Communism is not better sparklite but it is Putin trying to combine a caricatured capitalism with nostalgia for the superpower ethos of the USSR with some Orthodox externals thrown in.
Barring a Moscow monument or two to those pesky “repressions” and “excesses” of the Stalin era: as far as Putin is concerned, Stalin is a hero and the victor of World War II. (Which they don’t even call WWII, but “The Great Patriotic War” for the Russian homeland.)
The country barely acknowledges the Gulag anymore. FACT. And if you are an archeologist of its victims, you may be faced with punitive psychiatry. Look it up. Someone as recent as last week was subjected to such punishment for his investigations into Stalin’s mass murders.
The Soviets took the brunt of WWII and it’s possible American history elides that. As for the rest, Russia is a whole lot more responsible for the defeat of ISIS than you hear in the political rhetoric of “our” victory over ISIS.
I don’t want to make Russia an enemy again, so have no interest in hating the USSR back into existence.