Well, maybe every big international event should be held in Russia then. Their motives for doing this are bullshit, but if a worldwide spotlight causes a tiny crack in the authoritarian system then give them the Winter Olympics, Eurovision, World Cup and Gloucestershire Cheese Rolling.
The plan is once the party’s over, resume robbing the country. Rinse and repeat.
A system of selective enforcement of the law is probably even more suitable to the pragmatic authoritarian than a uniformly harsh one is. Uniform enforcement forces you to restrict your laws to what people will put up with when they are carried out. Selective or near-arbitrary enforcement means that the laws on the books can be ever so ghastly in theory, mild enough to avoid reform pressures in practice, and how much of the book they throw at you is entirely down to official interest in your case.
(It probably doesn’t hurt that, if you are trying to cozy up with the nationalists and traditionalists, emphasizing the foreign pressure behind these disgusting radicals and their corrosive agendas is always a good move. No, there is no authentically Russian opposition to the holy church or petrochemical extraction, only some pawns of foreign libertines and international meddlers…)
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