Boris Akunin: I wonder, why am I so sick of the Russian government today? I'm a historian and I should understand that at the present stage it cannot be of a better quality. We must learn to walk before we can run, Rome was not built in a day, civil society takes time to develop – and other such folk wisdom.

It's as simple as that.

It is understandable that a regime of transition may not be sugar-coated, but it need not be so vile.

Without a doubt, the personal qualities of the leader are evident here: he is cynical, utterly fake, petty and vengeful.

Putin's government is the most corrupt in all of Russia’s thousand-year history. Never – not even in the eighteenth century – did it demonstrate such brazen thievery.

Putin's government is on friendly terms with the most heinous political regimes on the planet and prevents them from being called to account.

Putin's government does not allow the country to thrive; he cares only about the immediate self-interest of the ruling elite, and is depriving Russia of a future.

Under Putin's rule they do away with political opponents with cowardice and malice: criminal charges are fabricated, as they were with Khodorkovsky and Navalny, and their loved ones bear the brunt of it – as with Navalny, again, or Roizman; and they hound them using the worst kind of tabloid-type journalism such as Anatomy of Protest or Life News (LifeNews.ru).

And of course, to top it all off, there is the law on orphans. It is patently clear that America is totally unmoved by these threatening measures. So you can’t adopt children from Russia? – so what! The world is full of other countries that are unable to care for their orphans. But no, the logic here is somewhat different. The aim was to do something more painful to our own civil society, given that it is particularly susceptible to humanitarian concerns. With as much success they might have shut down our hospices or taken something away from the disabled in retaliation. After all Putin and his gang are not taking revenge on America, but on us. They know that we are feel so sorry for the disadvantaged, and that is why they are doing what they can to cause us pain. We are screaming, and they are rejoicing.

But it is not just painful for us, it is very unpleasant as well. And the further things go, the more unpleasant it gets.

It is very shameful to live in a squalid, despicable country; that is the heart of the matter. And if someone says to me in turn: "Well, if you don't like it – get lost! The borders are open", I reply tactlessly: "Get lost yourself!"

I want to live in my own home, in Russia, but I don't want Russia to be squalid and despicable. That's all.

Now Novaya Gazeta has started to collect signatures for the dissolution of the so-called Duma.

I know that many people will say that this is absurd and will not come to anything.

It won’t, of course, cause the 'Duma' to dissolve itself. However, it's a far from pointless exercise to tell the scumbags what they really are.

Source: Boris Akunin's blog