The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad-free version of the LawFair

podcast become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash LawFair.

That's patreon.com slash LawFair.

Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, rational security, chatter, LawFair

no bull and the aftermath.

The feeling is that of course in the reason that we've seen so little protest in Russia

is just this overwhelming sense that nothing can be changed by protesting.

And that's obviously something that the Putin regime has done a lot of work to promote

as an idea and a lot of work to actually make that self-affilling prophecy that the way

that the system is now built, any kind of to demanding any kind of change possibly would

involve kind of uprisings and then who knows what happens.

So and they've also played very well, again going back into the sort of use of history,

you know they've played off this idea of 1917 and 1991 as these kind of two cataclysmic

events in Russian history and trying to sort of instill in people this idea that revolutionary

change or kind of uprisings is always wrong.

So that's the question of like where does the point come where people feel they have

less to lose by protesting than they do by not protesting.

I'm Alina Plyakova and this is the LawFair Podcast for January 20th 2018.

Last week Moscow correspondent for the Guardian, Sean Walker joined me to discuss his new book,

The Long Hangover, Putin's new Russia and the Ghosts of the Past.

Sean has spent the last 10 years reporting from Russia.

So what does he know that we don't about what average Russians think of Putin and the

...