The link between conservatives and post-1989 Russia is no surprise to me because I was involved in the Evangelical church scene in the early 1990s, and I recall many of the deep underground leading lights in that scene - Rick Joyner and the 'Kansas City Prophets', for instance - talking very approvingly, very early on, about how Russia was more open to capital and church influence than America, and also how 'the Kingdom of Heaven is not a democracy' and that a future regime might be autocratic.