Is Russia becoming a dictatorship?

Back in the 2000s and even 2010s the elections were rigged, but the real trick was to allow opposition parties and candidates who were, in the main, so personally unsavoury and politically unattractive that while the scale of Putin’s victories was exaggerated, they were not wholly fictitious.

Meanwhile, there was a strikingly vibrant grassroots civil society that was allowed to campaign, so long as it focused on local and specific issues rather than national politics, and even a lively and critical media.

For most, the system was at once receptive enough not to arouse their anger, yet distant and dangerous enough not to encourage them into politics. Machiavelli memorably affirmed that it was best for a prince to be both loved and feared, but if he could not manage both, then he would be better off feared. A post-modern authoritarianism, though, knows that while love can be fickle and fear destructive, apathy is better than both.