We believe that David Ignatius’s article in the Washington Post is very well worth reading today, as he discusses some of the dominant themes that came up during a recent conference sponsored by the Russian Institute entitled “What Does Russia Think?”  (oddly, I unknowingly gave yesterday’s video interview a similar title).  The result is a presentation of a bouquet of modern myths about Russia – such as Putin’s authoritarianism being mistaken with economic success (instead of coincidence with high oil prices), the strongman legend, the distrust and antagonism toward the outside world, and the other “heaps of memes” (as Michael Idov would describe them) that contribute to our common understanding of Russian politics.  Ignatius is aware of these shortcuts of logic and rationalism, so the argument he presents over the Grand Inquisitor paradox takes the longitudinal view that the problems Russia is experiencing are the same from 100 years ago.  Interesting stuff.

“Putin is the leader. There is no disagreement about that. Putin came to power and life improved,” argued a member of the Russian Duma. He described Putin’s political intuition in the way that 19th-century Russians spoke about the czar: “Putin knows what the society needs better than the society does.”