The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America

by Timothy Snyder

On January 16, 2014, Yanukovych retroactively criminalized the protests and legalized his own use of force. The official parliamentary record included a raft of legislation which the protestors called “dictatorship laws.” These measures severely limited freedom of expression and freedom of assembly, banning undefined “extremism,” and requiring nongovernmental organizations that received money from abroad to register as “foreign agents.” The laws were introduced by deputies with ties to Russia and were copies of Russian legislation. There were no public hearings, no parliamentary debate, and indeed no actual vote: a show of hands was improperly used instead of an electronic count, and the number of hands raised was short of a majority. The laws were nevertheless entered into the books. Protestors recognized that they would be treated as criminals if apprehended.