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| The last time I was in Russia, the summer of 2015, I came face to face with a contradiction. What if a place was unfree, but also happy? How long could it stay that way? | 我上一次去俄罗斯是在2015年的夏天，我遇到了一个矛盾状态。如果一个地方不自由，但也很快乐会怎样呢？这种状态会持续多久？ |
| Moscow had blossomed into a beautiful, European city, full of meticulously planted parks, bike lanes and parking spaces. Income for the average Russian had risen significantly over the course of the previous decade. At the same time, its political system was drifting ever closer to authoritarianism. | 莫斯科已经变成了一个美丽的欧洲城市，到处都是经过精心绿化的公园、自行车道和停车位。在过去十年里，普通俄罗斯人的收入有了大幅提高。与此同时，该国的政治制度正越来越接近威权主义。 |
| Fifteen years earlier, Boris Yeltsin had left power in shame, apologizing on national television “for having failed to justify the hopes of the people who believed that we would be able to make a leap from the gloomy and stagnant totalitarian past to a bright, prosperous and civilized future at just one go.” | 在此之前15年，鲍里斯·叶利钦羞愧地离开了权位，他在国家电视台道歉，因为他“未能证明人民的希望是合理的，他们相信我们能从阴暗停滞的极权主义过去跃入光明、繁荣和文明的未来”。 |
| By the summer of 2015, his successor, President Vladimir V. Putin, had seemingly made Russia bright and prosperous. The political system he built was increasingly restrictive, but many had learned to live with it. | 到2015年夏天，他的继任者普京似乎已经让俄罗斯变得光明和繁荣。他所建立的政治体系限制越来越多，但许多人已经学会适应它。 |
| Many Russian liberals had gone to work for nonprofits and local governments, throwing themselves into community building — making their cities better places to live. A protest movement in 2011 and 2012 had failed, and people were looking for other ways to shape their country. Big politics were hopeless, the thinking went, but one could make a real difference in small acts. | 许多俄罗斯自由主义者开始为非营利组织和地方政府工作，投身社区建设——使他们的城市更适合居住。2011年和2012年的抗议运动失败了，人们开始寻找其他方式来塑造自己的国家。他们认为，宏大的政治是没有希望了，但人们可以通过小的行动带来真正的改变。 |
| There was another side to this bargain: Mr. Putin was seemingly constrained, as well. Political action may have been forbidden, but there was tolerance when it came to other things, for example religion, culture and many forms of expression. His own calculus for the system to run smoothly meant he had to make some room for society. | 这样的妥协还有另一个方面：普京似乎也受到了约束。政治行动可能是禁忌，但涉及宗教、文化和许多表达形式等其他方面则比较宽容。在他的考量中，要想让体系平稳运行，就必须为社会留出一些空间。 |
| I lived in Russia for nine years, and began covering it for The New York Times in 2000, the year Mr. Putin was first elected. I spent lots of time telling people — in public writing and in my private life — that Russia might sometimes look bad, but that it had a lot of wonderful qualities, too. | 我在俄罗斯生活了九年，从2000年开始为《纽约时报》报道这个国家，那一年普京首次当选。在公开写作和我的私人生活中，我花了很多时间告诉人们，俄罗斯有时可能看起来很糟糕，但它也有很多美好的品质。 |
| But in the weeks since Russia invaded Ukraine, I have felt like I am watching someone I love lose their mind. Many of the Russian liberals who had turned to “small acts” are feeling a sense of shock and horror, too, said Alexandra Arkhipova, a Russian anthropologist. | 但在俄罗斯入侵乌克兰的几周内，我感觉自己正在看着我爱的人们失去理智。俄罗斯人类学家亚历山德拉·阿尔希波娃表示，许多转向“小行动”的俄罗斯自由主义者也感到震惊和恐惧。 |
| “I see lots of posts and conversations saying these small deeds, it was a big mistake,” she said. “People have a metaphor. They say, ‘We were trying to make some cosmetic changes to our faces, when the cancer was growing and growing in our stomachs.’” | “我看到很多帖子和对话都在说，这些小行动正是一个大错误，”她说。“人们有一个比喻。他们说，‘当癌细胞在胃里不断生长的时候，我们却试图给我们的脸做点整容手术。’” |
| I began to wonder whether Russia was always going to end up here, and we just failed to see it. So I called Yevgeniya Albats, a Russian journalist who had warned of the dangers of a K.G.B. resurgence as early as the 1990s. Ms. Albats kept staring into the glare of the idea that at certain points in history, everything is at stake in political thought and action. She had long argued that any bargain with Mr. Putin was an illusion. | 我开始怀疑俄罗斯是否总要落到现在的地步，而我们只是没能预见到。于是我给俄罗斯记者叶夫根尼娅·阿尔巴茨打了电话，她早在1990年代就曾警告过克格勃卷土重来的危险。阿尔巴茨一直坚持这样一个观点：在历史的某些时刻，政治思想和政治行动的一切都处于危险之中。她一直认为，面对普京的任何妥协都是一种幻觉。 |
| She said 2008 was a turning point, the moment Mr. Putin divorced the West, even invaded another country, and the West barely noticed. | 她说，2008年是一个转折点，那一年，普京与西方离心离德，甚至入侵了另一个国家，而西方几乎没有注意到这一点。 |
| “For Putin, it was a clear sign,” she said by telephone last month, “that he can do whatever he wants. And that’s exactly what he started doing. He behaved extremely rationally. He just realized that you don’t care.” | “对普京来说，这是一个明确的信号，”她上个月在电话中说，“他可以做任何他想做的事。”这也正是他开始做的事情。他的行为极其理性。他只是意识到你并不关心。” |
| She was referring to Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia, which came shortly after President George W. Bush began to talk about NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine. I covered that war, and spent the night with a Russian unit in the Georgian town of Gori and remember how invigorated the soldiers seemed, laughing, joking. The Soviet defeat in the Cold War had left a bitter sense of humiliation and loss. The invasion seemed to have renewed them. | 她指的是2008年俄罗斯入侵格鲁吉亚，当时美国总统小布什刚刚开始谈论格鲁吉亚和乌克兰加入北约。我曾报道那场战争，在格鲁吉亚的哥里镇与一支俄罗斯部队一起度过了一晚。我记得士兵们看起来精神焕发，时而哈哈大笑，时而说些笑话。苏联在冷战中的失败留下了一种痛苦的屈辱感和失落感。入侵似乎令他们重新振作起来。 |
| “When Putin came, everything changed,” one officer told me. “We got some of our old strength back. People started to respect us again.” | “普京上台以后，一切都变了，”一名军官告诉我。“我们找回了一些昔日的力量。人们又开始尊重我们了。” |
| Ms. Albats sounded tired but determined. The day we talked, she had traveled to a Russian penal colony to be present for the sentencing of her friend Aleksei A. Navalny, Russia’s popular opposition leader, who used his allotted time to give a speech against the war. | 阿尔巴茨听起来很疲惫，但却非常坚定。我们谈话的那天，她前往俄罗斯的一个流放地，出席对她的朋友阿列克谢·纳瓦尔尼的宣判。纳瓦尔尼是俄罗斯很受欢迎的反对派领袖，他利用宣判中分配给他的时间发表了反对战争的演讲。 |
| “We now understand that when Putin decided to go into war in Ukraine, he had to get rid of Navalny,” she said, because he is the only one with the courage to resist. | “我们现在明白，当普京决定在乌克兰开战时，他必须除掉纳瓦尔尼，”她说，因为他是唯一一个有勇气反抗的人。 |
| Indeed, Mr. Navalny never accepted the turn away from direct confrontation and was building a nationwide opposition movement, leading people into the streets. He rejected the bargain and was willing to go to prison to defy it. | 事实上，纳瓦尔尼从未接受放弃直接对抗的立场，他正在全国范围内发起一场反对运动，领导人们走上街头。他拒绝妥协，为了反抗，他愿意坐牢。 |
| Ms. Arkhipova pointed out that his mantra, that the fight was not of good against evil but of good against neutral, was a direct challenge to the political passivity that Mr. Putin was demanding. | 阿尔希波娃指出，纳瓦尔尼的口号是，这场战斗不是正义与邪恶的斗争，而是正义与中立的斗争，这是在直接挑战普京所要求的政治被动。 |
| Many people I interviewed said the poisoning of Mr. Navalny in 2020 and the jailing of him in early 2021, after years of freedom, marked the end of the social contract and the beginning of Mr. Putin’s war. Like Al Qaeda’s killing of Ahmed Shah Massoud on the eve of Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Putin had to clear the field of opponents. | 我采访过的许多人都说，纳瓦尔尼在多年自由行动后，在2020年遭到投毒，并于2021遭到监禁，这标志着社会契约的结束和普京战争的开始。就像基地组织在2001年9月11日前夕杀死艾哈迈德·沙阿·马苏德一样，普京也必须清除反对者。 |
| Greg Yudin, a professor of political philosophy at the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences, argues it was the political opposition’s success, which began to accelerate in 2018 and 2019, that tipped Mr. Putin toward war. | 莫斯科社会与经济科学学院的政治哲学教授格雷格·尤丁认为，2018年到2019年，政治反对派的成功开始加速，正是这种成功将普京推向了战争。 |
| Professor Yudin said it was inconceivable to Mr. Putin that there could be people inside Russia who wanted the best for their country, yet were against him. So he looked for traitors and nursed an obsession with the idea that the West was after him. | 尤丁说，普京无法想象，俄罗斯国内会有人为国家谋福利，但却反对他。所以他寻找叛徒，并执着地认为西方在追杀他。 |
| “It’s a feature of this kind of regime,” Professor Yudin said. “It recodes internal dissent into external threats.” | “这是这种政权的一个特征，”尤丁教授说。“它把内部的异议解读为外部的威胁。” |
| As for my 2015 question — how long can a place be unfree and also happy — perhaps we have lived into the answer. Many liberals have left. Many of those who have not left face fines or even jail. In the weeks after the invasion, the police detained more than 15,000 people nationwide, according to OVD-Info, a human rights group, substantially higher than in the protests in 2012, when about 5,000 people were detained over 12 months, said Ms. Arkhipova, who studied that movement. | 至于我在2015年提出的问题——一个地方虽然不自由但很快乐，这能持续多久——也许我们已经找到了答案。许多自由主义者已经离开。许多没有离开的人面临罚款甚至监禁。据人权组织OVD-Info的数据，俄罗斯入侵后的几周内，警方在全国拘留了逾1.5万人，远远高于2012年抗议活动期间的人数，研究那次抗议活动的阿尔希波娃说，当时在12个月内约有5000人被拘捕。 |
| Ms. Albats has stayed and is angry at Russian liberals who have not. | 阿尔巴茨留下了，她对没有留下的俄罗斯自由主义者感到愤怒。 |
| The message, she said, is that “Russian liberals, they don’t have any tolerance for any problems.” She added, “They just run away.” | 她说，这种情况意味着“俄罗斯自由主义者，他们对任何问题都不能容忍”。她还说，“他们直接就跑了。” |
| At the same time, she said, it’s an extremely hard choice. “Choosing between jail and not jail, I’d rather choose not jail,” Ms. Albats said, adding that she already faces thousands of dollars in fines just for reporting about the war. | 同时这是一个极其艰难的选择，她说。“在被关进监狱和不进监狱之间选择，我宁愿选择不进监狱，”阿尔巴茨说。她还表示，因为报道这次战争，她面临数千美元的罚款。 |
| Mr. Yudin said the choice was hard because the crackdown was complete, and because political opposition was now being pulverized. | 尤丁说，选择的困难在于镇压已经完成，政治反对派已经被粉碎。 |
| “The best comparison is Germany in 1939,” he said. “What kind of democratic movement would you expect there? This is the same. People are basically right now trying to save their lives.” | “最贴切的类比是1939年的德国，”他说。“你期待那里发生什么样的民主运动？这是一样的。人们现在基本上是在试图保命。” |
| Not everyone, of course. Lev Gudkov, a sociologist at Levada Center, a research group that tracks Russian public opinion, told me that about two-thirds of people nationwide approve of Mr. Putin’s actions in Ukraine. | 当然，不是所有人。追踪俄罗斯公众舆论的研究组织列瓦达中心的社会学家列夫·古德科夫告诉我，全国大约三分之二的人赞成普京在乌克兰的行动。 |
| “It is a less-educated, older part of the population, mainly living in rural areas or in small and medium-sized cities, where the population is poorer and more dependent on power,” he said, referring to those who rely on public funds like pensions and state jobs. “They also receive their whole construction of reality exclusively from television.” | “这是人口中受教育程度较低、年龄较大的部分，主要生活在农村地区或中小城市，那里的人口更穷，更依赖权力，”他说，指的是那些依赖养老金和国企工作等公共资金的人。“而且他们所有对现实的建构完全是从电视中获得的。” |
| He points out that “if you look at 20 years of our research since Putin came to power, then the peaks of support for Putin and his popularity have always coincided with military campaigns.” | 他指出，“如果你看看我们自普京上台以来20年的研究，那么普京得到的支持和其声望高峰总是与军事行动相吻合。” |
| One such campaign was the war in Chechnya, a particularly brutal subduing of a population that in 1999 was Mr. Putin’s signature act before being elected president the first time. We are starting to see some of the features of that war in Ukraine: bodies with hands bound, mass graves, tales of torture. In Chechnya, the result was the systematic elimination of anyone connected to the fight against Russia. It is too soon to say whether that was the intent in Bucha. | 1999年的车臣战争便是其中之一，那是一场尤其残暴的征服，是普京在首次当选总统前的标志性行动。那场战争的一些特征开始在乌克兰出现：双手被捆绑的尸体、乱葬岗、酷刑的故事。车臣战争的结果是系统地消灭了所有抵抗俄罗斯的人。这是否是俄罗斯在布查的意图，现在说还为时过早。 |
| Now the bargain is broken, the illusion has shattered. And the country has been pitched into a new phase. But what is it? Mr. Yudin argues that Russia is moving out of authoritarianism — where political passivity and civic disengagement are key features — into totalitarianism, which relies on mass mobilization, terror and homogeneity of beliefs. He believes Mr. Putin is on the brink, but may hesitate to make the shift. | 现在这种妥协中止了，幻想破灭了。俄罗斯已进入一个新阶段。是什么样的阶段？尤丁认为，俄罗斯正在从威权主义——以政治被动和公民不参与为主要特征——走向极权主义，后者依赖于群众动员、恐怖和统一信仰。他认为普京正处于危机边缘，但可能会犹豫是否做出转变。 |
| “In a totalitarian system, you have to release free energy to start terror,” he said. Mr. Putin, he said, “is a control freak, used to micromanagement.” | 他说：“在极权主义体系中，你必须释放自由能量才能引发恐怖。”他说，普京“是个控制狂，习惯于微管理”。 |
| However, if the Russian state starts to fail, either through a collapse of Russia’s economy or a complete military defeat in Ukraine, “unleashing terror will be the only way for him to save himself.” | 然而，如果俄罗斯政府开始崩塌，无论是通过俄罗斯经济的崩溃还是在乌克兰的军事惨败，“释放恐怖将是他自救的唯一途径。” |
| Which is why the current situation is so dangerous, for Ukraine and for people in Russia opposed Mr. Putin. | 这就是为什么对于乌克兰和反对普京的俄罗斯人来说，目前的局势如此危险。 |
| “Putin is so convinced that he cannot afford to lose, that he will escalate,” Professor Yudin said. “He has staked everything on it.” | “普京深信他承受不起失败，他会升级，”尤丁说。“他押上了一切。” |
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