The dream of returning to the Soviet Union in modern Russia is increasingly ceasing to be nostalgia and more often becoming a political program. But the problem is that it is not about the romanticized image of a ‘great power’ from television myths, but about recreating the darkest model of coercion, control, and suppression. For the Israeli audience, this process is especially important because it shows how a state waging an aggressive war against Ukraine is simultaneously restructuring its own society according to the logic of fear, isolation, and controlled disenfranchisement.
Today in Russia, the features of a system where dissent is declared a threat, freedom of speech becomes a crime, and citizens are offered to exchange personal autonomy for the television illusion of stability are becoming more pronounced. And if earlier talks about a ‘new USSR’ could sound like propagandistic bravado, now more signs point to a much harsher scenario — a return not to the late Soviet lifestyle, but to the model of conditional 1937 with modern digital stuffing.
This is no longer a metaphor.
This is a political construction being assembled before our eyes.
How Russia approaches the model of total submission
Not Soviet nostalgia, but a system of fear and forced loyalty
One of the main features of the current Russian course is the attempt to restore a state where a person exists primarily as a resource. Not as a citizen with rights, not as a participant in public life, but as a controlled unit obliged to work, remain silent, obey, and not ask unnecessary questions. In such a model, war is needed not only for external aggression but also for internal discipline. It justifies censorship, strengthens repression, allows for demands of sacrifice, and simultaneously accustoms society to the idea that the norm is not freedom, but mobilization obedience.
Against this backdrop, ideas that would have recently seemed like political grotesque are increasingly being voiced. Discussions of a six-day workweek, a twelve-hour workday, and the actual expansion of the workload to 72 hours a week fit into the general trend. If such proposals are promoted by people from the pro-government elite, it means that the very idea of turning the country into a huge production barracks is no longer marginal. It is being tested in the public field and gradually introduced into public consciousness as an acceptable future option.
For the authorities, this is convenient. An overworked, intimidated, and economically dependent person resists worse, protests less often, and more easily accepts any new restrictions.
From internet shutdowns to a new serfdom logic
Recent years have shown that the Kremlin closely monitors the limits of its own population’s patience. First, society is accustomed to censorship. Then — to blockages, internet filtering, criminal cases for words, and demonstrative punishments for dissent. After this, the next stage becomes possible: presenting labor coercion, total control, and restriction of personal choice as supposedly necessary measures for the sake of the state, the front, or ‘stability.’
That is why talks about digital isolation, the analogue of ‘CheburNet,’ and the gradual transformation of the country into a controlled information camp cannot be considered an exaggeration. When society agrees to live under conditions of shutdowns, bans, and an increasingly narrow field of the permissible, the authorities draw a logical conclusion: the limit of resistance is lowered. And that means they can go further.
It’s not just the economy being tested.
It’s a test of obedience.
Why the myth of ‘returning to the USSR’ turns into a trap for the Russians themselves
Television romance versus the real model of 1937
A significant part of Russian society has indeed lived for many years with the myth of ‘returning to greatness.’ In this picture, the USSR was presented as a space of strength, military power, large industry, strict discipline, and global fear that supposedly commanded respect from the world. But such a myth always had one fundamental substitution. People dreaming of a ‘great era’ almost never imagine themselves as its victims. They mentally place themselves on the side of the authorities, security forces, party nomenclature, special services, or the punitive system.
Reality is arranged differently. In any system built on coercion, the majority of the population finds itself not in the boss’s chair, but in the role of subordinate material. Not the master of the repressive mechanism, but its raw material. And if modern Russia is indeed moving towards a version of USSR 2.0, then for millions of its citizens, this will mean not a return to the ’empire of winners,’ but a slide into a world where rights are replaced by orders, salary — by a form of dependence, and personal freedom — by the obligation to survive in a state that considers a person an expendable resource.
This paradox is especially noticeable today. Those who have supported the cult of a strong hand, repression, and militarization for years risk being the first to face the same system not as spectators, but as objects of management.
War as a way to gather the country into one big labor camp
For the Israeli reader, another aspect is important here. Russian aggression against Ukraine does not exist separately from internal processes in Russia itself. External war and internal unfreedom feed each other. The deeper the country goes into a military economy, the easier it is for the authorities to explain to society new sacrifices, new restrictions, and new forms of forced labor. The more resources go to the front, the stronger the temptation to tighten the screws inside the country and present it as an inevitability.
That is why the rhetoric about the need to work more, endure longer, and not ask questions does not look like a random set of propaganda theses, but part of the overall architecture. A country living in a state of endless war gradually adjusts civilian life to the military standard. Hence the attempt to turn society into a huge mobilization mechanism, where the factory, barracks, propaganda, and fear begin to work as a single system.
In this context, НАновости — Новости Израиля | Nikk.Agency records not just another ideological shift in Russia, but a more dangerous process: a state destroying Ukrainian cities and lives is simultaneously building within itself a model where repression, overwork, and disenfranchisement are presented as the new norm of national existence.
What this means for Ukraine and the region
Russia is becoming less predictable and more totalitarian
For Ukraine, the conclusion from this picture is quite harsh but understandable. The deeper Russia goes into the model of internal coercion, the less reason there is to expect rational evolution, humanization, or renunciation of aggression from it in the foreseeable future. A country that shapes its own society according to the laws of a camp does not become safer for its neighbors. On the contrary, it more often seeks an external enemy, strengthens militarism, and turns violence into a universal language of internal and external politics.
For Israel, this is also an important signal. The history of the 20th century has too clearly shown how quickly the cult of strength, repression, and total submission can grow into a threat not only to its own population but also to the surrounding world. When unfreedom, labor coercion, suppression, and the cult of the enemy are normalized in a state, it always ceases to be only the internal affair of such a country.
That is why the current transformation of Russia is important not only for the Ukrainian front.
It is important for understanding what type of regime the world will have to deal with in the future.
If the current trajectory continues, Russia will look less and less like an ordinary authoritarian state and more like a closed system of the late imperial type, where the population is held by a mixture of fear, propaganda, war, and social dependence. And in such a case, the conversation is no longer about beautiful myths about ‘returning to the USSR,’ but about a real slide into a model where the state demands not participation from a person, but submission.