--- title: Russian Human-Rights Champion on Dangers of Putin’s Propaganda description: A Nobel Laureate on the power and the danger of Putin's Soviet nostalgia propaganda. canonical: https://time.com/6299212/a-russian-human-rights-champion-on-why-putins-soviet-propaganda-is-so-dangerous/ author: Philip Elliott article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2023-07-28T14:55:29.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:03:34.725Z article:section: Politics og:title: A Russian Human-Rights Champion on Why Putin’s Soviet Propaganda Is So Dangerous og:description: "Houston, we all have a problem." og:url: https://time.com/6299212/a-russian-human-rights-champion-on-why-putins-soviet-propaganda-is-so-dangerous/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt3b5df1f48a5be61f/698a3f1416d8843c90c3c136/GettyImages-1557471586.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: Saint Petersburg Hosts Second Russia Africa Summit og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: A Russian Human-Rights Champion on Why Putin’s Soviet Propaganda Is So Dangerous twitter:description: "Houston, we all have a problem." twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt3b5df1f48a5be61f/698a3f1416d8843c90c3c136/GettyImages-1557471586.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # A Russian Human-Rights Champion on Why Putin’s Soviet Propaganda Is So Dangerous > Sponsored content. 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It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, twice a week. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3/newsletters?i=1c0da640-00c8-4059-b583-2a67d3cfa391&cr=time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3-v1) ## Video: TIME World Report: What's Next For Putin's Power [Watch (HLS stream): TIME World Report: What's Next For Putin's Power](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/Dlymjvhx.m3u8) (5:44)  _Published 2023-07-06. Russian President Vladimir Putin faced the greatest threat to his authority in decades when the mutinous Wagner Group seized major cities in an armed rebellion against the Russian military on June 24. TIME Senior Correspondent Simon Shuster explains what this insurrection means for Putin's power._  by [Philip Elliott](https://time.com/author/philip-elliott/)  ## Philip Elliott Senior Correspondent Jul 28, 2023 2:55 PM UTC  Russian President Vladimir Putin during the Second Summit Economic And Humanitarian Forum Russia Africa on July 27, 2023 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin during the Second Summit Economic And Humanitarian Forum Russia Africa on July 27, 2023 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Contributor—Getty Images  by [Philip Elliott](https://time.com/author/philip-elliott/)  ## Philip Elliott Senior Correspondent Jul 28, 2023 2:55 PM UTC _This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up_ [_here_](https://cloud.newsletters.time.com/signup?nln=dc-brief&source=dc%5Fonsite) _to get stories like this sent to your inbox._ To appreciate the power of a myth, let’s take a quick visit to post-Soviet Russia. In the weeks after Vladimir Putin came to power in early 2000, the new Russian president was enjoying a 77% job approval [rating](https://www.levada.ru/en/ratings/), a definite improvement from his 31% outlook just a few months earlier while he was biding time as then-President Boris Yeltsen’s prime minister inside a fast-unspooling regime. Putin had grand designs for his country, and his new constituents seemed to want to help him build his proverbial temple to Soviet nostalgia. Putin had watched in horror through the 1990s as democratic ideals came in fits and twitches after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He professed to be an agent of change, a steadying hand, a steward of the rebooted nation’s deep history. But Russia was coming out of an inflation tailspin of [85%](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/FP.CPI.TOTL.ZG?end=2002&locations=RU&start=1998), unemployment was stuck in the [double digits](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.UEM.TOTL.ZS?end=2004&locations=RU&start=1999), and the promises of reform were not making life much better. He didn’t have much room for error, and he knew it. The answer? Putin basically promised to Make Russia Great Again, and launched a concerted effort to invoke the nostalgia of the Soviet empire. ### More From TIME Putin has made no secret that he [sees](https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna7632057) the end of the Soviet system as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century,” one that has been an animating tragedy that he’s been trying to undo over almost a quarter century leading that [petrostate](https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/petrostate-putin-power-and-the-new-russia). To accomplish this, however, he needed to inspire—not his strongest suit as a stiff former KGB spook who famously has little time for pleasantries. But Russia’s grand history? That was something Putin could work with. So over the last two-plus decades, Putin has enmeshed Russia’s glory days, including its cruel Soviet era, with the present. As TIME’s then-editor Richard Stengel [explained](https://content.time.com/time/specials/2007/personoftheyear/article/0,28804,1690753%5F1690757,00.html) in an essay announcing Putin as our [Person of the Year](https://content.time.com/time/specials/2007/personoftheyear/article/0,28804,1690753%5F1690757%5F1690766,00.html) in 2007: “Russia lives in history—and history lives in Russia.” The result has been a crude re-Stalinization of sorts, or a systematic rehabilitation of the brutal Soviet figure who led his colossus for 30 years until his death in 1953\. The last time Russia’s most respected independent pollsters, Levada, [asked](https://www.levada.ru/en/2019/04/19/dynamic-of-stalin-s-perception/) about Joseph Stalin, a stunning 51% of respondents had positive views of him. That 2019 survey found just 15% of Russians offering negative views of the man who created the [Gulag](https://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/607546/gulag-stories-russia/) system that operated until 1987\. An eye-popping 70% of Russians said Stalin’s contributions to the country’s history were a net positive. By contrast, Mikail Gorbachev, the first and last President of the Soviet Union who set in motion democratic reforms, enjoyed a 15% positive reaction when Russians were last [asked](https://www.levada.ru/en/2017/02/28/leaders-of-russia/) about him in 2017\. Much of that is thanks to Putin’sdecades-long propaganda project, which has taken on new geopolitical urgency during the war in Ukraine**,** and now matters more than ever. “The majority of Russians still see their glory in the forcible restoration of the Russian Empire,” Oleksandra Matviichuk, who runs a major human rights group in Ukraine, the Center for Civil Liberties, tells TIME. “The success of Ukraine will provide a chance for the democratic future of Russia, because it will provide the push for people to reflect that maybe it’s not OK in the 21st Century to invade other countries and kill people to erode their identity. Maybe it’s better to find our glory in something else.” Matviichuk visited TIME’s Washington Bureau this week, sitting alongside two other representatives of groups [co-honored](https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2022/summary/) with a Nobel Peace Prize last year. One was Aleksandr Cherkasov, chairman-in-exile of Russian human rights organization [Memorial](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-59853010), which researched Stalin’s systems, organized sites of remembrance for his victims, and documented the sins of the Soviet era as a warning against repetition. It was shut down by the state in 2021, right before the country invaded Ukraine. Cherkasov says that the lessons he learned from ferreting out the truth should be applied now to try to dismantle Putin’s powerful propaganda effort to help Ukraine win the war. “Right now, we have a tremendous task ahead of us,” he says. “We understand that we need to work on the Soviet past, and it’s a very complex past. But we also have 35 years—which is half of the 70 years of the Soviet period—in the post-Soviet period, which is no less complicated.” Adds Matviichuk, whose organization has documented 45,000 examples of war crimes Russia has committed in Ukraine—and counting: “Now, we are in the situation where Russia wants to return us to the past. But the future plays against Russia. That is why Russia will lose, sooner or later.” She is right, at least when it comes to invented legends. Myths are fickle beasts. In a parallel reality of his creation, Putin is a popular and decisive leader determined to restore glory to Russia. In another reality—one closer attuned to the real world—Putin is presiding over a fragile autocracy that survives only because his pact with oligarchs allows them to share the spoils of a kleptocracy. ([Oh](https://time.com/6266418/russia-belarus-nuclear-weapons/), and [nukes](https://time.com/6290977/nuclear-war-impact-essay/).) “The propaganda has roots in the imperialistic culture of Russia,” says Matviichuk. “People in Russia still need to provide a reflection of their imperialistic culture.” Thanks to an unmatched propaganda machine—described in detail by TIME’s Vera Bergengruen [here](https://time.com/6257372/russia-ukraine-war-disinformation/)—Putin has mostly prevailed in sparking that invented and often perverted memory, at least at home. (After his [invasion](https://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1832294%5F1832295%5F1832699,00.html) of Georgia in 2008 fell flat, Putin learned the lesson of trying to spin on the cheap and he almost tripled the propaganda budget over the three years that followed. RT, a broadcasting effort masquerading as a news station, now [spends](https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html) $300 million annually for Russian-language pro-Kremlin programming.) But Putin’s war in Ukraine may be testing that perceived glory more than at any time in living memory. New [polling](https://www.usnews.com/news/world-report/articles/2023-07-11/russians-fear-the-worst-is-yet-to-come-new-polling-indicates) from Levada reveals the most pessimistic Russian population in 15 years; 58% believe that “hard times are yet to come,” and another quarter think they’re already there, according to polling released this month. Among the naysayers, almost half point to the invasion of Ukraine and the attenuating death tolls. One independent [analysis](https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-military-deaths-facd75c2311ed7be660342698cf6a409) puts the Russian death toll at almost 50,000\. Still, 76% of Russians in the same poll said they trusted Putin. And when asked if the fighting in Ukraine was heading toward eventually ensnaring NATO**,** 60% answered in the affirmative last month, up 12 points from a year earlier. All of which is why the trio of human rights leaders made the trek to Washington to meet with think tanks, administration officials, and journalists to make the case that helping to land a decisive win against Russia could reset not just Ukraine’s future, but could force a rethinking of what Russia looks like after Putin—a question the West is hesitant to reckon with.(TIME’s Brian Bennett has an assessment of the Nobel Laureates’ visit [here](https://time.com/6298875/nobel-peace-prize-laureates-urge-allies-to-help-ukraine-win-fast/).) “Without justice, we have never sustained peace,” Matviichuk told us. Left unsaid, of course was this: without truth, there can be no meaningful justice. And, at the moment, Soviet-style spin has gummed up the gears of that churn of accurate information to the point of evading accountability. We all think Putin is building a scaffolding to build and defend political power; he may actually be designing a system to evade any comeuppance at all. After all, if no one can agree to the facts of an offense, did the crime even take place? That’s a problem with big stakes not just for Russians, but for the whole Western world seeking stability in the region. As Cherkasov said in our conference room here in D.C.: “Houston, we _all_ have a problem.” _Make sense of what matters in Washington._ [_Sign up for the D.C. Brief newsletter_](https://cloud.newsletters.time.com/signup?nln=dc-brief&source=dc%5Fonsite)_._ ## Transcript On June 24th this year, we saw some of the most dramatic events play out. I think in puta, naira, Russia. Where we had an armed rebellion of one faction of the Russian Armed Forces, marching on Moscow, with tanks taking over a few big Russian cities, and taking them very easily without much resistance. And the importance of that is I think that it shook the authority of President Vladimir Putin to the core. I think it's it's it's a level of weakness and uncertainty and in his grip on power that I haven't seen in 15 years of reporting on Russia. The mutineer. It's it's a it's a term used to hear associated with pirates and Buccaneers but it's kind of a useful way to think actually about the Wagner group and you've guinea pig ocean. It's Commander, they are a private Army, a mercenary force of paramilitary force that operates within the blue kind of brought her umbrella of the Russian Armed Forces, but very much Independence and then pretty autonomous more and more. So as the war in Ukraine has been folded over the last year and a half or so you can guinea pig, ocean has spent months during the war, in Ukraine, complaining against the, the commanders of the Russian military saying that they are not providing him with enough weapons enough ammunition that they are ineffective incompetent and trying to kind of Steel Authority from them. They've got more and more independent, confident better armed and I think that Independence is, what gave the commander? You've been here for the Gordon, the confidence. And that would spur to declare this Mutiny and go to war against basically the rest of the Armed Forces. Is very hard to say how this is going to play out from now on there does seem to be at least the beginnings of a purge going on within the Russian Elites in response to this. I haven't been to Moscow since 2015 when they expelled me from the country, certainly in the last few months, it has been rare for Western journalists to go in there very consistently. The the regime has gone after every layer of the media. So now the level of of control that the regime has and exerts over the media is so extreme that. It's very hard to find independent sources of information. We've seen already at least one Russian general, who was close to there to the rebel faction arrested, in General Store, avakin better known in the Russian media. At least is General Armageddon for the absolutely rampant and horrible war crimes that he's been accused of he was in charge For a period of a few months of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Then was removed from that command generals, Aurora Beacon is an ally of the rebel commander for Goshen. They were quite close. It seems that the General survey can has been detained or arrested because of his connections to to this Rebel faction. There's an effort now, to weed out or two to figure out within the Russian Elites, who was aligned with, with this Rebellion, who was potentially helping them, or giving them information, or where that they were planning this Mutiny. So that's going to play out certainly in the coming days, if not weeks. And again the rebel commander is still free, he's been given leave as far as we know. So there is still this kind of Rebel faction. That is not being dismantled, they're still around and they still can serve as a kind of Alternative Center of power alternative center of gravity for any factions within Rush. Within the Russian to leave within the Russian military to gravitate towards in opposition to President Vladimir Putin. I think one thing that's been very consistent and Putin, the 23 years in power is the key was the man at the top of the pyramid, at the top of what he called the vertical of power, this kind of great Machinery of the states where he was at the wheel and all of the other elements of this, this machine all the different Clans and towers of the Kremlin. They might fight with each other, but Putin was always the kind of arbiter above them all. Who could settle disputes and who could put people in their place when they challenge the system. But I think Putin himself is still trying to Parson understand just How Deeply the foundations of his authority have been shaken and I think an intuitive Lee has his approach to doing that is to look for the traders, to try to find them. But also mindful of the fact that if there are more traitors than he thinks, they could still United band together against If he cracks down too hard so it's quite a delicate Balancing Act. If he has to strike, right? He needs to put down the rebellion and control the treasonous factions within the Russian Elites, but he can't do it so harshly and end so openly that they have a mind to unite again and maybe make another attempt to, to take Moscow. But I think I would expect that the Putin will now impose even harsher controls over the Elites in and try to weed out a rest. If not kill enemies that he sees around him that he imagines around him. That certainly has been that the historical pattern that we've seen in inside the Kremlin and within the Russian leadership for hundreds of years. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/6299212/a-russian-human-rights-champion-on-why-putins-soviet-propaganda-is-so-dangerous/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/6299212/a-russian-human-rights-champion-on-why-putins-soviet-propaganda-is-so-dangerous/"},"headline":"A Russian Human-Rights Champion on Why Putin’s Soviet Propaganda Is So Dangerous","datePublished":"2023-07-28T14:55:29.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T08:03:34.725Z","description":"\"Houston, we all have a problem.\"","url":"https://time.com/6299212/a-russian-human-rights-champion-on-why-putins-soviet-propaganda-is-so-dangerous/","keywords":["The D.C. 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