When the Bolsheviks mounted their putsch against the tottering Provisional Government in October 1917, one of their first objectives was Petrograd’s grand Central Telegraph. The logic of those who wish to control the country today is little different: control the means of communicating to the masses, and the country is yours. One of Vladimir Putin’s first acts in power back in 2000 was to crack down on independent television stations; ever since, Russia’s TV screens have spouted whatever the Kremlin wants the Russian people to think.

Russia’s latest row with the UK shows the depressing truth that Putin was right: most Russians do believe what State TV tells them to. For some reason the UK has been the Kremlin’s favorite whipping-boy for some years now – an all-purpose dastardly enemy which can be wheeled on whenever Russia’s rulers need a good distraction from domestic issues to occupy the minds of their people. An early example was a 2006 spy row which centered on the discovery of a fake rock packed with radio equipment apparently planted by British agents in a Moscow park to communicate with their spies. Then came the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko; the result was a series of expulsions of Russian diplomats from London, and a request to extradite the prime suspect in the Litvinenko murder, Andrei Lugovoi.

Russia’s angry and disproportionate reaction to all this has been a bell weather of its new-found, touchy pride – as well as a measure of the Kremlin’s arrogant disregard for what the Economist calls “international niceties.” That’s putting it mildly. Russia’s latest, obnoxious move to pressure Britain has been to close the St Petersburg and Ekaterinburg offices of the British Council, a body which promotes the English language and British culture. The Council’s employees were called in for questioning by the FSB, successor to the KGB, and policemen called at their apartments at night. At the same time, a deluge of the crudest propaganda aimed at the UK streamed from all Kremlin-controlled and influenced media, denouncing Britain for “neo-imperialism”, in the words of the Foreign Ministry’s spokesman. The UK was also berated for harbouring anti Kremlin elements (in the tradition of London-based subversives of an earlier era, Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin), Chechen separatists and Boris Berezovsky, accused by the Kremlin of embezzling billions of dollars. The truth is, of course, that other Yeltsin-era oligarchs guilty of far greater fraud are still close friends of the Kremlin, and Chechen separatists like Ramzan Kadyrov, now president of Chechnya, are also close Putin buddies. The difference between them and the London exiles is simple: the former chose to flee for their lives, while the latter chose to submit to the new Kremlin management and, crucially, cut them in on their business empires.

The sad thing is that the Russians remain, even after fifteen years of supposed democratic freedom, so absolutely “upravleyemiye” (easy to control, biddable). Over the last two weeks I have been shocked by the number of apparently intelligent and worldly Russian friends who have muttered about British spy plots and the need to “teach the Brits a lesson.” I tell them that the Kremlin has made morons of them: roll out an enemy, pick a petty fight, publicize it as a great victory for a resurgent Russia – and they believe it. This is not, as British Foreign Secretary David Milliband said this week, the behaviour worthy of a great country. It’s the kind of childish petulance practiced by cheap third-world populists like Hugo Chavez or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – both of whom are, incidentally, friends of Putin’s.

But there is the real tragedy: the truth is that Russian people aren’t morons, they’re not simple peasants to be stirred at the word of a rabble-rouser. Russia is an important European civilization; it deserves to take its place at the table of great nations. But Russia’s current leaders have cynically and systematically constructed a Chinese wall of ignorance, fear and suspicion between the Russian people and the rest of the world in order to distract attention from their own kleptocratic rule.

Twenty nine days remain of Vladimir Putin’s rule: one can only hope that his successor, Dmitry Medvedev, will provide leadership more worthy of his countrymen.