Stop the Untouchables. Justice for Sergei Magnitsky.

Andrei Piontkovsky. Features of the Russian “light totalitarianism”

Bernardinai.lt

A paper of Andrei Piontkovsky – a physicist, scientist of Startegic studies center, publicist and one of the most famous dissidents in contemporary Russia. The speech was delivered in an international conference “Totalitarianism and Tolerance. The Challenges to Freedom”, which was held in Vilnius, November 16th.

Some time ago my book about contemporary Russia “Third Path to Serfdom“ appeared. The name of the book was an allusion to the famous work of the philosopher and economist Friedrich August von Hayek „”he Road to Serfdom”. F. Hayek claimed that fascism and communism as well inevitably lead to serfdom. Completely agreeing with this, I still think that today we can complement the considerations of F.Hayek by maintaining that there’s also a third way leading to serfdom, and this is putinism.

I would like to emphasize that I truly am not going to equalize putinism, fascism and communism. For me it is important to stress that despite of internal differences all these ways lead to the same point. It would be irresponsible to call putinism as fascism in a new form. If fascism or stalinistic totalitarianism would be prevailing in today’s Russia, I would for sure not have this opportunity to talk to you from this tribune, and all the opponents of the regime would be simply physically eliminated. Putinism can be called as “light totalitarianism“. But let’s not get it wrong, even though looking from aside it is not so bloody and agressive, in certain aspects this phenomenon can be even more dangerous than its “hard“ form.