“A dictator must inspire fear,” Igor Eidman says, because if he isn’t feared, people begin to tell anecdotes about him and laugh at what he does. Propaganda can help him maintain formal loyalty, but it can’t create “a real cult of personality” that dictators crave. That is something Putin is discovering as he becomes “a laughingstock” much like Brezhnev.
OP-ED
Paul A. Goble: Putin becoming a laughingstock much like Brezhnev
Russian President Vladimir Putin waves as he attends the Navy Day parade in St. Petersburg on July 25, 2021.
