Putin's Russia: the fear meter

An editorial in The Guardian says that President Vladimir Putin's problem is that he faces a generation that was not alive under Soviet rule. Unlike their elders, younger Russians do not fear the state, nor do they feel the nostalgia for Soviet days that Putin exploits. The opposition's comparisons with Stalin's roundups in 1937 are inappropriate. But once you start fiddling with the fear meter, who knows where it might end?