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I did a little research.

Warning: LONG

Current use of Soviet Flags

I saw a picture of a Russian troop, on at Yahoo news photos, standing guard at a road checkpoint under a soviet flag.
Steve Stringfellow, 07 Feb 2000

Russian military aircraft still use the red star, Russian military units still carry red colors, Aeroflot still uses the hammer an sickle, and (at least until recently) the towers of the Kremlin are still topped with illuminated red stars. And the military newspaper is still Krasnaya Zvezda, which means Red Star. (Red Square is still called Red Square, too, although that name goes back to pre-Revolutionary times.) My impression is that Russians are quite OK with retention of at least some of these Soviet era symbols, especially for military uses, in recognition of the achievements of the USSR armed forces, esp. in World War II.
Joe McMillan, 30 May 2000

Government plans to adopt new emblem, new banners, new flags. But for now Armed Forces use old communist symbols.
Victor Lomantsov, 30 May 2000

As in here, for instance, the joint display of modern and soviet motifs is not unusual in current russian militaria.
António Martins, 09 Nov 2000

https://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/ru%5E.html
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Red Army
Soviet history
Alternate titles: Krasnaya Armiya
By The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica • Edit History
Red Army
Red Army
See all media

Date:
1918 - 1946

Areas Of Involvement:
land warfare

Related People:
Oleg Vladimirovich Penkovsky Mikhail Tukhachevsky

Summary
Read a brief summary of this topic
Red Army flag
Red Army flag

Red Army, Russian Krasnaya Armiya, Soviet army created by the Communist government after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. The name Red Army was abandoned in 1946.
Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky
Bain News Service/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (LC-DIG-ggbain-33302)

The Russian imperial army and navy, together with other imperial institutions of tsarist Russia, disintegrated after the outbreak of the Russian Revolution of 1917. By a decree of January 28 (January 15, Old Style), 1918, the Council of People’s Commissars created a Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army on a voluntary basis. The first units, fighting with a revolutionary fervour, distinguished themselves against the Germans at Narva and Pskov on February 23, 1918, which became Soviet Army Day. On April 22, 1918, the Soviet government decreed compulsory military training for workers and peasants who did not employ hired labour, and this was the beginning of the Red Army. Its founder was Leon Trotsky, people’s commissar for war from March 1918 until he lost the post in November 1924.

The Red Army was recruited exclusively from among workers and peasants and immediately faced the problem of creating a competent and reliable officers’ corps. Trotsky met this problem by mobilizing former officers of the imperial army. Up to 1921 about 50,000 such officers served in the Red Army and with but few exceptions remained loyal to the Soviet regime. Political advisers called commissars were attached to all army units to watch over the reliability of officers and to carry out political propaganda among the troops. As the Russian Civil War continued, the short-term officers’ training schools began to turn out young officers who were regarded as more reliable politically.

The number of Communist Party members increased among the Red Army’s ranks from 19 to 49 percent during 1925–33, and among officers this increase was much higher. Moreover, all commanders were graduates of Soviet military academies and officers’ training schools, admission to which was limited to those recommended by the Communist Party.
Siege of Leningrad
Siege of Leningrad
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (LC-USZ62-25900)
Examine how Stalin’s Red Army defeated Hitler’s Fourth and Sixth armies in the Battle of Stalingrad
Examine how Stalin’s Red Army defeated Hitler’s Fourth and Sixth armies in the Battle of Stalingrad
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
See all videos for this article

In May 1937 a drastic purge, affecting all potential opponents of Joseph Stalin’s leadership, decimated the officer corps and greatly reduced the morale and efficiency of the Red Army. On June 12, Mikhayl Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky, first deputy people’s commissar of war, and seven other Red Army generals were found guilty of plotting to betray the Soviet Union to Japan and Germany, and all were shot. Many other generals and colonels were either cashiered or sent to forced-labour camps, or both. The purge’s effects were apparent in the serious defeats suffered by the Red Army during the first months of the German invasion (1941), but a corps of younger commanders soon emerged to lead the Soviet Union to victory in World War II.
Red Army; Operation Barbarossa
Red Army; Operation Barbarossa
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

By war’s end the Soviet armed forces numbered 11,365,000 officers and men. Demobilization, however, started toward the end of 1945, and in a few years the armed forces fell to fewer than 3,000,000 troops.
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In 1946 the word Red was removed from the name of the armed forces. Thus, a Soviet soldier, hitherto known as a krasnoarmiich (“Red Army man”), was subsequently called simply a ryadovoy (“ranker”). Discipline in the Soviet forces was always strict and punishments severe; during World War II, penal battalions were given suicidal tasks. In 1960, however, new regulations were introduced making discipline, and certainly punishments, less severe. Officers were to use more persuasion and were charged with developing their troops’ political consciousness, thus ending the dual control of military commanders and political commissars. By contrast, enlisted men increasingly brutalized each other; conscripts with longer service took advantage of new recruits, and ethnic communities worked out mutual hostilities in the barracks. The era of the revolutionary “Red Army” ended, in fact as well as in name, long before the final disappearance of the Soviet Union. In Russia, February 23, now known as Defender of the Fatherland Day, is still the official day to honour military veterans.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia BritannicaThis article was most recently revised and updated by Michael Ray.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Operation-Barbarossa
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A variety of
answers on the hammer & sickle

https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-hammer-and-sickle-still-a-popular-symbol-in-Russia
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“...For years, Putin has questioned the legitimacy of former Soviet republics, claiming that Lenin planted a “time bomb” by allowing them self-determination in the early years of the U.S.S.R. In his speeches, he appears to be attempting to turn back the clock, not to the heyday of Soviet Communism but to the time of an imperial Russia.”

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/vladimir-putins-revisionist-history-of-russia-and-ukraine

This is as I recall from other readings over time. His goal is the restoration of Russian under Peter the Great

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“...What Putin retains from the Soviet era is not its utopianism but its late-period security obsession, via his personal background in the KGB.

He does not carry his belief in science into dogma. He is not – like Marx and Lenin were – interested in science as a grand legitimiser of historical vision: he is only interested in technologies of communication for the purposes of control. And his belief in violence is utilitarian and calculating (even if miscalculated in practice), rather than revolutionary and geared towards social renewal.

Totalitarianism today in Russia would need to be a “post-totalitarian totalitarianism”. The legacy of the original totalitarianism – thanks to inherited trauma of the Soviet era – is a population not enthused into grand, confident collectivism but far more cowed into suspicion, “self-isolation” and “state paternalism”. Repression, which has increased, is not actually a very specific marker of totalitarianism. “

https://theconversation.com/putins-not-a-fascist-totalitarian-or-revolutionary-hes-a-reactionary-tyrant-179256
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The New Soviet Man includes adherence to Marxist-Leninism. Putin repudiates both Marx and Lenin.

From an admittedly brief attempt to find some insight into your assertions, I believe your conclusions rest on a confusion of cultures and perhaps a misunderstanding of the Russian people. It seems to me that Russians themselves have a deep sense of history. A goodly number must descend from serfs, with a deep tie to their soil. Because of that USSR incorporated many elements from Russia’s military/political/geopolitical past. It appears that the Russian population finds these symbols comfortable. Likely, since the substance of the old soviet model is gone and life is better, they do not confuse historical symbols with the actual substance of their political lives.

TL;DR: None of what you postulate indicates the Russian Federation is a continuation of the USSR. There is nuance; you might benefit from some intensive reading of the most neutral sites you can find.

Soviet Russia was destroyed. I watched the lead up to it in 1991 on an old large sat dish before the news corps encrypted their pool feed. I also watched the editing bays and the footage was accurate. I watched stereotypical burly blue-collar men lifting those little soviet cars to form barricades. There were demonstrations, but there was very little large scale violence (I’m sure some occurred).

Here is Britannica’s precis of the events and some analysis.

The attempted coup
Boris Yeltsin; collapse of the Soviet Union
Boris Yeltsin; collapse of the Soviet Union
Reuters/Newscom

“Rumours of a coup against Gorbachev were rife in Moscow throughout the spring and summer of 1991. The military, the KGB, and conservative communists were alarmed at the turn of events. They wanted strong central leadership in order to keep the Soviet Union communist and together. Gorbachev had little to fear from the Communist Party. He had sharply reduced the power of the Politburo at the 28th Party Congress in June 1990 but had had to concede the emergence of a Russian Communist Party. This was dominated by the party apparat and turned out to be a toothless tiger. As it eventually transpired, a coup was organized by the KGB and was timed to prevent the signing of a union treaty on August 20 that would have strengthened the republics and weakened the centre.

On August 18, 1991, a delegation visited Gorbachev at his summer dacha at Foros in Crimea. The delegation demanded Gorbachev’s resignation and replacement by Gennady Yanayev, the vice president. When Gorbachev refused, he was held prisoner while the coup leaders, called the Extraordinary Commission and guided by KGB boss Vladimir Kryuchkov, declared that Gorbachev had been obliged to resign for reasons of health. As the commission tried to take over the country, Yeltsin arrived at the Russian parliament building, from where, beginning on August 19, he declared the putsch an attempt to crush Russia, called for the return of Gorbachev, and appealed for popular support. Lack of decisiveness on the part of the coup leaders led to more and more support for the Russian president; even some soldiers and tank units turned to defend the parliament building, and some top military officers sided with Yeltsin. There were only three fatalities in Moscow before the coup collapsed on August 21.

There were many reasons why the coup should have succeeded. Many were disenchanted with the course of perestroika. The military was depressed about the withdrawal from eastern Europe and about declining defense expenditure and loss of status at home. Several republican leaders, including those in Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, came out in support of the coup. Most others prevaricated, while the lone condemnatory voice from the beginning was that of Askar Akayev, the president of the Kirghiz S.S.R. (now Kyrgyzstan). Why then did it fail? Astonishingly, it was poorly planned and executed. The lessons of the brilliant coup of General Wojciech Jaruzelski in Poland in December 1981 were ignored. The fatal tactical error was the failure to identify and deploy loyal troops. It was assumed that orders would be obeyed. Troops had moved ruthlessly against civilians in Tbilisi, Georgia, in April 1989; in Baku, Azerbaijan, in January 1990; and in Vilnius, Lithuania, in January 1991—to name only a few instances when coercion was used. What was different this time was that troops who were overwhelmingly Russian were being ordered to move against Russians. The crucial weakness of the plotters was their inability to understand the radical political and social transformation that had occurred in the U.S.S.R. since 1985. It was no longer possible simply to announce that Gorbachev had retired for “health” reasons. Yeltsin and the democrats seized the opportunity afforded by the incompetent plotters to organize very effective resistance in Moscow. Anatoly Sobchak did the same in St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad). Probably a majority in the provinces supported the coup, but its fate was decided in the cities. There were significant divisions among top military and KGB officers. World statesmen condemned the coup and warned that all aid would be cut off.

The attempted coup destroyed Gorbachev politically. The republics rushed to be free of Moscow’s control before another coup succeeded. The three Baltic republics successfully seceded from the union, as did many others. The key republic was Ukraine, politically and economically number two. It voted for independence on December 1, 1991. Russia, Ukraine, and Belorussia (now renamed Belarus) on December 8, 1991, in Minsk, Belarus, declared that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist and founded a loose grouping known as the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). On December 21 in Alma Ata (now Almaty), Kazakhstan, 11 states signed a protocol formally establishing the CIS. Of the former Soviet republics, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Georgia refused to join. Gorbachev resigned as Soviet president on December 25, and all Soviet institutions ceased to function at the end of 1991. The main benefactor was Russia. It assumed the U.S.S.R.’s seat on the UN Security Council, and all Soviet embassies became Russian embassies. The Soviet armed forces were placed under CIS command, but it was only a matter of time before each successor state formed its own armed forces. Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan became nuclear powers, but all, except Russia, declared their goal to be the destruction of their nuclear arms.

The Soviet experiment, begun in 1917, had ended in failure. The high moral goals that it had set for itself were never realized. Indeed, countless crimes had been committed in the attempt. Stalin perceived that the U.S.S.R. could only be kept together by a strong central hand that was willing to use coercion. Attempts at democratization under Khrushchev began a slow unraveling of the empire. Gorbachev merely accelerated the breakup by promoting glasnost. He confirmed that a communist system cannot become democratic. When democracy triumphs, communism departs the stage. Economic failure was the key reason for the U.S.S.R.’s collapse. The socialist alternative to the market economy turned out to be an illusion.”
Martin McCauley

https://www.britannica.com/place/Soviet-Union/The-attempted-coup

From what I can cobble together from various readings/videos, Putin is a strong head of a strong security state that does not, unlike the current ones of the US/Canada/Australia/NZ/and the EU, utilize this state for the oppression of the Russian people.

For this reason, people accept it. They concur with Russia returning to Empire in the sense of regaining territory that wishes to repatriate. I could not recall and could not find a single article/photo post 1991 of Russian tanks in the street as we all saw back in Eastern Europe during Soviet times. Of course, I don’t know the politics that went on behind the scenes, but it may likely have been in the best interests of the repatriated republics, from an economic, ethnic and military POV.

I have made a reasoned, good-faith attempt to find the explanations you have posed. I have picked left wing or establishment sources and neutral encyclopedias. It’s just facts. Hopefully it helps some other FReepers.

Another point: *soviet* and *federation* are political management designations in a language I don’t know, speak or read. (NB: I had Russian, Ukrainian and Lithuanian grandparents. They spoke several languages each and were educated, though Jews who mostly, except for 1 grandfather, lived in various parts of The Pale. They wanted us to be Americans and used Russian as the *secret language* to discuss things in front of us they wished us not to know).

Nor do I have the breadth of knowledge of Russian history/culture(s) to interpret what I have learned or recall observing during my life. The Russian people seem fine with it and they live, for the most part, similarly to many rural or small town or small city people here in the US, at least in the main part of Russia. I have seen conditions in some further-flung non-Russian-ethnic areas and watch some vloggers from various regions, so that is an impression.

What I see in Putin is also a measured man of analytic intellect. What I see in Ukraine is a sham country (Kiev is the ancestral capitol of the original Rus, who are as Nordic as they are Slav.) that has been used and abused over centuries by everyone. That _could_ engender both paranoia and psychosis. (just riffing, here). I have listed consistently what I see as Ukraine being used by the overarching Global Government (globo), nascent as it might be, to gain power, advantage, wealth at the expense of Ukraine and the entire planet and then say : “Blame Putin”. He truly has (like Trump) peed in their Cheerios.

And yours, too, from what you post.

Some people need to personify their enemy as an individual villain. From what we have all experienced these past 2&1/2, or really, 7&1/2 years, that is folly. The truth is we are ALL being attacked on a 360 degree grid by far more powerful groups of people with the means and the will to do as they malignly wish and then turn us against each other in a riot of blame.

YYMV