Putin says Sochi Games wrongfoot critics of Russia

MOSCOW - The Sochi Olympics "opened Russia's soul" to the world and wrongfooted critics of the host country, President Vladimir Putin said in remarks broadcast on Tuesday.

Taking stock after Russia topped the medals table and avoided major security problems at its first post-Soviet Games, Putin said constructive criticism from the International Olympic Committee had helped make Sochi 2014 a success.

But there were other critics whose jabs were motivated by "the competitive struggle in international politics, maybe even geopolitics".

"They used the Olympic project to achieve their own aims in the area of anti-Russian propaganda," he said.

"Because when a strong competitor emerges - in this case Russia - some grow worried, some don't like it, some fear it, not understanding how deeply Russian society has changed," Putin said in a state TV interview, strolling in the sun in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi.

The buildup to the Olympics was overshadowed by threats of militant violence, an outcry over an "anti-gay propaganda" law, allegations of corruption, complaints about the high cost of travelling to Sochi and tweets about slapdash hotels.

"The Olympics were very important for us, because it seems to me ... that they not only opened Russia's door but opened Russia's soul, the soul of our nation - so that people looked and saw that there is nothing to fear," Putin said.

I am so thankful there were no terrorist attacks. Guess Putin knows how to do security.

I suspect part of it is restraint from the terrorists. People like watching Olympic events, including terror sponsors. Note that anti-terror efforts are merely one of many budget items, and the limited amount of money used limits the effectiveness of the effort. If terrorists had crashed the party, the manpower and funds used would have increased greatly, and the methods employed would have started resembling what the terrorists use themselves. Imagine entire families disappeared into landfills. Communist countries have had few problems with guerrillas or terrorists because they (Mao and Stalin) simply killed or persecuted to death everyone involved, including family members:

At a Kremlin reception on 7 November 1937, Stalin declared that enemies should be eliminated as kinship groups: “And we will eliminate every such enemy [of the state and peoples of the USSR]… . we will eliminate his entire lineage (rod), his family! … Here's to the final extermination of all enemies, both themselves and their clan (rod).”1 In the Soviet Union, political enemies were rounded up in groups of kin, family ties marked people as disloyal, and “counterrevolutionary” charges against one person threatened also his or her relatives. The Soviet security police or OGPU-NKVD issued detailed instructions regarding the punishment that should be assigned to the spouses, children, siblings, parents, and even ex-wives of state enemies. Campaigns against anti-Soviet elements rounded up kinship groups, whether these counterrevolutionaries were identified as so-called kulaks, enemies of the people, or traitors to the motherland. To be sure, the collective punishment of kin did not accompany every act of Stalinist repression. The regime's draconian criminal legislation also constituted a form of terror, yet persons sentenced under such laws as those punishing theft of socialist property were dealt with individually; their relatives were not targeted. Only the “politicals,” that is, people accused of disloyalty, treason, or other counterrevolutionary activities experienced terror as family units. It was the collective punishment of kin that made political repression under Stalin truly a mass phenomenon.

Many Latin American countries encountered serious terror attacks from organized communist guerrillas funded, equipped and trained by the Soviets (in many cases via their Cuban proxy after Castro’s victory). Given that such attacks are a form of collective punishment against people who “collaborate” with the regime by not helping the rebels (through “taxes” levied by the rebels or intelligence demanded by them), any regime that failed to reply in kind faced the possibility of its supporters defecting just to stay alive. As a result, many of those regimes did reply in kind via gruesome atrocities that matched or exceeded the guerrillas’ worst efforts. Leftists in America have shone klieg lights on what our anti-Communist allies in Latin America did to their Communist rebels, but this was really a two-way affair.

The Sochi Olympics "opened Russia's soul" to the world and wrongfooted critics of the host country, President Vladimir Putin said in remarks broadcast on Tuesday...it is interesting that RT - Russian Television - and some of its cohorts like Mind TV - were off the air, at least on our cable system, for "technical problems" for a full ten days or so and showed up again only yesterday - the day after the Olympics ended (and the situation in the Ukraine simmered down for a while) - quite a coincidence maybe, but I've fallen off of too many turnip trucks not to think somebody was trying to keep something out to the public view, although just what is pretty murky......

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