THE Soviet Union dealt with its opponents in a harsh, decisive and clear way. Dissidents were prosecuted and imprisoned. Famous artists who spoke against the system were stripped of their citizenship and deported. Public protests were not allowed.

Today few Russians go to prison for their political or religious convictions; and Russia claims to be a democracy. But the thuggish ways in which the Kremlin deals with challengers is an insult to human intelligence and makes a mockery of the legal system, says Yuri Schmidt, a top lawyer. “The Soviet regime was more severe and cruel, but in some ways it was less hypocritical and false,” he declares.

Consider the response to protests at the Russia-European Union summit in Samara on May 18th. The Kremlin satisfied Germany's request to allow a rally by Other Russia, a motley coalition of its leading opponents, including Garry Kasparov and Eduard Limonov. But it then engaged in tricks redolent of the mischievous characters in Bulgakov's “The Master and Margarita”, not a respectable government. Activists were detained because they resembled criminals or were said to be carrying disguised drugs or grenades.

Before the summit, Denis Bilunov, Mr Kasparov's assistant, arrived in Samara by train. Police met him, opened his bags and, finding 95,000 roubles ($3,700), declared the notes counterfeit. After hours watching policemen copying out all the details, Mr Bilunov emerged with neither money nor time to prepare for Mr Kasparov's arrival. It did not matter, for when Mr Kasparov and Mr Limonov arrived at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport to fly to Samara, they were told their tickets were dodgy and barred from boarding. The police took their passports, returning them only when the last flight had left. Meanwhile members of Nashi, a pro-Putin youth movement, dressed up as psychiatrists and distributed leaflets ridiculing Mr Kasparov's and Mr Limonov's “diagnosis”.

“The Kremlin was not in Sheremetyevo,” said Mr Putin's spokesman. “I don't think the issue of the non-arrival of a Russian citizen, even a famous one...will be on the summit agenda.” He was wrong. Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, said publicly that “if demonstrators throw stones, if they smash windows, then of course they should be curbed. But if someone has done nothing, if they just want to go to a demonstration, then it's different.” Inevitably, on state television Russians heard only the first sentence.

This is the sort of manipulation that Manana Aslamazyan, president of Educated Media Foundation (EMF), a nongovernmental organisation that trains regional television journalists, fights. Recently EMF offices have been raided, computer servers and files seized, and Ms Aslamazyan and a colleague threatened with criminal charges. Her supposed “crime” was not to declare 9,500 ($12,300) brought into the country in January. (Only $10,000 can be brought in without a customs declaration.)

In the eyes of the Kremlin, any NGO receiving foreign cash is an agent of foreign intelligence. One EMF-trained television channel in Siberia has written an angry open letter to Mr Putin, signed by more than 2,000 journalists. But the Kremlin is unlikely to be impressed.