[ethbr1]

Those are all countries in which I'd hazard a free and open election, without a thumb on the scales and voted in by all citizens, would topple their governments.

Your description of Russia seems accurate, ~1995 to ~2010.

However, policies appear to be changing into tighter, more direct state control of oligarchs, in an effort to ensure civil stability.

Additionally, Putin is now 70... which is getting to the age that more laissez faire dictators turn increasingly autocratic in response to any external disturbances of their social control.

At some age and tiredness, it seems like the blunt approach trumps finessing a solution between multiple competing interests.

And... not to put too fine a point on it, but Putin did just survive a coup attempt, which wouldn't have launched if there weren't some support for it among the myriad power brokers in Russia.

[anovikov]

I don't mean oligarchs. I mean everyday men and women. People don't want to be politically active because they know that Putin allows and wants them to acquire wealth (and even has no problem with them exporting that wealth abroad); and they also know that the masses don't want them to be allowed that, and if Putin is out, most probably masses will have it their way.

[ethbr1]

Everyday men and women, which I take to mean middle class, aren't a threat or power base in modern Russia.

They don't have voting power.

They don't have demonstration power.

They don't have access to broadcast their free speech via mass media.

Short of outright rioting, there's little they can do that matters to the Russian government.

Which means than in a trade-off between {what the people want} and {what those with power want}, the people are going to be ignored.

> (and even has no problem with them exporting that wealth abroad)

"...discuss reintroducing some capital controls to help prop up the struggling rouble."

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/aug/16/putin-meeti...

[anovikov]

Ironically, today the idea of reintroducing capital controls was rejected, officially, "because it was obvious that people will quickly find ways around it anyway". Simply put, there is no need to further increase already terrible level of corruption by introducing another useless but corruption-inducing regulation.