But it feels fuzzy. Like it starts clearly and then goes all out of focus.
It shifts between liberals and intelligentsia and "most Russians" without actually stating what she entails: That those who were liberals in '68 could side with liberals in rejecting an oppressive state, albeit with only a very few having enough conviction to act on it. Now, however, even the liberals are either cowed or co-opted by visions of territorial "birthrights" a thousand miles from where they live.
She overlooks that one involved Czechs against Czechs while this involves Russians against outsiders. It's not them against them. It's them against us. There's no parallel with the Prague Spring. None. Just an aspiration that liberals don't like Putin and for some reason do sort of like Putin in this. She needs a good justification, and finds merely "a" justification.
She also plays this funny game with Georgia. Georgia was a big deal. Liberals weren't involved, but Internet forums were all riled up during the Georgian conflict. It took a special kind of reporter to show unflattering photos from the conflict.
The most unflattering photos I saw were on pro-Russian sites. "Look at all this destruction and death! Woo-hoo! Go Russia!" These weren't liberals. They were a majority. Soldiers uploading the photos--it never occurred to you that they didn't have permission or even orders to do so--were proud of the incursion and with one voice echoed the party line. "We good, they evil, death to the evil ones." But while this is certainly relevant today, for Gessen it's all about Putin versus Medvedev and how Putin was perceived.
But it's precisely the same attitude.
And that's where the fuzziness comes in. She wants quite dissimilar things to be parallel, and for the current differences to be meaningful and in need of explanation. She wants rather similar things to be dissimilar, and finds the similarities indicative of change.
Still, it's reasonable. At least it brings up points that most don't.
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