[GSlob]

"When an evil empire returns"
What do you mean - "returns", when it has never left? What did Reagan's words "evil empire" mean and refer to? - Landscape? Evil rivers, hills and lakes? Or maybe plants and animals? Evil birch trees and squirrels? Architecture? Cuisine? [Some of it is indeed, atrocious] - of course, not. It was the people there who were evil, or, more specifically, their way of life- how they saw themselves and the world and how they related to that world and to one another - the sociological essence of what Samuel Huntington would call their civilization.
Now, did that empire in 1991 overnight stopped being evil with Yeltsin's declaration of USSR dissolution? - of course, not, for it was populated by the same people who behaved pretty much as before. Nor did it suddenly become evil in 1917. It had been evil even before, but that evil merely became more manifest.

[M. Espinola]

You are fully correct in your overview. It's always been a despicable place with one beast or the other running the show. The problem is the current beast is arming Islamic madmen and having his vocal critics bumped off one after the other while the West sits there - silent.