The Return of the Soviet Union

"In Soviet times, we had security, we had stability. We could travel, at least within the Soviet sphere of influence. We took vacations at the seaside. We didn't have much money but nothing we could buy cost much money. Now we make little money but everything costs a lot, and we have no security. Travel? Forget it. Times were better in Soviet days."

Except for that post-midnight knock on the door. Notice that we can't hear the opposite point of view from those victims (because they were killed, duh!). I refer you to the above-mentioned mass grave with 30,000 bodies in it. None of them are claiming that life in the Soviet Union was better then than life in Russia now.

“That and the things listed below are the reasons I think the Communism still rules while flying under the flag of Democracy.”

To be fair, the Communists view Communism and Democracy as being one and the same. Let’s look, for example, at some of Vladimir Lenin’s speeches:

“...at a certain stage in the development of democracy, it first welds together the class that wages a revolutionary struggle against capitalism — the proletariat — and enables it to crush, smash to smithereens, wipe off the face of the earth the bourgeois, even the republican-bourgeois, state machine — the standing army, the police and the bureaucracy — and to substitute for it a more democratic state machine, but a state machine nevertheless, in the shape of the armed masses of workers who develop into a militia in which the entire population takes part.” —Vladimir Lenin, The State and Revolution (http://www.marx.be/sites/default/files/documents/EN/texts/sr_and_sq.PDF)

“...the Social-Democrat’s [Communist’s] ideal should not be the trade union secretary, but the tribune of the people, who is able to react to every manifestation of tyranny and oppression, no matter where it appears, no matter what stratum or class of the people it affects; who is able to generalise all these manifestations and produce a single picture of police violence and capitalist exploitation; who is able to take advantage of every event, however small, in order to set forth before all his socialist convictions and his democratic demands, in order to clarify for all and everyone the world-historic significance of the struggle for the emancipation of the proletariat.” — Vladimir Lenin, What Is To Be Done?(https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/iii.htm)

Note how many times Lenin has used “democratic”, “democracy”, or similar terms in describing their perceived views. I just view that as another indication of how democracy is bad. Heck, that’s not even counting Vladimir Lenin’s declaration that democracy is indispensable with socialism, or Karl Marx stating that democracy is the road to socialism for that matter.

GHW Bush may have meant well, but he really shouldn’t have tried to bring “democracy” to Russia, as they technically already HAD that system via Communism (certainly, they had the French Revolution style of democracy), and not in a good way. If anything, he would have been better off trying to help the Russians restore the Tsar.

Yes, I agree that the Left in the U. S. is incredibly misguided.

The LEFT is misguided when they think they are on a different page from modern Russia and its take on history. They're not.

Members of the Right are misguided when praising Putin for paying lip service to KGB-led Christianity. And allowing for Muslims to execute gays in his Chechen backyard is NOT an example of what I call "defending Christian values." (Among other things...and with Putin himself being divorced and single.)

Some things Putin does are okay. Other things he does are troublesome.

He is not a good man. He is not altruistic. Those who think he’s a fine upstanding person, are mistaken IMO.

I don’t think we need to insult him on the world stage. There is probably more to gain by having dialogue with him, than by ostracizing him.

I don’t trust him. Our leaders shouldn’t either, and they should be very leery of making deals with him.

He’s going to be around for quite some time, so we may have to make some deals, but I’d think long and hard about any negative connotations that could come from it, and be prepared for the worst.

Yes I’m not referring to what’s being done at the executive/diplomatic level. I leave dealmaking to the experts (like Trump) —> but I’m speaking in terms of how conservatives here on the the ground and even on these forums relate to what’s going on in Russia and other countries.

Not every movement towards freedom/democracy should be dismissed as a “Soros” effort (though he does taint or play a role quite a few.) and Putin is NOT our ally when it comes to saving Western Civilization. Far from it. He seeks to undermine and upend it.

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