Old-fashioned ideas are back in style: the Great Empire, the “iron hand,” the “special Russian path.” They brought back the Soviet national anthem; there’s a new Komsomol, only now it’s called Nashi;*12 there’s a ruling party, and it runs the country by the Communist Party playbook; the Russian president is just as powerful as the general secretary used to be, which is to say he has absolute power. Instead of Marxism-Leninism, there’s Russian Orthodoxy…
