On: Revealed: How Russia use mobile ‘super-app’ Max to spy on its citizens

Nineteenth of September.

The Russians have built a single button, violet-blue, through which an entire people must now pass - messages, payments, papers, all through one door - and they call it patriotism. Eighteen months, tens of millions compelled. What strikes me is not the compulsion, which is old, but its new form: not the soldier at the threshold, but the servant in the pocket.

I know something of servants. In the old world a great house kept a steward who anticipated the master’s every want, and the master, idle in his comfort, ceased to govern his own affairs; in time the steward governed them, and no one could name the moment of the change, for there had been no usurpation - only a series of small conveniences, each accepted with pleasure. This Russian application is such a steward, installed by decree and embraced as a gift. It does not forbid the citizen to act; it offers to act for him, until acting for oneself seems an eccentricity, then a suspicion, then a forgotten art. The other doors are not broken down; they are simply allowed to fall out of use.

Yet I should be a poor observer if I stopped at the border. The despotism of Petersburg is imposed; ours arrives by invitation. There the state says: you must carry me. Here it need only say: you will find me useful. Different roads, same station - a people well kept, well served, well watched, each man alone with his small instrument, which knows his habits, his debts, his affections, and reports them without malice to a center that means him no harm and permits him no independence.

Nor is this despair. The ingenuity that built the button could build a thousand voluntary associations tomorrow, if permitted. Russia shows me only the tendency at its completion. My concern is with societies still on the road, traveling cheerfully, admiring the scenery.