On the Paris barricades, alienation and repression were live questions.
If this repression were unfolding in Iran or Syria, the White House would thunder with indignation.
If this formula for civil society repression were isolated to Russia, it would be one matter.
The people, tired of insurrection and cowed by repression, were politically apathetic.
And in contrast to East Germany or the Czech Republic, "the mechanics of repression" were not revealed or put on trial.
And the students, many of them children of the victims of Stalin's repression, were relatively progressive, interested in -- and allowed to experiment with -- foreign films, music and opinions.
But by 2011, spies, tear gas and heavy-handed repression were not enough to keep him in power.
Mr. Ban addressed the brutal legacy of military rule in his speech, saying that "confrontation and repression were tried — and they failed".
Later, from 1948, the instruments and executors of Japanese repression were hitched to the new South Korean state under American military tutelage to boot.
He was swiftly the finest chronicler of apartheid's disintegration, a correspondent who caught the excitement of a momentous story but always paused to analyse how and why the plates of repression were shrinking.
It gives a distinctive treatment to the familiar story of how a war-weary, traditionally frugal population, many of whom believed that physical discomfort and emotional repression were character-forming, turned into a nation of unashamed consumers and cry-babies.
