#314: Preserve Your Democracy. A Conversation with Konstantin Samoilov

Welcome everybody. Today I would really like to welcome Konstantin Samoilov. It is indeed a great honor to host you here and I hope we can have a fascinating conversation. Konstantin is most known for his YouTube channel, Inside Russia, in which he reports about what Russia has turned into in recent years. Konstantin is an economist by training and has accumulated vast experience running businesses both in the United States and Russia. Luckily, he is no longer physically inside Russia, but he knows what is going on.

We share a bit of history. Both of us grew up under the Soviet system—me in East Germany and you directly in the Soviet Union. We both were a bit younger then. I guess now you are in exile because Russia has turned into a dictatorship again.

For this conversation I would like us to talk about what it actually means to live in a dictatorship, because I have noticed that there is a trend amongst people in the West to think that it does not matter whether you live in a democracy or not, that talk about socialism while ignoring the real existing socialism that existed in the Soviet system and still survives in China and other countries. People also seem to believe they can ignore politics and just live their lives and that it might be okay to outsource political responsibility to a leader they trust.

Konstantin has been steadfast in his rejection of the war against Ukraine and his promotion of democracy. His mission, although demonetized by Google, is to hold up what it means to be a good citizen and a good person. So we are here to talk about why this attitude against democracy is dangerous, where it can lead to, and what such thinking has led to in the case of Russia.

You frequently, Konstantin, use a variant of a quote by Pericles, the ancient Greek politician: “If you are not interested in politics, politics is very much interested in you.” What does this mean when you say this?

Konstantin: Philipp, thank you very much for inviting me. It’s a pleasure to be here. We have communicated via email a few times and it’s finally good to see us talking. Thank you for inviting.

That phrase is very personal for me. Where do I even start? When the mobilization in Russia started in late September of 2022, I was afraid of two things. First, I was afraid of being mobilized. And I would never take up arms and follow orders to go and kill Ukrainians. No. And I know for that disobedience I would be punished, and the punishment would be—most likely—long imprisonment and death.

But it was not probably even the biggest concern. Another concern I had was that the Russian government—I was definitely under radar because I was still in Russia and I was not liked by the state for what I was saying all along—and I was afraid that they were going to take this opportunity of mobilization to basically silence me, to get rid of me, to have me disappear or something would happen to me.

For a few days I remained in Russia—six days to be exact. Every single day I expected a knock on the door, and every single day at the end of every live stream—and I did and I still do live streams daily—I kept saying, “Friends, this could be my last live stream. If I don’t show up tomorrow, if I don’t go online, know that it’s over for me and it’s been an honor and pleasure being able to communicate with you and send you messages.” And I meant it, because every single day, I treated it as if it was my last show. And every single night, I expected the knock on the door.

When I thought of that, I was thinking just that—you know, I didn’t care about politics for 20 years that I had lived in Russia. I saw bad things happen gradually, slow, step by step. And you know what? I kept silent and I closed my eyes. I would turn the other way. I saw the Russian state deteriorating. I saw freedoms taken away. I saw power of the people being taken away from the people, step by step. I did nothing.

Well, I was not interested in the politics, and the politics got very interested in me, and I was expecting that knock on the door. That’s what it means to me—in a very straightforward way, a very personal way for me. And I think that’s what it means for everyone, not just me. I have lived through it, I have experienced it.

Phil: There’s a famous German author, Thomas Mann, who fled Germany and discovered that it was very important to be political. He spoke out as the voice of Germany outside. He said, “Wherever I am, there is German culture.” Now you don’t have that kind of ego, but you do speak for those Russians who can’t speak at the moment. You left at a point where you needed to protect yourself.

You said you probably could have spoken out earlier. What mechanisms did the state have to make people not speak out? How does a state like Russia get you to not want to communicate, to not want to say what is wrong?

Konstantin: It’s such a complicated issue. It’s been a process, a 25-year-old process. When Putin first came to power, he started changing Russia at the end of his first year of his first term. He started taking gradual steps. Not he personally, but he was making decisions and he had a team who implemented them. First of all, he started growing that team to have more followers and supporters.

Then he started taking away freedom of press—he started crushing independent media, independent press. So he wanted to limit what people could hear. He wanted to limit the stages where independent voices could come to and be heard. He was very successful at that.

He started taking ability to finance decisions at the local political level, at the level of provinces, and that was very important. And no one in Russia cared. No one even noticed it. They did it so covertly that people didn’t even realize that the revolution happened in 2002. There was a reform done, and local governments were given more responsibilities but they were taking money away. So the money would not go to the local governments but to Moscow, and Moscow decided who to give money to and how much. So that was a leash they put everyone onto.

They started corrupting the system of elections, election by election, step by step. I can’t really say that they were honest elections even before Putin, but at least they were much more honest than with Putin. Anyone could become a monitoring person at the elections—any citizen—and that citizen would have full access to all the election process, would have ability to monitor all the steps from opening the polling stations to closing and submitting all the polls and counting them.

Then Putin started changing that. I’m saying Putin, but it’s his regime really—his government. They started changing that step by step. Now they would implement changes, small changes every election, but now if we look back to 2025, we go, “How did we get to this point from being free in 2000?” We didn’t even notice.

They started introducing laws to silence people. They started first by introducing a law that would forbid protesting, and it wasn’t like they just made a law saying you can’t protest anymore. That was a very smart process. The first step was that they said for public safety, now all protests must be approved by local authorities, and they were approving. It was not a big deal. They were approving protests left and right, and people thought, “Well, it’s really for our security and protection.”

Then all of a sudden they started disapproving those who held political protests and meetings. Then they made another law saying that now it’s only—no more than three people could get together. Everything above three people would be considered a protesting group. Now we are to the point where one person only—and two people are considered a group. If you have something in your hands saying “Not to war” or anything like that, they just arrest you.

Before the start of the war, they had a secret agent, an acting KGB agent, stand right next to you, and that would be not just one person but two people protesting—that would be illegal. These things they implemented step by step, and now Russia is all of a sudden at a place where people don’t have basic rights and freedoms. Everything is done according to the law. There are agencies who are armed and can use violence against Russian citizens for so many reasons, and it’s legal.

When they arrest you, no one can say, “Oh, you’re arrested illegally.” No, they arrest you according to Russian law. It’s just they’ve transformed Russian law to the point where it makes it possible to do anything with any Russian citizen.

Phil: I mean, you’ve sometimes described this process as “boiling the frog.” So when you put a frog into normal water and then boil the water, the frog doesn’t notice. I’ve noticed over time as I’ve observed Russian elections that the parties that were allowed to compete were selected in a way that any normal person would select Putin because you would have Zyuganov the communist, then the right-wing extremists—the name escapes me right now—and then Yabloko or maybe some other small party.

But it always seemed that Putin was able through United Russia to put up the face of “he’s just there to help the people.” He is the center, the normal point in politics, and everybody else is crazy. Compared to Zyuganov and Zhirinovsky, that was certainly true. But that’s how these things seem to develop.

There’s this idea that dictatorship starts because a bunch of evil people say evil things and force everybody to do it. But it happens by a bunch of people saying well-meaning things: “We are just there to protect you. We just want to make life easier. We just want to give you a sense of safety and security.” And so this is what you’ve just described. And it’s a very repeatable process.

But what makes this even more complicated is people in Russia just came out of a dictatorship in the Soviet Union. I’m from East Germany and I have people in East Germany who feel very close to Putin. There are people in Hungary—Victor Orbán fought against the Soviet Union. He was not someone in favor of dictatorship, and now he’s a complicated politician.

How do people get convinced in going through the same thing again? Was the pain between Gorbachev and Putin really that painful?

Konstantin: Phillip, that’s a question I have hard time answering because I am wondering myself. The whole situation that is happening in Russia now seems absurd because I remember how Russians were breaking down the USSR. I remember what was happening in the days of the coup in August of ’91 and in weeks and months after. I remember that feeling of joy, feeling intoxicated without drinking—intoxicated by feeling like finally we have our lives back, finally we have a future which is bright.

You must have gone through the same times when the Berlin Wall was taken down. I still remember that day—they showed it on Pervyi Kanal, and we were just looking in awe. The Berlin Wall was going down, and we had the same moment.

Then I remember there was political unrest in ’93, and it was a very complicated situation. It was actually a coup staged by Boris Yeltsin. He took out the parliament. But people were led to believe that Yeltsin was acting on their behalf and he was defending democracy. And I remember people rose and they were so active and angry, and they stood up saying, “You know what, never again. That’s not going to happen ever again. We remember the USSR well. We don’t want to go back to that country. That is why we’re here on the streets. This is our country and we’re taking charge.”

Basically this helped Yeltsin—that was a turn into a wrong direction, but anyway it doesn’t matter. I remember this wrath of people, and now it’s complete U-turn, complete. Now I think it’s even worse than USSR because in USSR there was dissent. People were speaking against—they were speaking in the kitchens. Now everyone is paranoid that their conversations are dropped through their telephones and they don’t even speak any longer. Everyone is silent.

So how Russians went from ’91 to 2005—well really to 2022, to the start of the war—that is a big question. I have a lot of thoughts, but it seems like we gained some speed but it was not enough to propel us into space. At some point we started slowing down and we fell down, and now we’re crushed on the ground back from where we started. That’s how it feels. The Polish could gain enough speed to take off into the stratosphere. The Bulgarians, the Czechs definitely. But not Russians. We failed.

Phil: Well, Yeltsin was also able to, for some reason, frame Gorbachev for the destruction of the USSR, although it was really Yeltsin who did it. It wasn’t Gorbachev.

I remember seeing the images from the Soviet Union too. For a while when I was still growing up in East Germany, we were reading Sputnik, the Reader’s Digest of the Soviet Union. There came a time in ’88 or ’89 when the Sputnik was too dangerous to be read in East Germany. We were not allowed to read Sputnik anymore because it was now the voice of Gorbachev, and the East German system started to distance itself.

Then they had this great state visit—40 years of East Germany. Gorbachev came. I had to stand there with my school class and wave. First you had Honecker in his limousine—no one wanted to wave to that—and everybody waved to Gorbachev.

But people tend to forget also that the system was stable till it wasn’t. Yes, you had refugees in Prague in the West German embassy, in Hungary. And I will forever be thankful to Hungary, especially to Gyula Horn, who opened the border to Austria when these East Germans were able to flee. That’s why I’m a little depressed about what’s going on in Hungary right now.

But you had the feeling that everything was under control, and then Günter Schabowski read that letter on a Thursday, November 9, saying, “Well, it says here that people can now travel across the border to West Germany.” And no one was prepared for that. Quickly after that, Honecker was dethroned. Egon Krenz took his case—didn’t last that long either. He still gets to write nostalgic newspaper columns, but he was actually the only one in prison for a while, or one of the very few.

But there is a sense once you’ve lived through it once that such a system is more fragile than you think. But maybe just as I heard you talking, maybe the difference now is technology. People are not really aware how invasive surveillance nowadays is. I remember in Soviet times, yeah, if you had a group of 10 people, one of them would spy on you. You just knew that. You knew that you had to really trust only a few people, even then.

But now in Moscow, they surveil how people walk. They don’t even need to see your face. They can recognize you everywhere. So modern technology seems to contribute to that too. Is that why people feel so afraid?

Konstantin: Yes and no. Yes, because of technology. Technology has definitely changed our lives in the last 20 years. They know who you are, who you speak with, what you say, how you walk, how you talk, what you say. They know everything about you. Imagine how much Google knows about us. Well, the KGB knows even more than Google.

And people are definitely afraid of that. Older people are more afraid than younger ones. I talked to so many people in Russia—literally half a dozen times. Older people said, “Be quiet. Be quiet. We don’t talk of some things here.” That’s just like back in the USSR, back in early ’80s, because in late ’80s it was glasnost—that was eradicated. Gorbachev came out and said, “Look, you can have an opinion that differs from party line. Officially you can have it and you will not be prosecuted for that.” And I was like, “Wow, we can speak our mind now.”

And everyone forgot about that stuff. But I definitely heard it when I was very young in the ’80s, and now I keep hearing it again. It’s the 21st century. In 2021, people in Russia were saying, “Never again. We will not let dictatorship again in Russia.” And the very same people who were saying it back in ’93-’94, now: “Be quiet, don’t speak, be silent.”

I think that technology has contributed to that not only in a way of planting fear into people’s hearts but by brainwashing them. And I think it’s being done absolutely brilliantly now. They’re using cutting-edge technology. They’re using psychological tricks. They’re using the science of psychology. They’re using NLP. And they’re multiplying the effect by using social networks, by using direct communications, direct messages and things like that.

They’ve learned from marketologists. Only they have replaced the product—like selling product—with planting ideas inside people’s brains. And I think Russia is leading the way, and I think that has contributed to a lot of Russians just supporting Putin or not standing up against the war or just being silent. That is a huge part of people’s lives now—technology, Russian propaganda. Oh boy.

Phil: I’ve never thought of glasnost, which means openness, also as something communicated to the people so that they’re open now. I’ve never thought about it that way.

Konstantin: It’s actually a term—it was coined by Gorbachev and then later taken by all the communists. Glasnost is the ability to have your own opinion, to publicly voice it, and not being prosecuted for that.

Phil: And you mentioned also NLP—I believe you mean neuro-linguistic programming, of course. And it strikes me as very dangerous that we are living in a world where especially younger people are encouraged to always communicate their feelings, their thoughts, unfiltered on social media. I mean, this is the perfect surveillance tool. If you wanted to imagine something like that—I mean, I still have that Soviet mindset in me to try to be as deliberate as possible when I communicate, but we are being conditioned not to do that.

And that’s not just in dictatorships. It’s also—and I’m not anti-capitalist—but you could say there is a mingling between dictatorial techniques and capitalist techniques too. Could you please explain more what you mean—what’s that mingling?

Konstantin: Well, a corporation wants you to say things you shouldn’t say so they can make money off you, and they condition you in that way. But if you say things you’re not supposed to say, they’ll punish you by banning you or demonetizing you.

Phil: Yes, now I understand. You’re right on. And they punish you by not breaking the law because they suck you into an ecosystem that they create—which is like, for example, YouTube or Facebook. It provides very convenient tools, it provides so many conveniences, but at the same time they install their own corporate censorship. And if you say anything against the rules—their own rules that they make—that’s it. You break the rules, you get thrown out, demonetized, or account is canceled.

And they don’t break the law because they have you agree to the rules before you sign up. So I don’t really know what to do about that. It’s a big problem, and I’m still trying to figure out how to live with it and deal with it. I’m a victim of this system. I’m being demonetized by Google and it’s been quite a journey. It seems like Google has agents of influence from Russia inside the corporation, and they’re manipulating some Google procedures—not just towards me, but I know a few creators who speak against Russia and China, for that matter. They do that to us.

Phil: Well, there is this—of course we know that Donald Trump has tried to get Putin to agree to a peace deal, and Putin—I mean, Putin is not as smart as people think he is. He thought that the image that Donald Trump portrays to the people is what Donald Trump really is like. I think in Alaska, Putin to a certain degree, as you’ve described, gained a domestic victory in Russia, but he also lost Donald Trump’s confidence or trust. And since that and Putin’s continued bombing, something has happened in American politics about how Russia is seen.

But I think what you’ve been going through with Google is a result of this idea that once the aggression ends—and I don’t like the word “conflict” because it sounds like Ukraine is guilty—once the aggression ends, we go back to make business with Russia. And so many businesses are trying to be in a holding pattern where they don’t want to anger either Russia or China so they can continue to do business.

And here it would need a really strong democratic country to say, “No, we have rules and these rules apply also to corporations.” But that’s just silly naive me thinking that.

Because here’s the other danger maybe of dictatorships: People say dictatorships are more efficient and they can solve problems better. But what do they do to people’s drive for innovation and to start businesses and to actually do what they want to do?

Konstantin: Philipp, this is a very interesting thought. I’ve never heard before people saying that dictatorships are more efficient actually. Are there any people in the USA who think so?

Phil: Oh yes, it’s a continued theme. I don’t understand it either, but I mean, it’s the old theme. Political theory starts with the idea that the good king is the best. Well, the good king is always the best, but the good king doesn’t stay good forever and he doesn’t stay king forever. And then whoever follows later—just look at the history of the Roman Empire. But people are deluded into thinking if we didn’t have all these different politicians always bickering, always complaining, just a strong leader that would solve problems. I see this idea on the left and the right.

Konstantin: Wow. It’s just wow. The best thing for any person is the freedom to govern himself or herself, to make decisions on his own, to plan and live his life. The best social structure is when a bunch of people get together and they decide for themselves how they live their lives. They come up with the laws that most agree on. They come up with the rules that most agree on. And if the rules don’t work out, they change the rules. That’s done by the people, by all people.

When you have one person—strong, good person, a king—that starts making decisions for people, any strong man, any king, any president with absolute power of any country, he doesn’t—or he or she doesn’t—care for people. Even if the good king comes and starts caring for people and working on their behalf, very soon he changes, because his only purpose becomes to hang on to his kingship, to continue being the king for as long as possible. And this goal definitely doesn’t benefit the people.

The king starts getting more and more power, starts getting more and more control over people. And when people rise up and say, “Hey, you know what? We want things differently,” he starts oppressing them, crushing them. So you really introduced me to a new idea—people think that dictatorships are more efficient.

Now I’ll give you an example. Until recently, if you’d go to Mexico to the border of the United States of America where the two countries meet, you would see a very strange picture: tents, hundreds and thousands of tents, and people in those tents—not homeless, very good people, some of the most educated, most bright, most full of energy, most courageous—waiting for opportunity to cross the US border to claim political asylum, to find a new home in the United States of America.

Now if you would go to South Korea and you would see the border between North Korea and South Korea where the countries join, you would not see—and you still don’t see—any single person willing to go to North Korea. Following the logic that dictatorship runs things more effectively, North Korea must run things in the most effective way possible found on earth, right? Somehow no one wants to get into North Korea to claim political asylum from the West, to find more opportunities, better life, to find protection for political oppression in other countries.

Perhaps if you go to a border of Russia and Finland, you will not see anyone on the Finnish side of the border trying to get into Russia to find a home in a country that is supposed to run more effectively because there’s a strong man, the dictator, at the helm of that country. That’s the example right there.

The United States does not have a strong man at the helm. Even now, Donald Trump—there’s still the system of checks and balances, right? That’s still working in one way or another. Somehow, there’s no strong man, but there’s so many people who want to come and live in the USA.

When you take any device, you pretty much see “Designed in California” or “in the United States,” “Built in China.” How come no one runs and lives in China where things are run super effectively because it’s not much of a democracy there?

So that’s, I guess, my best answer. Well, I’m sorry, I have another one. Yes, the USSR was also a dictatorship. Yes, it’s a joke—things were running effectively there. You should have seen the life inside the USSR. It was a very strong dictatorship, but everything was aimed at one goal: for powers that be to remain powers for as long as possible. And that was very effectively done. Nothing else was nearly effective.

Phil: Well, I remember East Germany, and to me the idea is also absurd. But I think it comes from the desire to be left alone by politics, to just do your private life. And that is just the seduction that people have.

Konstantin: That is a very wrong idea. They’re delusional if they think so. They need to go and check things out outside the United States. How things are run in other countries—not too far, Venezuela. Go and see how things are run in Venezuela.

By the way, speaking of Eastern Germany, I remember there was a person who visited Eastern Germany back in the ’80s, and she came back and everyone started asking, “How was it?” And she looked at us—I think it was at my mom’s work or anyway, I remember her speaking—she said, “You will not understand. I cannot describe how life is great in East Germany compared to what we have. It’s like I went to Mars and saw a wonderful place. We are living like savages compared to them.” And that’s how much better your life was as an Eastern German than ours in the USSR. That’s—I just remember that memory popped up in my head.

Phil: Well, the Soviets wanted to create East Germany as kind of a shopping window to the West, so some things were designed to be better in East Germany. But I also remember we had a relative from West Berlin. He told me as I was talking about the music I liked—I showed him my vinyls—and he told me that there is a disc that can be read by a laser and has music on it, like a vinyl. And I thought, “You’re making fun of me. That doesn’t exist. How could this possibly exist?” I was really angry at him. And I was even angry when I found out he was right and how far beyond the moon, as they say in German, we were actually living.

East Germany reinvented computer chips that the West already had—it was absolutely ridiculous. But every East German, if they had some kind of money, was able to exchange their money into so-called forum checks—looked like Monopoly money—and go to those Intershops to buy West German products.

But this seduction is very dangerous. Very dangerous.

Konstantin: Yeah, people need to start thinking. I wish that everyone starts applying logic and common sense in our lives, because that’s—critical thinking. They taught me at the university when I came to America as the very first thing—you have to take this class, “Critical Thinking.”

Well, somehow a lot of people have lost the ability to think critically, and that is very concerning. That’s dangerous.

Phil: Yes, indeed. Well, Konstantin, I have a few more questions, but I think this is a good time to stop for today. I wish we could have another conversation sometime down the road. I think we’ve opened hopefully some people’s eyes that if you allow your voice to be silenced, they will silence your minds and they will not run the system the way you want. Thank you, Konstantin.

Konstantin: Step by step, they’ll do it very slowly, unnoticeably, step by step, small step by small step.

Phil: Well, you always close your remarks on Carthage. Do you want to say it?

Konstantin: Yes. Let’s all say it out loud: Carthago delenda est.

Phil: Thank you, Konstantin. See you soon. And please everybody, tune in to Konstantin’s Inside Russia. It is mandatory watching. It helps you understand not just what’s happening in Russia, but what will happen to your own country if you let it come that far. And I’m going to end on a note of optimism. Just as I mentioned earlier, East Germany ended like that. I’m prepared that this will happen also to Putin’s Russia eventually. We may have to be patient, but it will happen. Thank you.

Konstantin: Thank you, Philipp. Good luck to everybody. Thank you for listening.

Phil: This is Dr. Philipp Kneis. This is Erratic Attempts. I’ll put a link to Konstantin’s channel in the description. I hope to have more interviews in the future. Thank you again and see you soon.

Carthago delenda est – “Carthage must be destroyed”

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