Two months ago, Human Rights Watch published a 75-page white paper reviewing the effect of a 2006 Russian enactment known as the “Law on Extremism.” Just as civil rights activists warned at that time, the law has been used, as HRW documents chapter and verse, to support a wave of attacks by the government aimed not at terrorists but at politically oriented non-governmental organizations which dare to challenge the Kremlin on issues pertaining to civil society and democracy.

As HRW reports, the Kremlin has been systematically attacking all independent political action for some time now:

In 2007 Russian authorities cracked down on opposition political movements and on public protests expressing dissent. Police systematically harassed and detained activists planning and participating in a series of peaceful political protests called “Dissenters’ Marches.” The protests were organized by an opposition coalition called Other Russia and several other opposition groups seeking to protest setbacks in democracy in Russia.10

Protest marches took place in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and half a dozen provincial capitals. Authorities refused to allow or severely restricted the demonstrations. On April 14 riot police and special forces used excessive force to break up the Dissenters’ March in Moscow, beating numerous demonstrators and detaining hundreds. Authorities prevented observers and activists—including Other Russia’s leader, Garry Kasparov—from traveling to Samara to participate in a Dissenters’ March on May 18.11

In a case reminiscent of the Soviet era, Other Russia activist Artyom Baysarov was forcibly confined to a psychiatric hospital in Ioshkar-Ola on November 23, 2007, one day before the protest he had been planning in that city.12 He was released one month later.

Within the past few days there have been two more vivid examples of this neo-Sovietization of Russian society. On April 22nd, Other Russia reports, the “appeal of a Russian non-profit organization, shut down after failing to comply with strict new registration rules, was been thrown out by the country’s highest court. The Judicial Division for Civil Cases of Russia’s Supreme Court, led by Viktor Knyshev, upheld an earlier court order that the refugee assistance group be dissolved for failing to file the correct documents in time.” A year and a half after the Law Against Extremism went into effect, there are some 227,000 registered NGOs. According to the state-run Rossiyskaya Gazeta, only a quarter of those groups had filed correctly by this year’s April 15th deadline.

On the same day, ironically, Other Russia reports that “the website of a popular newspaper in Kirov, Russia suddenly stopped working. As it turned out, the Vyatsky Nablyudatel had been targeted by local law enforcement office for alleged extremism. The site’s internet host, the ‘Hosting Company,’ decided to pull the plug after a formal request from the Kirov Oblast militsiya.”

As if to remove any doubt as to whether these actions are approved by the Kremlin, three days later Russia’s lower house of parliament voted to allow the government vast new powers to restrict and silence the mass media.

Some in today’s younger generation may look back with contempt on the actions of their forefathers during World War II when faced with the rise of Adolph Hitler. They may ask how the world could have turned its back for so long on the threat it faced, how things could have been allowed to get so far out of hand. They may think that those times are passed, that a similar thing couldn’t happen today, not with NATO and the United Nations in place. But reflecting on the impunity with which Russia’s dictator, a proud KGB spy, is rapidly recreating the Soviet system in today’s Russia, it’s not hard to see how wrong such a conclusion would be.

Even now, just as Neville Chamberlain sought to blind the West in the 1930s to the threat posed by Hitler, the appeasers are desperately seeking to cast Vladimir Putin’s successor as a closet liberal. Yet, Dimitri Medvedev has remained silent in the face of the new legislative initiative against the press, silent as a new wave of attacks on independent voices in Russia is launched, silent as Putin reaches out to grab more power in his new position as prime minister.

What we need now is a new Winston Churchill. Perhaps American presidential candidate John McCain, who has called for Russia’s ouster from the G-8, will prove to be that leader.