Timothy Snyder

What does it feel like to watch a republic die? And what does it take to revive one? Whether the American republic survives could be decided in the next few months. Decades or centuries hence, the signs will seem clear; today, we live through one of those moments when we feel the weight of our own decisions, even as the larger historical forces, powerful as they might be, remain elusive in our daily life.

Vladimir Putin likes to associate today’s Russian Federation with the old Russian empire, and in one sense he is right. The Russian empire was the most repressive state of its era, with the most refined state police: the Okhrana. Russian revolutionaries, the men and women who would establish the Soviet state, were educated by its methods. It did not simply hunt them down; it ensnared them, often without their knowledge, in a complicated dance of incriminating their comrades.