Over the last 20 years, Russian society has been re-Sovietized. The KGB man at the top has seen to that. There are more political prisoners in Russia today than there were in the late Soviet period. This is documented by Memorial, the civil-society organization, which, of course, the Kremlin has outlawed.

The Kremlin has abolished civil society and independent media in Russia. There is the state, and the state alone. All nods to democracy — even fig leaves — have gone. …

Many of us have been thinking about the Daniloff case. Nicholas Daniloff, too, was taken hostage, in 1986. He was a correspondent for U.S. News & World Report.

[I’d forgotten the Daniloff case. Reagan played tough and eventually Daniloff returned to the US, but diplomatic retaliations continued for months. The US expelled one hundred Soviets, while the USSR forced 250 Russians to stop working for the US embassy. Daniloff eventually took a position at Northeastern University [correction: not Northwestern, as I originally wrote], and is still alive today. — Ed]