Posted on 12/02/2017 11:31:43 AM PST by GoldenState_Rose
"Political experts have consistently rejected the idea that Putin has reproduced the mechanism of Stalin’s power. They ridicule out of hand the very thought of it, arguing that Putin is not Stalin on the basis that there are no repressions today comparable with those in Stalin’s time and that there cannot be..."
"Why? I argue that this is primarily due to a superficial understanding of Stalinism and Stalin’s mechanism of power. The core of Stalinism was not mass repressions but a clandestine model of power, in which the worst traditions of Russian authoritarianism going back to the time of Ivan the Terrible obtained their complete expression. The model is ideal for consolidating power by a group of individuals, thus perfectly serving the interests and goals of President Putin and members of his corporation..."
"Re-Stalinization began in the mid-1990s, as the Kremlin sought to formulate a “national idea” (or, “patriotic idea,” as it is currently referred to) that could unite people around the central power...The austere image of Stalin offered the populace a welcome contrast to the injustice, criminality, and disorder that had been associated in people’s minds with the Yeltsin era..."
"Most alarming, these attitudes are not limited to those of the older generations of Russians nostalgic about the Soviet Union. On the contrary, it is the newly indoctrinated younger generation reared in an atmosphere of re-Stalinization that has absorbed all the apologetic clichés about the Soviet dictator."
...In my view, the most prominent feature of Russia’s decline has little to do with its struggling economy, runaway corruption, and poor governance; or even with its alarming demographic trends. It is about the process of re-Stalinization, which has dramatically defined and perpetrated the decay of Russian societal identity....
(Excerpt) Read more at jamestown.org ...
Ran across this quote a bit ago will going through some old files:
Former President of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili, when asked about Vladimir Putin, said, “He likes to be feared. For example: the last time I met with him, he said, ‘Your Western friends promise you nice things, but seldom deliver. I promise you bad things, and I deliver.’” 8/16/14
We could use some Stalinism in the war on terror. Since terrorism is an idea translated into action, the only way to extinguish it is to make the idea die at birth by having its consequences be blatantly severe, ie, “kill or imprison their friends, family, and associates, and then kill THEIR friends, family and associates.”
The Jamestown Foundation is not a good source. They produce simplistic propaganda for the globalist establishment. It’s also very dated propaganda that used Cold War era terminology and concepts with no recognition that the world has changed. By old people, for old people.
Any discussion of Russia that tries to suggest things have gotten worse then since Putin took power compared to how it was before it a joke.
The big decline happened under Yelstin and Putin reversed the decline.
A lot of it picked from recent Ukrainian propaganda which is a pure projection of modern Ukrainian conditions on Russia and blaming the latter’s influence for all of Ukraine’s ills.
That being said Ukraine was at its peak in 1992 which was the last year of so-called ‘Russian occupation’.
They had an economy on par with Poland and population of 52 million people. Today the economy is on par with Zimbabwe and official population figure is about 40 million people which is totally unrealistic with actual figures around 30 million.
Watchung, the writer specifies how the chaos and turmoil of the 90s raised the Russians’ appetite for a Stalinist “strong hand” mechanism of power and their willingness to revert back to Soviet psychological tendencies to cope and re-collectivize around a national idea. She never said things were “better” before Putin.
Economics, specifically Putin-omics is another story. Will expand more later.
But let’s just say in the grand scheme, Putin’s been a bad, not good thing for Russia regardless of a few material perks gained in the 00’s - and that had more to do with lucky oil prices than with his leadership. And if it weren’t for him, they would have gained a whole lot more and be a LOT better off than they are now.
There is no reason to think that. Who would have been the better leader? Berezovsky?
You sound like a parody of boomer neocon who hasn’t learned anything new in the last 20 years.
I guess there was no telling what “could have been.” If anything, there may have been a few more years of struggle.
The real verdict is: the Russian people did not see freedom as worth the struggle nor did they understand what freedom means. The chaos of the 90s only revealed how corrupt and sick the prior system of communism was and utterly bereft it left its individuals to fend for any higher ideal otherwise. I’ve lived there. I’ve seen it. The new generation is obviously a different story and will release itself from the Soviet grip eventually.
In the meantime, look up male mortality/life expectancy alone and you’ll see how broken Russia has been these past few decades including under Putin. Not to mention the severe demographic crisis. Go outside Moscow and Saint Petersburg and you see how stalled much of the country’s development is.
Russia still has not recovered from the USSR collapse and neither has Ukraine or Belarus. Even the Baltic states like Estonia still struggle.
Putin’s interest was not to transition Russians to freedom but to keep them as comfortable as they are caught between two worlds. He revived much of the old older and installed an adjusted oligarchic capitalism meant to enrich himself and his chosen few. Lucky oil prices allowed for a decent middle class existence for many, but living standards have been on the decline for quite some time even before Western sanctions
To distract people from their dissatisfaction, he does things like annex Crimea and to return to people the sense of lost glory so many crave.
By the numbers, Russia should be lot more prosperous than it is, considering all the resources at their disposal, and all its strengths in STEM and the arts.
But there has been much cultural decay as well and its a myth that they’ve somehow been immune to the social ills that have prevailed in the West. Their HIV epidemic is at a tipping point.
But once the system changes, there is MUCH potential for true revitalization to take place.
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