The Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, get started today. So far, much of the buzz about the Olympics has been about terrorism fears and complaints about the lack of creature comforts for visitors (undrinkable water, unfinished construction, public toilets without privacy, insects in food, pillows appropriated from hotels for the athletes).
With its legacy of communism, Russian society is not particularly oriented to satisfying consumers, certainly not by the standards of today’s consumer capitalism. But Russian society tends to be very good, even to a fault, at “security.”
Security is a challenge in a “free country.” Here, people have freedom of association, freedom to travel pretty much where they want, relative freedom from surveillance, even the freedom to bear arms. Security forces in the United States must operate under strict legal limitations. Authoritarian regimes like Russia have no such scruples.
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