Posted on 02/09/2007 10:40:35 AM PST by Tailgunner Joe
MOSCOW - Vladimir Putin has been likened to czars and Communist Party chiefs, but a top aide came up with an unusual comparison Thursday for the Russian president: Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Surkov found echoes of the United States in Roosevelt‘s time in today‘s Russia, news agencies reported.
"Like Roosevelt in his time, today Putin must and should strengthen administrative control and use the potential of presidential power to the maximum degree for the sake of overcoming the crisis," RIA-Novosti quoted him as saying.
Putin and his supporters have often evoked — and sometimes exaggerated — the chaos and uncertainty of the 1990s when explaining their policies and touting their achievements. At the conference, called "Lessons of the New Deal for Modern Russia and the World," Surkov suggested that both Russians in that decade and Americans in the Depression struggled with a frighteningly dark vision of the future.
Roosevelt, who was president from 1932 until his death in 1945, oversaw an economic recovery package that sought to lift America out of the Depression. One of the most enduring policies of his New Deal was Social Security , but he also instituted work relief programs, imposed stricter controls on public utilities and levied heavier taxes on the wealthy.
Well, they are (were) both socialists. Some similarity anyway.
Both my parents and grandparents always said that FDR was as close as this country has ever come to having a dictator.
FDR in the 1930s had to worry about the spread of fascism and the rise of Adolph Hitler. The Russians in the 1990s had to worry about the US being too strong for their tastes. Just about the same, I suppose, for this writer.
The comments may have been in response to the following speech:
FDR Conference "The New Deal's Lessons for Modern Russia and Contemporary World"
William J. Burns, U.S. Ambassador to Russia
MGIMO — Russian MFA University, February 08, 2007
http://moscow.usembassy.gov/embassy/statement.php?record_id=85
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