Analyzing Economic Success Under Authoritarian Regimes

On today’s episode, we discuss Alexei Navalny’s death, Vladimir Putin, censorship in Russia, and Samizdat Online, an anti-censorship platform that grants users living under authoritarian regimes access to news and other censored content. Yevgeny “Genia” Simkin is the co-founder of Samizdat Online and Stanislav “Stas” Kucher is its chief content officer.

Timestamps

0:00 Introduction 

2:25 Alexei Navalny 

8:53 The state of Russian opposition

20:48 The origins of Samizdat Online

28:17 How does Samizdat Online circumvent censorship? 

35:16 Could Yevgeny Prigozhin have overthrown Putin?

41:03 The progression of Putin’s regime 

58:08 How can people help? 

59:56 Outro

Show notes

Statement by Russian prison service on Alexei Navalny’s death

The Anti-Corruption Foundation (nonprofit established by Alexei Navalny)

Samizdat Online

“Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible” by Peter Pomerantsev

Transcript

Past related episodes

Ep. 108: A history of (dis)information wars in the Soviet Union and beyond

Ep. 156: What Russians don’t know about the war in Ukraine

Ep. 157: Former BBC bureau chief Konstantin Eggert and what you need to know about censorship in Russia