Tyrants can be especially ominous when they are ludicrous. In 2011, Vladimir Putin, scuba diving in the Black Sea, emerged clutching two 6th-century Greek urns — remarkably without a trace of moss — which had lain undiscovered in six feet of water, even though Russian archaeologists had scoured the seabed while studying an ancient Greek city. Putin’s flaunted contempt for his audience, the Russian masses, is calculated to breed in them an enervating cynicism that will prevent restiveness and the necessity of assassinations, such as that of the journalist Anna Politkovskaya in Moscow in 2006…