Kremlin's Policies Stir Protests and Concerns Among Citizenry

        The Kremlin's policy of designating dissenters as foreign agents has sent a message across the Steppes: fall in line or face repressive fines or worse.  So continues Vova's dictatorial reign as chief decider of Russyan politics and all things Russyan.  Just recently, folks down in the south, Crimea to be exact, got another dose of reality.  Seems some government types decided to restrict access to a popular beach area frequented by Crimeans.  The local stooge/leader said that it was just a temporary situation; locals know better and continued to press the leader for redress.
      With the price of oil getting back to lows seen recently, about $40/barrel, the Kremlin's managed economy will continue to slide into recession for even a longer period.  Russyan dupes can claim that this is how their illustrious leader(s) deal with the West's disrespect of all things Russyan.  It must be the water, or the vodka, or the cabbage, or the turnips, or the cold, or the wind, or the DNA, or Siberia, or Lenin, or, Trotsky, or Stalin, or Beria, or Brezhnev, or Dostoevsky, or  the gulag, or the Cossacks, or Hitler, or the Poles, or the Finns, or the Japanese, or, horror of horrors: the Amerikanski.
      Two new books recently published highlight Putin's government and how he has managed to place a veneer of democracy on top of his dictatorship and, again, the dupes have fallen for it.

PUTINISM, by Walter Laqueur,  Thomas Dunne, pub. 2015

PUTIN'S RUSSYA, Edited by Leon Aron, American Enterprise Inst., 2015

      Both highlight the last 15 years of the country, the world's largest, under the former KGB back office drone who buffaloed his way into the Kremlin using guile, chutzpah, intimidation, and old-fashioned muscle/thuggery.   Mr. Aron notes the rise of "self-governing" groups who operate as shadow governments at the local level, shades of the Roman Empire before the fall.  These pragmatic, "ideologically inclusive" groups have arisen to address the failures of the Kremlin, and seem ready to address the lack of accountability from the central planners of Putin's Russya.