I see this in this manner: smart people in Russia know that the government is evil and that it can (and will) abuse its power to ensure they reserve their power and money. They know democracy doesn't work as intended, it's a theater.

Contrary to that, people of the western world still believe that they can oppose an abusive government in courts and by voting for another government.

They aren't exactly smart in the sense that they don't have any plan for government evil. They're not smart in the Paul Graham, problem-solving, bold ideas way.

Rather they are cynical and "understanding" in the grumpy old man manner.

Well in most of the western world you CAN do precisely that (and it happens regularly). If people get pissed off with the government, they give it the boot. Unfortunately the Russian people have never had real democracy, so they don't realise that this should be the norm. In my country we would simply never put up with that shit. You see people putting up with shitty, oppressive governments all the time in countries like Zimbabwe, Russia, China, Syria, etc. Recently people in some parts of the middle east have finally realised that they can get rid of crappy governments. It's actually quite easy if the people can actually be bothered. The people of Russia did get rid of their Tsars a while back, but unfortunately they seem to have a new Tsar.

We had real democracy, in 1993-1996. Basically we democratically voted against it. Democracy is against Russian traditions, and most people either actively opposed it or passively (i.e. voting for the funniest candidate to discredit the whole system), and people were happy we gradually returned to normalcy, which is dictatorship.

More importantly, the Russian government doesn't know that this should be the norm. So they treat each attempt at a change as a treasonous coup or revolution, rounding up and silencing everyone. I'm willing to bet they go as far as a civil war if they had to fight for their power.

Having said that, when was the last time people got pissed off and gave the government the boot in a western country? It seems to me that any changes were minor, and the people in power are more or less the same group no matter who you vote for... not exactly super democratic, either...

Well, this is a bad move because it is stupid. It could not potentially result in any change. Only way a rational person can help Russian people is to work on improving educational system to help them emigrate and settle in developed countries successfully.

Also, in Russian mentality, it is not important if you committed any crime or not, it is more important if you were smart enough to not get jailed or not. Because nearly everyone who is politically or economically active commits crimes (which carries no stigma and is part of the system), and nearly everyone can be jailed either having committed a crime or not. So nobody thinks of degree or existence of any crimes he might have committed. This is not a part of the question. It is about being stupid enough to raise too much government's anger, not not leaving country in time.

That's how Russia works (and Mr. Putin has nothing to do about this, that was the norm long before him and once the system might eat himself in exactly the same way). I doubt he even benefits from this much.

I think anovikov is trying to say that it is futile to fight the Russian government openly.

That applies with almost every government, Their power is "infinitely asymmetric". Nowadays the way to gain symmetry is knowing a lot about computer security...

Not only futile, but people doing so are only reinforcing the government's case (because they show people that at least some of the 'enemies' they are pretending to fight do really exist).