Thread by @SlavaMalamud

Tom asks the right questions and starts with the right premise.
The premise is: Russia has been incapable of building a free state that values individual rights or indeed of accepting these ideas as foundational values.
The questions are: Why? And WTF?
But there are answers...

https://twitter.com/RadioFreeTom/status/1522776827009327105

The problem is that Russia, for the last 5 and a half centuries, has lived in essentially the same state. Despite all the wars, revolutions and palace coups, despite all the name changes (Muscovy, Tsardom, Empire, USSR, Federation) it has never really changed since the 1470s.

The state build by Ivan III at around that time copied the model of the Mongol Empire. Simply because Ivan had no other model to copy, as Russians were under the Mongol rule for the previous 2+ centuries.
That model was a highly centralized, absolutist monarchy...

A state where all the decisions are made centrally, either by a single individual or by an inner circle of elites, provinces have no autonomy, citizens' rights and freedoms are subjugated to the interests of the state, and laws exist only to keep the subjects in line...

... as opposed to providing justice for all.
Such a state is extremely rigid, easily mobilized and can withstand great external pressures (which is where all that heroism @RadioFreeTom is talking about comes from). But it is doomed to lag behind more progressive nations.

At some points, internal pressure builds up or one of the load-bearing walls of the state (the sanctity of the ruling authority or rigid centralization) is shaken, and the state collapses (see the Time of Troubles, the Revolution, 1991). But its exact copy is built in its place.

The Soviet Union wound up becoming just another extension of Ivan III's (and ultimately Genghis Khan's) model, and post-Soviet Russia, after a disastrously inept attempt to build a Western-style state in the 1990s, snapped right back to it under Putin.

Aiding and abetting all this are several factors:
1) The population is fearful of the unknown and, generally, likes the idea of living in an oppressive state, as long as it's "great."
2) Whatever opposition to it exists, it's usually disorganized, inept and self-destructive.

3) Russia still exists as an empire and as such must maintain imperial status, which is extremely difficult to do with a functioning free and democratic society, particularly one that is not used to freedom and democracy.
Imperial ambitions and responsibilities are too demanding.

As for Russia's cultural giants, they generally have two ways to immortality:
1) Becoming the servant of the empire and being bestowed with largesse and love by the authority,
2) Dying a martyr.
Many happily choose the second path. Most don't and contribute to status quo.

But even those who are not totally in sync with the authority (Tolstoy was an avowed pacifist, Pushkin was more or less a liberal and Gogol was Ukrainian), are still to some degree addicted to the imperial grandeur.
You generally won't see any "giants of Russian thought"...

... rebelling agains the very idea of an empire. They simply have different ideas of how Russia can maximize its "greatness", but they always wish for it to be "great."
The fact that the very concept of "great Russia" is born from the Ivan/Genghis model and inseparable from it...

... means that Russians, even its "great thinkers" are forever doomed to wander in circles, from one iteration of the "Mongol model" to the next.
If they are ever to be free, they must separate themselves from the idea of being great, of leading other nations, of dominance.

Or be separated from it, by someone.
I don't think there is any other way.