“The United States is speed running into a more authoritarian model that the Russians have been living in for quite some time now.” — Dan Storyev
How to survive authoritarianism in the United States? Maybe we can learn from the Russians. At least according to the Russian-American Dan Storyev, co-author (with Maria Kuznetsova) of How to Survive Authoritarianism, a phrasebook which provides a hundred Russian words for the nasty political things Americans can see but can’t yet name.
Storyev’s premise is that America hasn’t got the vocabulary to describe its current predicament. The country has never lived under a dictatorship, he explains, so the language simply isn’t there. Russian history, on the other hand, is defined mostly by dictatorship. Storyev experienced Putin’s post-Soviet authoritarianism, his parents Brezhnev’s stagnation, their parents Stalinist totalitarianism, their ancestors one brutal czar or another. So the Russian language shaped itself accordingly, words becoming a way to both describe and resist the authoritarian reality of their lives.
Storyev provides us with phrases like “power vertical,” a chilling Kremlin euphemism for a country where a single desk decides everything (ie: the aspiration of the current White House). Then there’s the Russian word “byudzhetniki,” meaning the budget people, whose salaries come from the state and who are therefore expected to loyally show up at the rally and at the ballot box (ie: everyone who benefits from Trump’s $5,000 handout). And the “siloviki,” the men of force (ie: ICE agents). Best of all, “mnogohodovochka,” the multistep stratagem — Moscow’s way of explaining a catastrophe as a plan too clever for ordinary mortals to follow. Which is an unpronounceable way to understand everything from Elon Musk’s ridiculous DOGE debacle to Trump’s absurd war in Iran.
Five Takeaways
• A Phrasebook, Not a Prophecy. America isn’t an authoritarian state — but Americans lack the vocabulary to spot one forming, and Russians have had three generations to develop it.
• Aesopian Language. The art of criticizing the state without going to prison. Mnogohodovochka — the master plan too clever for you to grasp — is the Kremlin’s version of The Art of the Deal.
• Breaking the Law. His claim: resisting will eventually mean breaking the law, since autocrats write the laws. AK pushed back hard — and got a clarification rather than a retreat.
• The Words. Power vertical. Byudzhetniki, the budget people expected to vote correctly. Siloviki, the men of force. And near abroad, which turned up in a leaked Pentagon memo about Panama.
• Good Czar, Bad Boyars. The leader is kind; it’s the local officials failing him. And the hopeful close: what Americans do best, he says, is show up — as they did in Minneapolis.
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Chapters:
00:00:31 Introduction: after Lillian Smith, a phrasebook
00:02:17 Is there authoritarianism in America in 2026?
00:04:16 Jim Crow, McCarthyism and who already knows
00:07:08 Does resistance start with an attitude or a language?
00:09:41 Lea Ypi, Albania and families who said the opposite
00:10:34 Aesopian language, and mnogohodovochka
00:13:18 Havel, Shostakovich and the irony of dissidents
00:14:19 Irony poisoning
00:14:58 Why aren’t Americans willing to take risks?
00:16:15 “You will have to break the law”
00:18:52 Pushback: voted in, voted out
00:19:54 Protests are not emotional support groups
00:23:06 The New York Times op-ed, and six Russian terms
00:24:30 The power vertical
00:26:23 Is Curtis Yarvin a straw man?
00:29:11 Are we playing the conservatives’ game?
00:30:15 Apparatchik and samizdat
00:32:39 Book bans, bestsellers and what doesn’t translate
00:33:30 Byudzhetniki: the budget people
00:36:50 Siloviki, ICE and Ivan the Terrible
00:40:00 Near abroad, and a leaked Pentagon memo
00:41:51 Good czar, bad boyars
00:43:32 What could Americans teach Russians?