Estonia fears Russia dictatorship

Russia could be sliding into dictatorship as Germany did soon after World War I, Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves has warned. "There is a mentality of being stabbed in the back that reminds me of the Weimar Republic," Mr Ilves told Russia's Moscow Times newspaper.

The Weimar Republic is the name given to the German state in 1919-1933 - before Adolf Hitler's rise to power.

Last year, Tallinn and Moscow had an all-out row over the relocation of a Soviet-era war memorial in the Estonian capital.

"The Weimar mentality... is so similar that I really hope we do not go off in the wrong direction," Mr Ilves told the Moscow Times.

He was speaking as Russia prepares to elect a new president on Sunday. However he declined to discuss the polls.

President Vladimir Putin is stepping down after serving two terms in office and his endorsed heir, Dmitry Medvedev, is widely expected to win the 2 March elections.

One opposition leader has been barred from standing, while another has withdrawn saying the outcome is predetermined. The Russian authorities say the election will be fair.

On Tuesday, human rights pressure group Amnesty International said civil rights in President Putin's Russia were being eroded.

In a report, Amnesty said there was a systematic destruction of civil liberties and freedom of speech was "shrinking alarmingly".

The Kremlin says it is committed to human rights and accuses Western governments of using such allegations to limit Russia's global influence.

The Great Danger If Russia Stays on the Path It's On - By Andreas Umland - A factor accounting for Russia’s recent nationalist resurgence is the mode of thinking learned in Soviet schools and universities – a Manichean world-view which sharply distinguishes between “us” and “them.” Although the basic definitions of “us” and “them” have changed, a number of Soviet stereotypes, for instance, about the US have survived glasnost until today. The major determinant in Russian nationalism’s recent rise is that the Kremlin’s political technologists have discovered it as a tool suitable to reconfigure political discourse in general. In the Kremlin’s new political reality, Putin is not competing with alternative programs or parties. Putin’s opponents are not socialists, liberals or other Russian political movements. Instead, Putin is juxtaposed to Chechen terrorists, Estonian fascists, Georgian russophobes, Ukrainian neo-Nazis, American imperialists, Western conspirators, and, in general, to various non-Russians who desire to destroy, divide or, at least, humiliate Russia. In this atmosphere of paranoia, it is only logical that those opposing Putin are not acknowledged to constitute legitimate (not to speak of useful) political opposition. Instead, they are represented as a “fifth column” of the West, as traitors who are, in Putin’s words, skulking around foreign embassies like jackals.

The radical, often neo-fascist wing of Russian nationalism, naturally, has been rising together with the movement as a whole.

A widespread fear among Russian and Western analysts observing the rise of Russian nationalism is now that the Kremlin could loose (or, perhaps, is already loosing) control of the genie it has let out of the bottle. Russian nationalism might transform from a political technology tool of the Kremlin into a societal force of a proportion beyond the limits of manipulation by the cynics in the Kremlin.

On Tuesday, human rights pressure group Amnesty International said civil rights in President Putin's Russia were being eroded.

This is part of the problem. No one believes Amnesty International anymore. They never had much credibility to begin with, but when they started going off on the whole "everyone in the USA has no civil rights anymore" BS bandwagon, that pretty much invalidated any other position on which they had an opinion.

I am certain that there are at least some people who think the human rights situation has improved in Russia specifically because Amnesty International has said that it has deteriorated.

Instead, they are represented as a “fifth column” of the West, as traitors who are, in Putin’s words, skulking around foreign embassies like jackals. ==

Absolute truth. We call them “grant-suckers”.

There are the amazing iternet resource called INOSMI.ru. They press the translations from the western press each day including Washington Post/Time, New York Time, Gardians, Times and so on. Accually from hundreds of the western press stands.
Whole Russia may see that russophobia is just overflood the western press. But you called us “paranoical”?:))) You should look into a mirrow first:).

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