Putin has Built East German-Style Totalitarianism in Russia Today, Shiropayev Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 1 – One of the most common mistakes Russians make is to assume that if the Putin system is not just like Stalin’s, with the latter’s “mass terror, slave labor, White Sea Canal, and iron curtain,” it can’t be totalitarian, Aleksey Shiropayev says, because such a view ignores other totalitarian systems like the East German which Vladimir Putin has copied.

            “In comparison with Stalin or Mao or Pol Pot,” the Russian commentator says, “Putin is a real liberal.” But if one compares what he has done with the German Democratic Republic, a country in which he worked as a KGB officer three decades ago and which was a real totalitarian state, a different conclusion arises (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=5D19233159AF0).

            The GDR like Russia today had a multi-party system and even a private sector. “But nevertheless, the GDR remained an absolutely totalitarian state whose remarkable security service, the Stasi, spread terror not only in its own citizens but also in the entire world,” Shiropayev says.

            Russia today looks much like the GDR did, the commentator argues, and that means that “totalitarianism is more productively considered not from the point of view of what is permitted but from that of the level of control. And from this point of view, undoubtedly a totalitarian system has been built in the Russian Federation.”

            Here “control is total, and all the rest are details and nuances.”

            Shiropayev hastens to add that he can’t take credit for this insight. Fifteen years ago, Pavel Svyatenkov pointed out the Putin, an admirer of the East German system, was copying it in Russia. Shiropayev says that he can only add that now “this totalitarian system has finally been put in place.”