I myself am by initial education a historian, and therefore I know that if you ask professional historians about historical parallels, they generally answer that it is a slippery slope. Whatever we come to compare, it is never exactly one-on-one: The historical context is different, there are no two similar societies, the socio-political and economic conditions are different, and even if it seems that two societies are similar in every way, the divergence often comes in small yet vital details.

This aphorism came back to my mind when I read an interview claiming that in Russia, everything will again move towards democracy, and Vladimir Putin simply needs to disappear. For example, it was recapped about those periods in Russian history when, after a reactionary ruler, comes someone as head of state who relaxed the screws and granted more freedoms.

With some historians, there is the theory that Russian history can be viewed as the swinging of a pendulum, meaning that the development of society moves from one extreme to the other. In this theory, for example, Stalin's terror was a reaction to Lenin's dismantling of the "bourgeois society", and the building of a new bright communist society, which at times went as far as dismantling the entire economic, social, and ideological foundation.

Lesser parallels have also been drawn. For example, there is the parallel with the early 1990s in Russia, when inhabitants enthusiastically welcomed democracy, and the claim this will surely also happen immediately once Putin disappears from power. As with such predictions in general, they are made by people who cannot conceive of what has happened in Russia over the past 30 years.

It was in 2015 when I sat in Tartu's Raekoja plats with a friend and colleague from St Petersburg, and we talked about what was going on in Russia. Following the annexation of Crimea, it seemed that a general madness was gaining momentum there: Theories and concepts that had always existed on the margins of Russian society broke into the so-called mainstream.

In one fell swoop in Russia, revanchism, an imperialist mindset, and a very paradoxical yearning for the Soviet Union rose strongly. On the one hand, the Soviet Union started to get glorified, and on the other, other former Soviet republics and their inhabitants were increasingly disparaged, with the proviso that 'one day we will conquer you again anyway, come with tanks, and then you will come crawling on your knees begging to be welcomed back into the bosom of Russia.'

The conversation also moved on to state propaganda. The battles were raging in the Donbas in Ukraine; the enthusiasm over the annexation of Crimea had reached fever pitch in Russia, and from almost every information channel in Russia sprang aggressive, highly uniform, and at times highly surreal propaganda.

Then, my friend announced: "The difference with the Soviet era is that, in the Soviet era, people didn't believe the state propaganda." This is an interesting point. While we have a large number of various info war experts analyzing Russia's influencing activities abroad, the way the information war is conducted inside Russia itself has largely remained outside attention. I know of only a few people who make analytical overviews of what kind of information is disseminated via Russia's internal channels, what arguments are used, or what the public's reaction to all of this is.

If Russia is at a high level in one thing, it is in its manipulation of information. In the presentation of information, they have now reached a completely different level compared with what was the case in the Soviet era. When we compare the Soviet-era journalism, with its dusty flavor and the dry, static news on television, read out in a monotone voice, by stony-faced announcers, then now things work differently.

If we look at the information landscape in Russia, it is extremely diverse, where the same messages get transmitted from different channels in different ways. The role of state television in Russia is not as central as is often assumed, since a large part of the population gets their information from other sources. Which does not mean, however, that in its main points this information would flow differently.

If we look at all these "alternative channels," which are generally to be found either on Telegram or YouTube, the so-called current talking points do reach the end-user there as well. Even if they are Z-bloggers critical of the Kremlin, they, too, spread Great Russian chauvinism in the same way as do the talk shows of state television.

I was very deeply impressed once when I was sitting in the waiting area at Yakutsk airport and an Orthodox television channel was playing on the TV there: I immediately began watching with interest. Clergymen took turns on screen, and there were also some talk shows. Yet the message the viewer got from there coincided with the general state narratives: God Himself wanted Crimea to "return" to Russia's bosom; the West is afflicted by an evil spirit and is degenerate; Christian values live on only in Russia. All this was presented in the quiet, discreet, and gentle manner characteristic of Orthodox clergy.

We here simply cannot grasp how well and effectively the state information space works in Russia, and do not take into account that already a third generation is growing up with such information flows. To hope that all this has had no effect whatsoever on public opinion is the height of naivety.

If we now return to the start, then that time in Raekoja plats in Tartu, we also engaged in some somewhat historical comparisons. My friend said that the big difference with the late 1980s is that there is now no longer any general optimism in Russia. At that time, a large part of Russia's population actually welcomed change, and hoped that life would get better in every way. One can always debate what went wrong, but already by the mid-1990s the words "democrat" and "democracy" had taken on a negative meaning; by the early 2000s they had become swear words.

A legendary rally took place in Moscow in 1991 with 100,000 people taking to the streets to express support for the Baltic states' independence. As of now that mindset has transformed. In Russia, few wish for a democratic and European-style society; there is no general optimism or enthusiasm about change. If nowadays 100,000 people were to gather in central Moscow, it would be only if there was a need to celebrate the re-occupation of the Baltic states.

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