-disillusionment-with-democracy.html.
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Freedom House
Chapter 6
Flacks and Friends
Did the Russian government attempt to surreptitiously
influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election
in Donald Trump’s favor? The answer to that question
may never be definitively known. There is, nevertheless,
a critical mass of evidence that Kremlin-allied
forces were responsible for hacking into the Democratic
National Committee’s computers, stealing
millions of files, and turning the information over to
WikiLeaks, which in turn circulated it to the media.
Some may find the evidence unsatisfactory. But given
Russia’s well-established record of cyberwarfare,
previously directed at neighboring states like Estonia
and Ukraine, and the Russian regime’s dislike for the
Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, there is ample
reason to treat charges of Russian culpability as
strongly credible.
Another body of evidence can be found in Russia’s
record of involvement in the internal politics of a
number of countries in Europe, including European
Union (EU) member states. In fact, under Vladimir
Putin, Russia has repeatedly interfered in the affairs of
European states in ways that the Kremlin would regard
as intolerable if Russia were the target.
Russian involvement is usually camouflaged so as
to ensure a degree of deniability, but the disguise is
sometimes rather thin. In late 2014, France’s far-right
National Front party, led by Marine Le Pen, secured a
€9 million loan from a Russian bank with indirect ties
to the government in what many interpreted as a bet
by Putin on the future of French politics. Le Pen has
subsequently spoken favorably of Putin and criticized
the sanctions imposed on Russia by the EU. 1 She has
even called for a strategic alliance with Russia and
proposed a pan-European grouping that would include
Russia while leaving out the United States. By 2016, the
National Front was seeking more funding that would
enable it to participate on an equal footing with mainstream
parties in the 2017 presidential contest. 2
The 2014 loan came just months after the National
Front helped provide a veneer of legitimacy to Russia’s
illegal annexation of Crimea. Aymeric Chauprade, a Le
Pen adviser who once called Russia “the hope of the
world against new totalitarianism,” participated in an
observer mission to monitor the Crimean referendum
on secession from Ukraine and union with Russia. The
“As an operator, but not as a human
being, I would say Putin. The way he
played the whole Syria thing. Brilliant.”
—Nigel Farage, on the world leader he most admires
“I admire his cool head. Because
there is a cold war being waged
against him by the EU at the behest
of the United States…. I admire that
he has managed to restore pride and
contentment to a great nation that
had been humiliated and persecuted
for 70 years.”
—Marine Le Pen
“[Putin] makes a decision and he executes
it, quickly. And then everybody
reacts. That’s what you call a leader.”
—Rudy Giuliani
mission was arranged by a pro-Moscow organization
called the Eurasian Observatory for Elections and
Democracy, and consisted largely of politicians from
a variety of European far-right parties, including Hungary’s
Jobbik and Austria’s Freedom Party. The vote,
held under Russian military occupation, was widely regarded
as falling well short of international standards.
However, the Eurasian Observatory delegation gave
the referendum an enthusiastic thumbs-up. 3
Moscow has paid considerable attention to evolving
political developments in Central and Eastern Europe.
Despite their relatively recent histories of Soviet
subjugation and communist rule, a number of these
countries have seen the rise of populist or nationalist
parties that express admiration for or affinity with
Putin’s regime. Meanwhile, mainstream parties have
developed attitudes toward Russia that are notable
for their ambivalence, including on the pivotal issue of
the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine.
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BREAKING DOWN DEMOCRACY: Goals, Strategies, and Methods of Modern Authoritarians
In some countries, Russia has made progress among
both far-right nationalists and more traditional conservative
parties. In Hungary, for example, Moscow
has a reliable ally in Jobbik and a business partner in
the ruling Fidesz party, which has been critical of the
EU’s economic sanctions. 4 The Hungarian parliament
conducted an investigation into allegations that the
Kremlin was helping to finance Jobbik. There were
also charges that a Jobbik member of the European
Parliament was a Russian agent. Gábor Vona, the
chairman of Jobbik, has embraced the idea of Eurasianism
and speculated that Hungary could serve as
a “bridge” between Europe and Asia.
At the intergovernmental level, Russia in 2015 provided
Hungary with a $10.8 billion loan to expand the Paks
nuclear power plant, a facility that supplies 40 percent
of the country’s electricity. The project was to have
been put out for open bidding until Hungarian officials
abruptly decided to accept the proposal from Russia’s
state nuclear energy firm—financed by the Kremlin’s
loan—without competition. 5 Some believe that the
Paks deal is meant to encourage the Fidesz government
to continue its support for an EU policy that would be
more sympathetic toward Russian interests. 6 While the
Fidesz leader, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, has been
cautious in public statements about Putin and Russia,
he did identify Russia as one of several countries with
illiberal or authoritarian governments that would provide
the models for global political development in the
future, as opposed to supposedly declining powers like
the United States and the EU’s founding members. 7
The Russian government has also developed friendly
ties to parties in Slovakia. Marian Kotleba, leader of
the far-right People’s Party–Our Slovakia, supported
Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych in his decision
to reject an association agreement with the EU and
pursue closer ties with Russia instead—a decision
that ultimately led to Yanukovych’s fall from power in
February 2014. Slovakia’s left-leaning populist prime
minister, Robert Fico, has publicly expressed his lack
of enthusiasm for the EU sanctions imposed on Russia
following the invasion of Ukraine. 8
In other countries, there is evidence that Moscow has
bankrolled environmentalist protests against the development
of local hydrocarbon resources, which would
reduce European dependence on Russian oil and natural
gas. In 2012, street protests compelled Bulgaria’s
prime minister, Boyko Borisov, to cancel contracts with
Chevron to explore shale-oil sites in the country. Those
who suspect the Kremlin’s involvement in the demonstrations
point to a €20 million media campaign that
was handled by companies with Russian ties, as well
as enthusiastic support from Ataka, a far-right political
party that is aggressively pro-Russia. 9
Russia and the right
During the Cold War, the Soviet Union could count on
the uncritical support of a network of left-wing parties
and personalities in the democratic world. Some were
formally communist; others were independent leftists
or part of what was called the peace camp, which
argued that the West, especially the United States,
shared responsibility with the Soviets for the world’s
political tensions, and therefore chose a path of political
neutrality. In the Cold War’s later years, a growing
collection of business interests encouraged détente
between the Soviet Union and the United States due
to the economic opportunities it would offer.
Under Putin, Russia has formed its alliances on a
strictly nonideological basis. Russia has built close
diplomatic ties with Venezuela, governed by a socialist
movement; Iran, an authoritarian system under the
rule of Shiite Muslim clerics; Syria, a dictatorship with
nominally Arab nationalist views; and China, a formally
communist regime devoted to state-led capitalism.
The interests that draw these governments together
are a common hostility to democratic norms, a need
for allies to block criticism and sanctions at international
bodies, a fear of “color revolutions” and the
potential consequences of democracy-promotion
projects backed by foreign donors, and an adversarial
relationship with the United States.
In its dealings with European political parties or movements,
Russia adheres to a similar policy of ideological
indifference, focusing instead on those with an
interest in disrupting Europe’s political establishment
and weakening its unity. Thus Putin has courted leftist
parties like Syriza, which leads the current government
of Greece and opposes austerity measures
imposed by the EU. Nigel Farage, former leader of the
anti-EU United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP),
and Nick Griffin, head of the far-right British National
Party, have both praised Putin for his leadership qualities;
but so has Alex Salmond of the Scottish National
Party, which seeks Scottish independence within the
EU and supports social democratic policies.
For the most part, however, Russia’s allies in democratic
countries are found on the political right. A
Swedish journalist who examined votes in the European
Parliament reported that right-leaning Euroskeptic
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Freedom House
Putin’s Foreign Admirers
“Putin decides what he wants to do, and he
does it in half a day, right? He decided he had
to go to their parliament—he went to their
parliament, he got permission in 15 minutes.…
He makes a decision and he executes
it, quickly. Then everybody reacts. That’s what
you call a leader.”
—Rudolph Giuliani, former New York City mayor
“In my opinion, Putin is right on these issues.…
Obviously, he may be wrong about
many things, but he has taken a stand to protect
his nation’s children from the damaging
effects of any gay and lesbian agenda.”
—Franklin Graham, American Christian evangelist
“Putin is certainly a pure democrat, but with
an authoritarian style. Russia is a great state.
The president has been endowed with great
power by the constitution.… Putin tries to
keep Russian interests from his perspective.”
—Heinz-Christian Strache, leader of Freedom Party of
Austria
“As an operator, but not as a human being, I
would say Putin [is the most admirable world
leader]. The way he played the whole Syria
thing. Brilliant.’”
—Nigel Farage, former leader of UK Independence Party
“I admire his cool head. Because there is a
cold war being waged against him by the EU
at the behest of the United States, which is
defending its own interests. I admire that he
has managed to restore pride and contentment
to a great nation that had been humiliated
and persecuted for 70 years.”
—Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s National Front
“Between Putin and [Italian prime minister
Matteo] Renzi I will always choose Putin. I
wish Putin tomorrow morning became chairman
of the Council of Ministers of Italy.… Punishment
against Russia [through sanctions] is
a stupid measure, which will cost us 5 billion
euros. If there is a part of Ukraine, which
wants to be Russia, I don’t see why not.”
—Matteo Salvini, national secretary of Italy’s Northern
League
parties supported Russian interests on a select group
of issues. The most reliable pro-Russian party was
Dutch politician Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom,
followed by France’s National Front, Italy’s Northern
League, the Swedish Democrats, and UKIP. 10
Putin and other Kremlin officials speak of Russia as a
successful example of interreligious harmony, boast
of government policies to ensure fair treatment for
Russia’s large Muslim population, and denounce
those who brought down Yanukovych’s government in
Ukraine as fascists and pogromists. Yet when it comes
to potential allies in Europe, it makes no difference to
the Kremlin whether a party has views that are racist,
anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, or even openly fascist.
Russia welcomes the support of parties like Jobbik,
with its history of anti-Semitism and contempt for
Hungary’s Romany population, and has no qualms
about right-wing parties that speak of Muslims as
criminals and rapists.
For Russia, the payoff from this strategy is a network
of parties that identify with the Kremlin’s hatred of
liberal values, support Russia on critical foreign policy
issues, and praise Putin as a strong leader. While some
of these parties are still marginal forces in domestic
politics, a growing number are regarded as legitimate
contenders, especially since an uncontrolled influx of
refugees and an increase in terrorist attacks dented
public trust in mainstream parties. Even if Russia
remains unpopular in most European countries, the
fact that increasingly influential political figures laud
Putin for his energy, decisiveness, and eagerness to
challenge liberal orthodoxies is regarded as a gain for
Moscow. As these parties acquire a share of governing
power in EU states, the prospects for a recognition
of the Crimea annexation and the abandonment of
economic sanctions improve significantly.
The benefit for European far-right parties is less clear.
Though they claim to be champions of national sov-
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BREAKING DOWN DEMOCRACY: Goals, Strategies, and Methods of Modern Authoritarians
ereignty, they are aligning themselves with a Russian
leader who has sought to dominate neighboring
states and who regularly invokes his country’s imperial
and Soviet past. Putin has refused to apologize for
Russia’s historical subjugation of Central and Eastern
Europe. He has defended the Soviet Union’s occupations
as necessary to secure its national interests, and
denounced the movement of former Soviet bloc countries
to join the EU and seek protection in the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Far-right parties apparently see Putin not as a threat
to national security, but as an exemplar of their own
nationalist values. Like him, they hope to build a
strong national state without regard for international
agreements, domestic checks and balances, or fundamental
human rights. Putin’s contempt for democracy
carries no stigma among these parties, for which
elections and civil liberties are purely instrumental.
While Le Pen, Wilders, and their ilk need elections as
a means of gaining power and a free press to convey
their arguments, they are hostile to the extension of
rights to immigrants and minorities, and unenthusiastic
about independent courts that might block their
initiatives. To the extent that the EU enforces democratic
norms in its region, Putin and Europe’s far right
have a common enemy in Brussels.
Flacks for autocrats
Paul Manafort, a Washington lobbyist and consultant,
had a long career of work for leading Republicans,
including presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and
Ronald Reagan. But by the time he became Donald
Trump’s campaign chairman in 2016, Manafort was
best known for his work on behalf of foreign political
leaders, including several with distinctly autocratic
pedigrees: Ferdinand Marcos, the strongman of the
Philippines until 1986; Mobutu Sese Seko, the kleptocratic
dictator of what is now the Democratic Republic
of Congo; Sani Abacha, a Nigerian military ruler; and
Viktor Yanukovych, president of Ukraine from 2010 to
2014, when he was forced to abandon the presidency
and flee to Russia in the wake of nationwide protests.
Manafort’s work to dress up the images of Marcos and
Mobutu stood out at a time when American consultants
seldom represented dictators or authoritarians.
In the 1980s, U.S. political operatives with experience
in major campaigns were expanding their clientele
to include foreign governments and political parties,
though usually in democratic settings. 11
By 2005, when Manafort signed on to work with Yanukovych,
political consultants, public relations specialists,
and blue-chip law firms were earning fees paid
by a majority of the world’s autocracies, dictatorships,
and illiberal regimes. Some, especially Middle Eastern
monarchies, are American allies. But others are hostile
to democracy and regard the United States—and often
the EU—as adversaries. The lobbyists and spin masters
they employ are not located exclusively in the United
States. Authoritarians with the requisite means and
interests have hired representatives in London and
Brussels as well as Washington and New York.
Lawyers and consultants often represent dictatorships
indirectly, through state-owned enterprises. A
number of China’s state businesses have hired legal
and political consultants in major democracies, as
have state energy corporations in oil-rich countries
like Azerbaijan, Venezuela, and Angola.
But authoritarian governments generally seek the
assistance of global public relations companies in the
wake of repressive crackdowns at home or acts of
aggression against neighbors. During Manafort’s relatively
brief tenure with the Trump campaign, it emerged
that several American firms had been contracted to
discourage Congress from criticizing the Yanukovych
government for its jailing of Yanukovych’s 2010 presidential
campaign rival, Yuliya Tymoshenko. That effort
failed, as members of Congress and the American media
made Tymoshenko’s fate a crucial criterion in their
assessment of Yanukovych’s record. 12 Manafort had
more success in his earlier work to prepare Yanukovych
for his candidacy in 2010. Ukrainian observers credited
the American adviser with smoothing Yanukovych’s
rough edges, convincing him to stay on message, and
reminding him that it was important to assure U.S. and
European audiences that he was committed to democracy
and the fight against corruption. 13
In 2016, Reuters reported that five global public relations
firms had competed for a contract to improve
China’s image abroad. The planned campaign would
presumably repair reputational damage caused by
the Chinese government’s intensifying domestic
repression, its aggressive territorial policies in the
South China Sea, and a push by Chinese companies
to acquire crucial assets in democratic countries. The
firms that participated in the public relations audition
were Hill+Knowlton, Ogilvy, Ketchum, FleishmanHillard,
and Edelman. According to the Reuters account,
the firms were asked to give a presentation “on China’s
most pressing image problems and demonstrate their
expertise on managing new forms of media.” 14
44
Freedom House
Several other examples of consultants in the pay of
authoritarians are worth mention:
• Until rather recently, Azerbaijan was represented
by a battalion of lawyers, political operatives,
and public relations specialists in Washington,
London, and Brussels. While some worked for
the national energy company, others were hired
directly by the government to explain away the
regime’s miserable human rights record to the administration,
members of Congress, think tanks,
and other opinion makers in the United States. 15
• Bahrain spent over $32 million between 2011,
when political protests broke out, and 2015 on
political consultants in the United States and
Britain. During that period, the country experienced
an explosion in the number of political
prisoners as the Sunni Muslim monarchy carried
out an often violent persecution of the Shiite
majority. 16
• Despite their efforts to hollow out Venezuela’s
democratic infrastructure and their virulent
anti-Americanism, the late Hugo Chávez and his
successor, Nicolás Maduro, had no difficulty in
finding American consultants who would represent
the interests of their government and the
national oil company. 17
• Richard Burt, a former U.S. diplomat in Republican
administrations, earned hundreds of
thousands of dollars promoting a critical Russian
energy project while also helping to shape
candidate Trump’s foreign policy positions.
According to Politico, Burt received $365,000
in the first half of 2016 for lobbying on behalf of
Nord Stream II, a Russian-backed pipeline plan
that would deliver more natural gas directly to
Western and Central Europe via the Baltic Sea,
bypassing Ukraine and Belarus. At the same
time, Burt was helping to write a major Trump
foreign policy address. That speech, among
other things, called for greater cooperation with
Russia. 18
• In early 2017, an Egyptian intelligence agency
hired two Washington public relations firms
to lobby on the country’s behalf and boost its
image. Filings with the Department of Justice
showed the General Intelligence Service hired
Weber Shandwick and Cassidy and Associates
in a deal worth $1.8 million annually. 19
• Michael Flynn, who served briefly as President
Trump’s national security adviser, did lucrative
consulting work for a firm with ties to the
government of Turkish president Recep Tayyip
Erdoğan before and immediately after the 2016
election. Among other things, Flynn wrote an
op-ed that urged the American government to
expel Fethullah Gülen, a controversial cleric
who was accused by the Turkish government of
masterminding the 2016 coup attempt. Flynn’s
consulting firm was paid $535,000 for work
between September 9 and November 14. 20
Balance sheet
Even as they declare their disdain for liberal values,
modern authoritarians take maximum advantage
of the freedoms that are embedded in democratic
systems. Russia, China, Venezuela, Iran, and others
have established television networks that broadcast
beyond their borders to countries around the globe.
Viewers in the United States or Europe can watch
Russia’s RT or China Central Television on their local
cable systems. Pro-Beijing tycoons have gained a
strong foothold in the Hong Kong press landscape,
and Chinese businesses are making substantial
investments in Hollywood studios and production
companies.
Russia would not tolerate a foreign power providing
funding for an opposition political party. Yet it helps
to finance France’s National Front and quite possibly
Hungary’s Jobbik. In 2013, Greenpeace activists
attempted to scale a Russian offshore drilling platform
as part of a protest against Arctic oil exploration; the
authorities arrested the protesters, charged them
with piracy, and held them for two months before their
release. 21 Yet at the same time, the Kremlin was allegedly
fostering anti-fracking demonstrations in parts
of Central and Eastern Europe. 22 Russia organizes
bogus election-monitoring missions that give a stamp
of approval to polling in Crimea and other authoritarian
settings, while effectively preventing legitimate
election observation teams from functioning on its
own soil.
Authoritarian states also rent the services of former government
officials and members of Congress, powerful
lawyers, and experienced political image-makers to persuade
skeptical audiences that they share the interests
of democracies. These lobbyists work to advance the
economic goals of their clients’ energy companies and
other businesses, but they also burnish the reputawww.freedomhouse.org
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BREAKING DOWN DEMOCRACY: Goals, Strategies, and Methods of Modern Authoritarians
tions of regimes that have been sullied by the jailing of
dissidents or opposition leaders, the shuttering of media
outlets, or violent attacks on peaceful demonstrators.