Russia Becoming Totalitarian?

Here's a very sad story from the New York Times detailing how one opposition party was handicapped by local authorities.

This reminds me of how I read of how Yuli Martov, a prominent leader of the Mensheviks, used to be shouted down by Bolshevik operatives during governmental meetings during that brief time when rival parties were (just barely) tolerated by the Soviet government after that most infamous coup of November 1917.