Although I would not go as far as Pyotr Pavlensky who has done just that in Red Square as a protest against Russian society’s acquiescence to a police state, I can see how anyone with a glimmering of social democratic tendencies would be alarmed at the consequences of “one man being strong enough to defy the system and live according to higher laws” and making open elections irrelevant.
It could lead to situations such as the disappearance from sight of Nadezhda Tolokonnikova. The Pussy Riot member’s family fears that she is about to be dispatched to Siberia.
On the other side of prison walls in Russia, there is Edward Snowden who now is working for as technical support for a “major Russian website”. I wonder the vague description hints at links to FAPSI. If so, presumably Snowden felt the risk of being force-fed Geng Huichang’s home-baked Rasputin cakes had he opted for the MSS in Beijing was too great, and sees a way to avoid ending-up a peak-reading on a Geiger counter when he collates and leaks Kremlin secrets.
Assuming it was all done in good faith, of course, and he is a contemporary Vasili Mitrokhin. On Pussy Riot’s inoffensive (to our eyes) protest, Mitrokhin might have said that acts which we might see as trivial, the Kremlin sees as a threat to the regime.
