With bare hands – the legacy of Oswaldo Payá
I’ve often wondered, what does it take for a lone individual to stand up to a totalitarian system, and to risk it all for the right to speak and associate… Read more »
Search Results for: totalitarian russia
‘Popular Dictatorships’: Why autocracies have strongman appeal
The key to understanding why Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine does not necessarily lie in its foreign policy, but rather in its domestic politics, according to Aleksandar Matovksi, assistant professor in the Department… Read more »
What liberals misunderstand about authoritarianism
Although Hannah Arendt’s 1951 classic “The Origins of Totalitarianism” is primarily about Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, but her descriptions often capture aspects of our present moment more clearly than… Read more »
Autocratic resurgence vs democratic renewal: 7-3 halftime score?
Liberal democracy is back to where it was in 1989, says the most recent report from the Varieties of Democracy Institute (V–Dem) – in other words, the massive gains in… Read more »
Ukraine: How far will Putin go?
Marvel at the heroism and resilience of Ukraine. In the first days of war, the armored might of Vladimir Putin shriveled before the courage of the nation he had attacked,… Read more »
Orban’s juggling act: Illiberal democrat’s autocratic infatuation
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is poised to win Sunday’s general election by a comfortable margin, though not by enough to secure another supermajority, reports suggest. In a video speech to European Union leaders… Read more »
Ukraine’s democratic antifascism exposes Putin’s Big Lie
In #DialoguesOnWar (above), Myroslav Marynovych, Vice Rector of the Ukrainian Catholic University, and Serhii Plokhii, Director of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, address the critical issues arising from the Ukraine… Read more »
‘Grand strategic mistake’: Ukraine spells the ‘beginning of the end’ for Putin?
History has accelerated; the impossible has become possible. Shifts that no one imagined two weeks ago are unfolding with incredible speed, notes Anne Applebaum, the author of Twilight of Democracy: The… Read more »
Ukraine: Democracies’ energetic unity shows reserves of power
A coalition of forty Ukrainian civil society groups today issued The Kyiv Declaration, a six-point appeal to the West’s democracies, listing urgent humanitarian and military demands. “There is no free… Read more »
‘Burner Phone Olympics’ show limits to autocratic solidarity
China today used the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics to present an image of a global power whose authoritarian style of government can go head-to-head with a world dominated… Read more »