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Has Russia Become an Authoritative Dictatorship?

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Submitted By monkeynoodle
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To what extent has Putin’s Russia become a Dictatorship?
Mussolini once said that ‘Democracy is beautiful in theory; in practice it is fallacy’ (ERepublik, 2009) and to some extent, this could be seen as true. However, how is it that a dictatorship can be truly defined? In the English dictionary (Oxford Collins Dictionary, 2003), a dictatorship is defined as ‘a government by a dictator or dictators’ however, whilst this does hold some truth, in the context of this question, this definition is far too simple, vague, and it does not help in any way to explain the extent to which Russia has become a dictatorship under Vladimir Putin since this only could really apply to a ‘yes, no’ question, which would abruptly end this investigation. But there are several questions that can be asked which will help in answering this query. In the context of Putin’s Russia and dictatorship we can inquire as to whether Russia has become a dictatorship under Putin, and if so why; is it politically correct to call it a dictatorship when compared to other countries such as Belarus and Zimbabwe, which are instated and well-known dictatorships; and another question we can ask ourselves is whether it is actually right for us, as westerners, to call it a dictatorship when it could be our own westernised and capitalised views affecting the way we see other political non-capitalist regimes, causing us to call Russia as such. To help answer these questions, several issues and subtopics will be addressed and these include the censorship of different types of media, The Crimean Crisis and its effects upon the countries involved as well as relations with the rest of Europe and the United States, the selling of Siberia’s land and resources to China, the Sochi Winter Olympics and the political upheaval that accompanied it and lastly Putin himself as a person and a potential dictator. However, this

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