How to Survive Authoritarianism: Dan Storyev on a Russian Phrasebook for America

00:00:31 Andrew Keen: Hello, everybody. It's Saturday, October 3, 2026. Yesterday, we had Keri Leigh Merritt on the show, a Spanish-based writer, a kind of American exile, and she has a new book out. It's called An Inconvenient Woman: The Extraordinary Life of Lillian Smith, the Southerner Who Defied Jim Crow America. It's about, an early twentieth century dissident called Lillian Smith who lived in the South under Jim Crow and wrote overtly against the system. She's best known for her book Bitter Fruit [as spoken: Strange Fruit]. Of course, Inconvenient Woman is written in part historically, but with one eye on the present given what's happening in the United States. And today, we're dealing with a book that deals even more explicitly with what is seen as an authoritarian threat to America. Its coauthor is Dan Storyev, a writer, somebody who has spent his life, going backwards and forwards between Russia and the United States. And the book is called How to Survive Authoritarianism: A Russian's Phrasebook for Everyday Life in America. Dan is joining us from New York. The book, is already out. Dan, congratulations on the new book. I wonder, are you really serious? I know you have a lot of, thoughts about how America and Russia or maybe America and the Soviet Union are similar. But do you really believe that authoritarianism exists in America in October 2026?

00:02:17 Dan Storyev: Right. Well— And thank you so much for having me on, Andrew. It's quite a pleasure to talk to you. I think that there is a real looming threat of authoritarianism in the United States. I don't think the United States right now, and, we don't think the United States right now, is an authoritarian state, an authoritarian government. But there are certainly elements within American society as well as within the American ruling class, which would really like for, the United States to be, an authoritarian state. And this is exactly what the book is about. The book is about spotting some key trends, which can really tell you, okay. This is authoritarianism. This is rising this is a rising threat of authoritarianism. The way really the book came about is that we realized that Americans don't have the language to describe, signs of authoritarianism just because the United States has this culture that historically hadn't really been exposed to dictatorships, to tyranny. Whereas Russian language is laced with a lot of ways of describing living in authoritarian reality because, well, you know, my parents lived under the stagnation. Their parents lived under Stalin. Their parents lived under, under the czars and so on and so forth. Right? So there is this, this background of authoritarianism that you kinda get used to, and you have specific terms. And this is how we structure the book here. There's basically— Each chapter has several entries, and each entry is a Russian word, which helps you understand how authoritarianism, how authoritarianism—

00:04:16 Andrew Keen: Right. And we'll come to some of those words. But coming back to, Keri Leigh Merritt's An Inconvenient Woman, which is about the life of Lillian Smith, some Americans would argue, historians and maybe even people living in the United States, that many Americans are actually used to living under one kind of authoritarianism or another, those who grew up— Especially black Americans in Jim Crow, those people who lived through McCarthyism in the nineteen fifties. So is the history of America in you— In your mind so different from the history of Russia or the Soviet Union? I know as I said in the introduction— You grew up, literally and metaphorically between the United States and Russia. So you're familiar with both cultures, both histories, both political systems. Is there such a big gulf between the US and Russia in your mind, historically?

00:05:13 Dan Storyev: I think historically— And you're absolutely right. I think there are certain populations within the United States which were always on the receiving end of state repression, and that, of course, is most true about, black Americans, about African Americans. It is also true about, like, recent immigrants, let's— Latino community in the United States. And that's actually— These communities, they do have sort of their own jargon for how they refer to the agents of the state, how they refer to all the authoritarian or kind of quasi authoritarian procedures that they encounter. But this doesn't necessarily reach the mainstream. Okay? The mainstream America, it— The mainstream American experience is not an authoritarian one. It's not the best experience in the world, mind you. I'm not trying to make this kind of American dream, argument here. But it not— It is not yet one of kind of state domination and [unclear]. And I think there are certainly more similarities between Russia and the United States than some people would like to admit. I certainly think the two are very similar in their historical trajectories. But in terms of our dealings with the notions of tyranny, the notions of totalitarianism and authoritarianism, I think that Russia as a whole historically had more experience with these models of government, whereas the United States is, to use a modern term, speed running, into a more authoritarian model that, the Russians have been, have been living in for quite some time now.

00:07:08 Andrew Keen: Your book is a phrase book for everyday life in America about surviving authoritarianism. So it's a kind of linguistic guide in a sense. We did a show a few months ago with the American writer Gal Beckerman about How to Be a Dissident. Again, a very interesting book. You're probably familiar with Gal and the work. He began— He has ten ways of being a dissident in the book, but he begins with a kind of attitude be— Before the language, Dan. Is there an attitude, a way of, of surviving authoritarianism? One of the people he writes about in the book and acknowledges he's maybe in some ways not the most attractive of characters

00:07:56 Dan Storyev: Mhmm.

00:07:56 Andrew Keen: Is Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who, of course, in terms of modern Soviet history, is a paradigm, a model to how to survive, Soviet authoritarianism. Is it an attitude? I mean, Solzhenitsyn stood up to Stalin or certainly to Stalinism.

00:08:16 Dan Storyev: Yeah. I mean, I think Solzhenitsyn's figure aside because you are correct. He's indeed way more controversial, I think, than people think, but definitely a strong writer. But I do think that resistance, it does start with language, this attitude that you're talking about and the How to Be a Dissident talks about. It does start with kind of modifying the way you think about things. And we, as humans, we are kind of deeply linguistical [as spoken], for the lack of a better word, creatures. We think about things mainly through language, through, through words. And once we are able to acquire a better language for understanding what's going on around us, that's when we are given this capacity. We're given this capacity to think and resist first within our minds. Right? First resisting within our minds just through thinking, through speaking to ourselves sometimes, then speaking to our friends, to our family, to, finally to strangers on the street. That's how you build a political movement. And it does— It really does start with language, and that's why, we think language is so important.

00:09:41 Andrew Keen: Few years ago, we had the, London based half Albanian political philosopher, Lea Ypi, on the show. I'm not sure if you're familiar with her work. She wrote a book called Freedom [as spoken: Free], which is very influential. An autobiography of growing up in Hoxha's Stalinist Albania.

00:10:01 Dan Storyev: Mhmm.

00:10:01 Andrew Keen: And she describes conversations she used to have with her family, which were, in a daily sense, surreal. Whatever they meant, they said the opposite, and they invented language and characters that actually reversed the world. Is that the beginnings, Dan, of how to survive authoritarianism when it comes to a phrasebook? It's not a literal, linguistic guide. It's more turning language upside down. Is that what the Russians have learned?

00:10:34 Dan Storyev: In a way, yes. In a way, a big part of what we are uncovering in this book is something called the Aesopian language. And that is a trope, which was a literary device, which was developed by, Russian satirists, back under the Russian empire, really. And then it survived into, into the Soviet Union. And so what Aesopian language is, it's— It is a way to write about society. It is a way to critique society and critique the state with— But in a way that doesn't immediately land you into prison. So you are kind of talking about things, but you're talking about it in a roundabout way. Right? So you're using all kinds of different terms, which everybody understands what you mean, but at the same time, you can't go to prison for that. So, like, there is this Russian term, [unclear] [ed.: likely mnogohodovochka], right, which means a multistep stratagem, literally. But what people tend to use it as is it's sort of a satirical comment on how the Kremlin explains their failures. Right? So the Kremlin loves to explain their failures through this idea. Oh, this was actually this great plan. You just don't have enough, understanding to grasp it, but it's actually gonna work out. Trust me. Trust me. And so people look at it and say, oh, they're doing another [unclear] [ed.: likely mnogohodovochka]. It's very— We included in the book partially because this is very similar to how, Trump circles are using the term, The Art of the Deal, right, where Trump's press secretary, I believe, told journalists at one point, oh, you just don't understand The Art of the Deal. Clearly, you didn't read The Art of the Deal enough, to understand just how genius our president is. And that's a very similar dynamic here. And this sort of Aesopian speech, when you take a huge dose of irony and kinda lace your speech with it to, at the same time, shelter yourself from the government, from the state, but also enable your writing to have more kick, more punch, more bite. That is something that is very prominent in, Russian literature, Russian language, and, also, I would believe in, Albania or Yugoslavia, any sort of state that has to do with, authoritarianism. There is always this sort of Aesopian, Aesopian speech.

00:13:18 Andrew Keen: Yeah. So it's probably not surprising. Certainly, in Gal Beckerman's book, How to Be a Dissident, perhaps his most attractive model is Václav Havel, the Czech dissident playwright, of course, a man of words, as well as other Czechs like Kundera writers. And, of course, again, don't need me to tell you this, Dan. This is manifested not just in works, but in all, not just in words, but in all kinds of, artistic, expressions. Shostakovich in the Russian tradition comes to mind. [unclear] used irony or the ironic— His own language, musical language of irony to literally or at least metaphorically fire back at the state. Filmmakers—Tarkovsky comes to mind as well. So it's rooted in the essence, I'm guessing, of Russian and certainly Soviet culture.

00:14:19 Dan Storyev: Yes. Yes. Absolutely. I think this— And, again, it's because you exist, and you see this in the US too where a lot of, especially younger people, they resort to, what's known as irony poisoning, right, where you just— Everything becomes ironic. Everything becomes kind of a self referential joke, because partially, it comes out of the fear of the state. It comes out of, oh, I'm afraid to say there's so that because I'm afraid that there is gonna be consequences. So whatever I'm saying, I'm gonna be putting this ironic kind of defense around it.

00:14:58 Andrew Keen: What's happened in America is one of the things that, interests and in some ways surprises me. Why aren't Americans ready to perhaps take risks? We did another show recently with an American writer, who has a book about, cowardice in Trump 2.0 and picks on, I think, six or eight Americans who've been unwilling to stand up. I had another guest who will remain nameless, last month who said some very critical remarks about Trump. And afterwards, he asked me to cut them out of the interview— Because he feared repercussions on the part of, I don't know, whether it was Trump or his university or the state. Are Americans not really ready for this? I mean, what do you make of it as someone who spent your life going backwards and forwards between Russia and the United States? Are some Americans ready? Some have left. I mean, historians, Timothy Snyder, of course, very publicly, got up and went to live in exile in Canada. What do you make of this rather mixed American response to what some people see as authoritarianism?

00:16:15 Dan Storyev: I think this response is exactly what— Well, this response is partially exactly what made us write this book. Right? Because we are seeing the same patterns. We saw the same patterns in the United States that we saw in Russia in, like, early two thousands when Vladimir Putin was strengthening his grasp on power. That's something that's really important to understand about contemporary Russia is that it didn't put— This Putinist, authoritarian regime didn't come out of nowhere. Russia used to be a very troubled but still a democracy in the nineties and the early two thousands, And then it went into a sort of a hybrid regime mode, and then it became a full— Fully fledged authoritarian state. And there were a lot of hinge points during which Russian civil society maybe could had could have had fought back, but it didn't for a multitude of reasons. And some of these reasons was covered there. Some of it was a lack of cohesion, lack of organization, and some of it was genuine lack of, for the lack of a better word, radicalism. Right? Because I think that people, especially people in the establishment of the positions of power or relative power, positions of privilege, they are reluctant to admit that the very state around them, the very fabric of the country around them is changing and changing for the worse. And something that I think a lot of Americans, especially kind of establishment American liberals, have yet to realize is that if you want to effectively resist authoritarianism, you will have to break the law at some point. Right? We still have, American establishment Democrats, American establishment liberals tell us about legality of things, about, kind of the legal size of what Trump is doing is, they talk about how what Trump is doing is illegal. They talk about all this stuff. But at the same time, they need to realize that autocrats or wannabe autocrats for that matter, they write the laws to suit their interest. Right? So at some point, there will come a time when in order to resist an authoritarianism, you have to break the law like in Russia today. In Russia today, if you want to resist Vladimir Putin, you have to break the law. It's that— It's just that plain

00:18:52 Andrew Keen: Well, I'm not sure everyone, p— Everybody, Dan, would agree. I mean, some people might argue, well, Trump was voted into office, and then it'll be voted out. And once you start breaking the law, it allows anything, violence, rioting of one kind or another. So it's become rather fashionable to pick on American liberals and say, well, they don't know how to respond. But are you really suggesting that people should just break the law in terms of resisting Trump, whatever it means to resist Trump? You wrote a piece with Maria Kuznetsova, who's your coauthor for this book, couple of months ago when you argued that protests are not emotional support groups. It was an explanation of why, at least in your view, the No Kings protests continue to fail. What should Americans do? Should they riot? Should they go into hiding? Should they go into the woods? Should they resist violently?

00:19:54 Dan Storyev: Right. And thanks for pushing back on that. So me and Maria Kuznetsova's article on the No Kings protest, I think that's a really good starting point to talk about this. Because I am not suggesting, of course, that Americans start a civil war tomorrow. That would be silly. What I am suggesting, however, is that Americans need to rethink the way they are engaging with authoritarianism. Right? They need to start— They need to stop thinking about, the reality around them as something normal because what— What's happening right now when we are trying— When we think about Trump, and we think about his circles as something that will invariably pass, as something that will be voted as, you know, someone who will be voted out anyway. Right? That's when we start normalizing them. And the problem is that these folks are not normal. I wish they were. I wish they were, but these folks are not normal. I mean, Steve Bannon said as much. He said that we basically only have two choices here. We either win or all of us are going to prison in the next Democratic administration. So we either figure out a way to hold on to power indefinitely or we all go into jail. And that's also where, you know, unitary executive theory, Project 2025. That's all centered on building what, we call in our book and what Russians call the power vertical, this sort of streamlined idea of, a rule that is centered not as much around a democracy, but more of sort of, like, a streamlined CEO corporate esque, model of governance. And that's really scary, and that's really abnormal. And so the moment, I don't necessarily have a prescription for what to do with this because if I did have a prescription, you know, maybe I would have been running for office somewhere. I'm not. What I am saying, however, is that we need to break out of this, toxic spiral of normalizing, of looking around and thinking, oh, okay. This is normal. This is going to pass. This is normal. This is going to pass. No. We need to look at the telltale signs of authoritarianism, point in them, and say, oh, okay. This is authoritarianism. And that's exactly why we wrote the book. And our hope is that Americans, once they are given this new vocabulary, once they are able to actually recognize what's happening to their country, they will be able to make, to make their own decisions around it. The kind of decisions they make are up to them again. I'm— I, unfortunately, I wish I had a silver bullet for what to do with, for what to do with the situation, that we're all in right now. I do not. But I am— As a writer and as, as a researcher, I am able to provide people with tools to recognize their current situation.

00:23:06 Andrew Keen: Well, you're gonna give us those linguistic tools. You may not have a silver bullet. I don't know what silver bullet means in Russian. You've got some very long words in— You wrote a good piece with Maria, in, in the New York Times last week, which was a kind of— I don't know. Did you write this before the book or as preparation for the book?

00:23:27 Dan Storyev: So the New York Times thing came out, yeah, that was—

00:23:31 Andrew Keen: That was in June of last year. Anyway, you talk about six Russian, mostly Russian terms to make sense of America. I'm not gonna make a complete fool of myself, Dan, by trying to pronounce this very, very long word, Russian word beginning with m. Maybe you can pronounce it and tell us why it's such an important word. I know it's not only in the New York Times piece, but also in the book.

00:23:55 Dan Storyev: Well, [unclear] [ed.: likely mnogohodovochka] is the one that I just talked about. That's the, the word that describes a multistep stratagem. And we put it into the op-ed and then put it into the book, precisely because it describes really well how Trump and his [unclear], talk about The Art of the Deal, the concept of, oh, you know, it's just [unclear] how genius a leader is. You just wait a little bit, and then it all goes— All going to work out at the end. It never does, but nevertheless.

00:24:30 Andrew Keen: And another word you talk about, which you just brought up is power vertical. So that's a kind of almost like a— I don't know whether it's a Marxist interpretation of the state, but suggests that the ruling class or the dominant class re architects the state in their own interest as Putin has done.

00:24:50 Dan Storyev: So the power vertical is something that came into Russian vocabulary, in the nineties, like, late nineties or early two thousands when Putin was coming into power. And Russia at the time was a fledgling democracy, but it was also a huge mess. Right? There was a lot of banditism, lots of gangsters, that kind of stuff. And the power vertical was like a political term that would sound— That would be very very well received— That was very well received by Russian society because the assumption was that basically meant law and order. That power vertical, when power flows directly from the executives, there is no democracy on the ground. And think about Russia is the largest country in the world. Right? It's something that should be a federation. Right? It's something that has, like, 11 time zones. It's not something that should be managed in a unitary, in a unitary sense. But de facto, it is. De facto, everything is controlled by essentially this one man, and there's a whole lot of problems with that. It's this corporate approach to running a state where everything is decided by the CEO at the top. And, again, it is exactly, it is exactly what people like Curtis Yarvin, JD Vance's allegedly favorite philosopher. This is what they want. This— They want a CEO monarch who will make sure that trains run on time and there are no pesky protesters in the streets.

00:26:23 Andrew Keen: I wonder, though, whether characters like Yarvin. I mean, they exist, of course, and they write books and maybe JD Vance reads them, although one wonders how powerful he is whether people like him characters like him a straw man. I mean comparing we've done lots of shows on patrimonialism in the United States, and, certainly, Trump has aspirations to be patrimonial, to run the state like some sort of mafia or boss leader. But the reality is in America, I'm not sure about Russia. Maybe you can compare and contrast, but the American liberal democratic constitutional state has held up relatively well. The courts, the universities, maybe not at first, but now they're coming around. Do you really think that this power vertical exists in America, that Trump has turned the US state, its massive bureaucracy into what you call a power vertical?

00:27:27 Dan Storyev: I don't think this is something that exists. I think this is something they're trying to build. And, I am also of the— I agree with you that we shouldn't overestimate the impact of people like Curtis Yarvin. Curtis Yarvin, though, is useful because— It is useful to bring up in conversations because he sort of says the quiet part out loud. And once you— Once we read Curtis Yarvin, once we look into what he is writing, what he's saying, it is very similar to what people with real power, like JD Vance, like Peter Thiel. It is very— It is very much aligned with what they are actually trying to do. We can see that this is exactly what they're trying to do. Like, there was this concept of RAGE, which I think also, Curtis Yarvin introduced into the kind of this, dissident right vocabulary. And RAGE means Retire All Government Employees, and that was employee— Employers. And this is something that they set off doing for DOGE when they started, when they started laying off, basically, a huge chunk of this American bureaucracy because they wanted— They want to politicize, the state apparatus. They want to make it political, and they want to make it beholden to Donald J. Trump. Now is it something that they're really successful at? I wouldn't say so because not a whole lot of these people are competent. But we definitely are moving into that direction, and this is what I think really scary and really abnormal.

00:29:11 Andrew Keen: Don't you think that there's a danger of playing the game that conservatives play, the radical right of finding that somebody associated with the Democratic senator or president or governor read some sort of left wing book, and therefore, they're all extreme communists?

00:29:32 Dan Storyev: I mean, I don't think that's the right comparison. I kind of struggle to imagine— Like, do we have, I don't know. Correct me if I'm wrong, but do we have, like, Zohran Mamdani saying that his favorite book is Little Red Book by Chairman Mao and then in— enacts Mao-like policies? I don't think that's what's happening. But with this dissident right, again, you can very much track their policies with what their kind of mouthpieces are saying. It's— It tracks significantly more explicitly than any sort of far left influence might track on the Democratic Party.

00:30:15 Andrew Keen: Let's go back to your phrasebook. The two words that are perhaps best known when it comes to Anglicisms, perhaps, interpreting from Russia or Soviet Union. One is apparatchik. Another is samizdat. Are they helpful words in the America of the twenty twenties?

00:30:37 Dan Storyev: Yeah. I mean, I think apparatchik is definitely something that we might see. I don't think this is something that is necessarily something that Americans have to worry about today. We do have it in the book because some terms that we have in the book, they are there to explain what authoritarianism might look like. It's not necessarily something that's happened in America today. Samizdat is, the sort of the form of literature, which you basically have to self publish, like, in the Soviet Union because there was a very— There's a lot of strict regulation of what you— And what you can and cannot publish. And so you had to publish— Self publish certain books that you wanted to read, and people would type them at night on their own typewriters. It's a fascinating— It was a fascinating— Almost like a subculture. And in the United States, again, to what extent it is relevant to what we have in today, I don't think so. It is— I don't think it is incredibly relevant, but it is something that is worth keeping in mind because we do have book bannings in the United States today. We have, like, I believe it is hundreds of books which are banned from, like, school libraries, and, Texas, especially, is a very strong violator in that regard. It is nowhere close to what was happening in the Soviet Union, mind you, but it is a, a warning sign. So if you notice that, you have to basically start self publishing books in order to read them because your state is, is not allowing you to read them, that is definitely a sign. And I think that in some states, definitely, I believe that in places like Texas, for example, abortion literature is definitely reaching the point where it could be, could be considered and almost a samizdat like phenomenon.

00:32:39 Andrew Keen: Yeah. I take your point. Although, of course, so many anti Trump books, books critical of the current administration of bestsellers, everything from Maggie Haberman to the book I just talked about, Jacob Weisberg's Profiles in Cowardice. So it seems as if in some ways, writing against Trump might be a guarantee of becoming— Not a guarantee, but might help become a bestseller. Let's talk about a couple of other words, Russian words, which are helpful in our current situation. I'm gonna pronounce this one because I probably won't completely destroy it. siloviki and another one, a long one beginning with b. I'm not even gonna try and pronounce. Maybe you can introduce us to these two words, siloviki and the long word beginning with b. Why there? How—

00:33:30 Dan Storyev: So, [unclear] [ed.: likely byudzhetniki], that's the long word beginning with b. That's a really interesting one. I like talking about this one. And [unclear] [ed.: likely byudzhetniki] basically means budget people. Right? What they are, they are specific demographics in Russia whose employment and whose well-being, whose livelihood depends on the state. And so because Russia has these legacies from the Soviet era, you still have a lot of people who are employed by the government. So, like, a lot of people who work in the medical field, a lot of folks who work as teachers, they all getting their paychecks from the government. And in Russia, being a part of the government is politicized. Right? That's kind of going back to our earlier discussion about what, I think the second Trump administration is doing to the US government. That's— To the US state apparatus. It's trying to politicize it. And so in Russia, these demographics, they are beholden, beholden to the state. That means that the state will occasionally demand some extra services for them. So, for example, you might see these pictures of rallies from Russia, right, of people, like, people rallying around Vladimir Putin and waving Russian flags. Well, these pictures are basically fake in a way. Of course, these people are actually there. They are waving the Russian flags, but these people don't want to be there for the most part. They are told by their boss or by their, like, you know, FSB operative to show up at the specific time and wave the Russian flag. And when election day comes, because Russia still holds elections, which are neither free and fair, but they still hold us these sham elections, basically, do you have people, you have people who are told to vote a certain way? Because, again, their livelihood depends on the state. Students are another example of this demographic because in Russia, a lot of students are getting, some stipends from, from the government, from the state, and they are expected again to vote the right way. They are expected to go to these, to these events, to these rallies, and so on and so forth. And you really see this start happening in the United States as well. Of course, the most egregious example of that is Donald Trump saying that every American adult will get $5,000 if, Republicans win, the midterms. Right? That is a very clear cut, like, an exact clear cut case of byudzhetniki. The case that we use in the New York Times op-ed is the earlier case of, Elon Musk trying to interfere, into, the Wisconsin, I believe it was, the,

00:36:42 Andrew Keen: Yeah.

00:36:42 Dan Storyev: the judge campaign. Yes. And offering money to people to— For voting for their preferred candidate.

00:36:50 Andrew Keen: And what about siloviki?

00:36:53 Dan Storyev: So siloviki is, Russian security services. The literal translation is man of force or, like, enforcers. [unclear] [ed.: likely sila] is force, like, physical force in Russian. And it tends to refer to people in security services, in police, in the military sometimes, but not all the time militaries kind of exists on its own, its own end of the spectrum. And the Russian state is very much a silovik [as spoken] state. It is a state that prioritizes national security above everything else, and so they are trying to make sure that siloviki have as much power in, in the country as humanly possible, and siloviki are also extremely loyal to the executive, to Vladimir Putin. And in the United States, you have examples of sort of trying to, again, make— And this isn't something that is new. I wanna be very clear here. I very much acknowledge the dark legacy of, I don't know, J. Edgar Hoover, for example. Right? There is— America has its own long tradition of kind of spies and, domestic spying on anti capitalist on, like, African American activists, what have you. But under— I think under this administration specifically, there is this attempt to create almost like a fighting force of, siloviki-adjacent groups. Like

00:38:32 Andrew Keen: They'd be like the ICE guys.

00:38:34 Dan Storyev: Yes. The way they were recruiting you into ICE is very similar to, how they recruit for siloviki. You know, you kinda get this mandate to do violence with no retribution whatsoever. It's actually similar to something that happened if you indulge me, going back to ancient Russian history under this guy known as Ivan the Terrible. That's, like, the middle ages. And so Ivan the Terrible creates, his own militia to rein in, the— To rein in the Russian— The fledgling Russian tsardom. And that militia was called the [unclear] [ed.: likely oprichnina]. And these guys were also, like, recruited pretty much the same way ICE were recruited. And just imagine you are in a medieval Russian town and the oprichniki, they ride into your town. And the way they would do that is really picturesque, which is why I wanted to bring this up. They ride in specifically to establish themselves as these agents of terror. They would ride these huge black steeds, and they would have cut off dog heads because they would identify as, the dogs, the loyal dogs of the czar. And they would have these hats hanging off their saddles, and they would start immediately, like, looting and burning and killing people. And isn't this— Doesn't this sound exactly as, like, an ICE patrol?

00:40:00 Andrew Keen: Well, I think that might be. Yeah. I'm not a great fan of the— Of what you call ICE patrols. I'm not convinced that they're equivalent. Let's deal, finally, with a couple of, English terms that I know you think can be helpful learning from the Russian experience of, authoritarianism. Near abroad and, good czar, bad boyars. Boyars, of course, meaning, I don't know, the nobility as opposed to the czar. Why are these terms useful?

00:40:31 Dan Storyev: Right. I think— So [unclear] is really interesting also. So it used to be a term which was primarily used by Russia experts, like area studies experts. And this is a term that the Kremlin uses to refer to the nations that used to make up the Soviet Union. So it's abroad. They're foreign, but it's close to us. It's near to us. It's near abroad, and so we have our own interests in there. It's basically another word of saying our sphere of influence. And the reason we included this term is because there was, I think it was about a year ago. There was— I actually— Even more so, there was this leaked Pentagon memo to the Washington Post, which apparently used the term near abroad to refer to, I think, was it vital American interest in Panama or something like that? That was a really bizarre moment.

00:41:23 Andrew Keen: Yeah. And, I mean, we've obviously had the Venezuela experience, and we're still waiting for the penny to drop on or the shoe to drop on, on Cuba. So, certainly, that idea of America being, a regional— An aggressive regional power and imperial power is equivalent. Although I think there are many other countries where the idea of near abroad is also relevant.

00:41:49 Dan Storyev: Absolutely.

00:41:51 Andrew Keen: And then, good czars or good czar, bad boyars. Why is this— It dates back to Imperial Russia. Why is this term useful?

00:42:02 Dan Storyev: Good czar, bad boyars. That's, a way to explain, how would I put it? That's a way to explain a way— Any sort of mistakes that the leader, the boss, that your leader makes. Right? And that's, that's something that propaganda would say. Oh, you know, Putin is so kind. He actually cares about you. It's just the local officials who aren't doing a good job. Okay? And that this is what they've been saying for years and years. It's the same thing they would tell peasants in, like, Imperial Russia. Oh, don't worry. The czar loves you, actually. It's the local officials who are, messing with you. Okay? And it's the— It's a very similar, instance of how they— Like, it's very similar. I wouldn't say word for word, but it is quite similar to how people in the MAGA circles talk about Trump sometimes. Oh, you know, he knows about all these problems, all these issues, but they just— They're not reporting to him. Right? He just— He doesn't really— He doesn't understand that the country is, the country is suffering. He doesn't understand how hard the tariffs are hitting us. He still loves us. He's still with us. He's still our, you know, our chosen president. But, of course, the reality is, the exact opposite most of the times, be it Russia or the United States.

00:43:26 Andrew Keen: Maybe it should be bad czar, good boyars, although the boyars also are in trouble.

00:43:31 Dan Storyev: Everyone's bad, I think.

00:43:32 Andrew Keen: Everyone's bad. Well, the book, is out. It came out a couple of days ago. How to Survive Authoritarianism: A Russian's Phrasebook for Everyday Life in America. Finally, Dan, if you were to reverse this, how to survive authoritarianism, of course, there's no doubt that you have or there is authoritarianism in Russia. How to survive authoritarianism, maybe a smart American might write the equivalent book, How to Survive Authoritarianism, an American's phrase book for everyday life in Russia. What one word or idea might Americans in terms of their response to Trump, how might they be offering other societies, Russia or elsewhere, ways of surviving authoritarianism?

00:44:25 Dan Storyev: Listen. This is such a good question. That is actually a great question, and I need to— I think I really need to think about that one. I think I

00:44:34 Andrew Keen: It can be your new book. Your next— Look. The follow-up.

00:44:37 Dan Storyev: It could be. It could be. I mean, it's actually— It's kinda hard to pick one word, but I would say that if I have to pick the way— Well, I think the one thing I would say is something that Americans have been doing really well is the concept of, like, Americans are really good at showing up. You know? Showing up for their neighbors, showing up for our loved ones. Like, we saw that in Minnesota. We saw that in New York. We see it all over the place. And I—

00:45:07 Andrew Keen: Well, then they can't be— When you show up, up, you— It can't be an emotional support group. You're not in favor of that.

00:45:12 Dan Storyev: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, again, I wanna have a nuanced take on this. I don't want this to be, I don't want this to be as sort of, like, the let's hug and all sing kumbaya and do absolutely nothing about what's happening around us. Right? I want showing up. I want people to show up like they did in Minneapolis when they were warning people about, like, ICE raids, where they were warning, where they were preventing, people from being kidnapped by ICE. Like, that's the sort of, that's the sort of fighting spirit that Americans have, and that is truly unique, and that is really— That gives me a lot of hope for us, the country, the United States surviving, surviving this very challenging administration.

00:45:59 Andrew Keen: It's nice to, end on a positive note. Dan, Dan Storyev's new book, he's written it with Maria Kuznetsova, How to Survive Authoritarianism: A Russian's Phrasebook for Everyday Life in America. Very provocative, entertaining, and I think in some ways useful. Dan, really nice to have you on the show. Next time, I'll have to get Maria on. I know she'll be in the United States soon. Thank you so much, and best of luck with the book.

00:46:27 Dan Storyev: Thank you very much.