Andrei Soldatov - How GULAG Economics and Repression is Dragging Russia Back to Worst Days of USSR

This version of the interview includes the ten minutes accidentally cut off in the original one.
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GUEST: Andrei Soldatov - investigative journalist and security services expert.
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Russian’s assault on Ukraine in 2022 presents the most serious geopolitical crisis since the Second World War, and the nuclear posturing and threats by Russia are unprecedented in human history. But even before, through 2021 the ratcheting up of internal repression and persecution of opposition figures in Russia had created a foreboding sense of crisis and escalation. In today’s episode we’ll look at how the secret state apparatus is being used in wartime, and how this differs from the 2000s, the 1990s and even the Soviet period. Who are the Siloviki, and how do they suppress dissent in Russia?
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SPEAKER:
Andrei Soldatov is a Russian investigative journalist and security services expert. Together with fellow journalist Irina Borogan he is co-founder of Agentura.Ru – a watchdog of the Russian secret services’ activities. He’s been covering security services and terrorism issues since 1999. Together with Irina Borogan Andrei has co-authored three books: The New Nobility: The Restoration of Russia’s Security State and the Enduring Legacy of the KGB (2010), The Red Web: The Struggle Between Russia’s Digital Dictators and the New Online Revolutionaries (2015) and The Compatriots: The Brutal and Chaotic History of Russia's Exiles, Émigrés, and Agents Abroad (2019). Until 2008 Andrei Soldatov wrote for Novaya Gazeta, but has since written for many other publications. He is a Visiting Fellow of King's College London, and Senior Fellow at CEPA, the Centre for European Policy Analysis.
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BOOKS:
The Compatriots: The Brutal and Chaotic History of Russia's Exiles, Émigrés, and Agents Abroad
(2019) by Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan
The New Nobility: The Restoration of Russia's Security State and the Enduring Legacy of the KGB
(2010) by Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan
The Red Web: The Struggle Between Russia's Digital Dictators and the New Online Revolutionaries
(2015) by Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan
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#andreisoldatov #fsb #siloviki #ukraine #ukrainewar #russia #zelensky #putin #propaganda
#war #disinformation #hybridwarfare #foreignpolicy #communism #sovietunion #postsoviet
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Edward Lucas
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Owen Matthews
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CHAPTERS:
02:56 Russia's developing GULAG economy after Autumn 2022
05:21 The expected collapse of Russia's economy has not happened
09:19 Belarus - Putin's laboratory for terror and repression
11:32 Protest threshold for toppling a regime - too low in Russia
14:53 Flowering of civil society in Ukraine, much smaller in Russia
20:53 Putin's actions triggered a reassessment of Russian imperial history
23:28 Ideology and propaganda of Putin's regime more effective than USSR
28:55 Propaganda narratives: Distrust of democracy and loathing of West
35:12 Paranoia of the Russian Revolution may have driven 2022 invasion
42:30 Ukrainian stubborness and culture of self-organisation critical
48:37 Huge increase in the 'class' of Security Services (Siloviki)
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