Putinism: "The Kremlin uses the courts, the public prosecutor and the tax police to frighten or ruin anyone who might oppose the government"

http://www.the-american-interest.com/article.cfm?piece=1412

The Brilliant Rage of Alexander HerzenMICHAEL MCDONALD

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e are more than 150 years removed from the historical events in Russia that Herzen described. Yet the pattern he described seems eerily familiar. Reading Herzen today is useful for understanding Putin’s Russia, because in some respects it resembles Czarist Russia. It has reverted to a heavily authoritarian style of government after a brief flirtation with genuine political openness. The Kremlin uses the courts, the public prosecutor and the tax police to frighten or ruin anyone who might oppose the government. The Russian parliament, such as it is as a legislature that lacks the power of the governmental purse, has endorsed all this. Still, in other respects Putinism and Czarism are vastly different.