The death of Alexei Navalny (or murder, as it is also being called) brings into focus the close resemblance between the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation. When the Soviet Union collapsed in the early Nineties, virtually everyone expected or at least hoped the new republic would be a democracy and an open society. The failures of the old system were too great, from agriculture to industry to living conditions, even to motivation. The socialist heaven it promised was delusion, the socie