ABSTRACT
The Russian post-intelligentsia turned away from Sakharov’s legacy when its members assumed power or were hired by the authorities. In the process, they committed moral and ideological suicide. It would be a mistake to view the intelligentsia’s recitations about the backwardness of the Russian people unprepared for democracy as just Kremlin talking points. The powerful and their servitors – restaurants, taxis, girls, media leaders, fashion designers, priests, sommeliers, political scientists, PR managers, pedicurists, members of the Civic Chamber – they are all corrupt to the core. And not just in the plain criminal sense. The incredible lightness of being they experience as potentates with unlimited financial resources has gone to their head and is now ingrained in their subconscious. The ideological foundation on which Russian foreign policy discourse rests is the ‘humiliation’ suffered by Russia following the USSR’s loss in the Cold War.
