“The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.”

– Princess Leia, “Star Wars IV: A New Hope“

Reuters reports that Russian “prime minister” and “former president” Vladimir Putin — a/k/a Darth Vaderski — is boldly going where no post-Soviet ruler has ever gone before. He’s creating a government-within-a-government, a star chamber inside his offices that the Russian White House, where the prime minister holds court, and he’ll use this system to further tighten his already dictatorial grip on power.

Putin said: “The full government is a rather big body.” So he’s scrapping it. Undoubtedly, there might be one or two random figures in the government that are 99%, as opposed to 100%, robotic slaves of Putin’s cult of personality, and might ask him an uncomfortable question or two. Hence, who needs them?

Dimitri Peskov, Putin’s former press secretary who now speaks for him as prime minister, said that Russia’s “president” Dmitri Medvedev won’t be allowed to attend the star chamber meetings. “This is a purely governmental body which does not provide for participation by the president,” he said.

A similar star chamber existed in Soviet times. It was called “presidium.” Guess what: Putin’s body will have the same name.

The next time you wonder curiously how the world ever managed to allow tyrants like Hitler, Stalin and Mau to rise to such obscene levels of power before doing anything to stop them, just have a look at today’s Russia. Putin has actually gone those three one better, because he’s created a clever straw man in Medvedev. Thus, Putin can engage in a whole new, even more brutal round of crackdowns on civil society, purging the last vestiges of civil rights and liberties, without getting the blame. When it’s all over, he can just blame Medvedev and take back the formal reigns of power as dictator for life.

Not even in Soviet times did the KGB achieve such direct control over the Russian government.