Six Russian Words for a Country Sliding Into Authoritarianism

Book Excerpt: The Words Russians Use to Describe Life Under Authoritarianism

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Excerpt: 6 Russian Words for a Country Sliding Into Authoritarianism

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Excerpt

6 Russian Words for a Country Sliding Into Authoritarianism

How ordinary people describe power, repression, absurdity, and life under Putin.

September 25, 2026, 3:05 PM

By **Maria Kuznetsova**, a Russian human rights defender and writer, and **Dan Storyev**, a writer and analyst.

!An illustration in red and blue tones depicting five silhouetted figures running forward through a dark corridor flanked by large, textured Russian lettering on the walls and floor. Light radiates from the far end of the tunnel behind them

*An illustration in red and blue tones depicting five silhouetted figures running forward through a dark corridor flanked by large, textured Russian lettering on the walls and floor. Light radiates from the far end of the tunnel behind them*

Daria Lada illustration for Foreign Policy

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Decoder

Explaining a word and the culture that uses it.

Growing up in early 2000s Russia, when President Vladimir Putin was strengthening his grip on the country, we watched firsthand as a stillborn democracy was trampled—by riot police in faceless helmets, sleek media operatives, greasy oligarchs, and a cabal of supporting characters who helped Putin centralize power and smother civic life.

It can be difficult to recognize one’s home country drifting toward authoritarianism while living through it. Today’s dictators don’t necessarily wear military uniforms. In public speeches, they talk about freedom and democracy. Their subjects often have access to world class technology, visa free travel, and middle class comforts.

Growing up in early 2000s Russia, when President Vladimir Putin was strengthening his grip on the country, we watched firsthand as a stillborn democracy was trampled—by riot police in faceless helmets, sleek media operatives, greasy oligarchs, and a cabal of supporting characters who helped Putin centralize power and smother civic life.



This article is adapted from ***How to Survive Authoritarianism: A Russian’s Phrasebook for Everyday Life in America*** by Maria Kuznetsova and Dan Storyev (Liveright, 232 pp., $19.99, September 2026).

It can be difficult to recognize one’s home country drifting toward authoritarianism while living through it. Today’s dictators don’t necessarily wear military uniforms. In public speeches, they talk about freedom and democracy. Their subjects often have access to world class technology, visa free travel, and middle class comforts.

Russians, however, have generations of experience with the sense of unreality that characterizes life under an oppressive state. Russian literature, and the language itself, have often been at the forefront of resistance to the authorities—which has in turn shaped language and literature.

Under the Tsarist autocracy of the late 1800s, for instance, Russian satirist Mikhail Saltykov­-Shchedrin developed Aesopian speech—an ironic, coded vocabulary that obscures meaning from the authorities while allowing people in the know to communicate freely. During Soviet times, Aesopian speech was fine-tuned by satirists such as Fazil Iskander, whose tongue-in-cheek fables jabbed at corruption and tyranny.

In Putin’s Russia, language remains a way of coping with, making sense of, and ultimately making peace with the horrors of daily life in a land where ordinary people are all too often devoured by the leviathan of the state.

The terms below offer a sense of what life is like for those living under authoritarianism in Russia today. Western readers often think of tyranny as something that happens elsewhere. But authoritarianism can spread—read closely, and you might find striking parallels to warning signs in the United Kingdom, Israel, the United States, and beyond.

---

!A group of officers wearing dark riot gear, helmets with face shields, and protective face masks move forward together outdoors on a city street lined with tall buildings.

*A group of officers wearing dark riot gear, helmets with face shields, and protective face masks move forward together outdoors on a city street lined with tall buildings.*

Riot police officers and supporters of jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny clash during a rally in Saint Petersburg, Russia, on Jan. 23, 2021. Anatolij Medved/NurPhoto via Getty Images

*Vlast’*: Power

The concept of vlast’ permeates Russian politics, as well as the conversations that Russians share about politics. Vlast’ literally translates to “power,” but it means so much more. Like *poder* in Spanish, it refers to state power and control, with the connotation of absolute or extreme power.

But sometimes, people use vlast’ to refer to the state or government itself, which is telling. For instance, Russians refer to policemen or soldiers as representatives of vlast’ (*predstaviteli vlasti*). Heads of state and government officials are called *vlast’ imooshchie*, literally “those who have vlast’.”

Language shapes politics and vice versa. Perhaps it is partly because of this association between the idea of power and the idea of a state—inherent in vlast’—that Russian politicians are so focused on capturing the state. In 1990, Putin’s former mentor Anatoly Sobchak, then a pro-democracy reformer, put it pithily: “We \[democrats] have the power. Therefore, this is a demo