As Sunday’s referendum, in which the people of Crimea will decide whether to join Russia, approaches, the images on Russian television are astonishing. They are more propagandistic and venomous than anything I can remember even from Soviet times. Breathless presenters whip up hysteria with bloodcurdling stories of atrocities being committed by the “neo-Nazi junta” now governing Ukraine. Overheated “victims” beg Putin to help, kindly Russians offer to give refuge to the terrified people fleeing Ukraine, and menacing music accompanies montages of swastikas, fascist thugs armed with clubs, and black-and-white images of Hitler’s troops and burning villages. It is all apparently...
