[The_Reader_David]

A small correction: Putin was never the head of the KGB. He rose to the rank of Colonel in the KGB.

Actually, it’s interesting that in the last days of the Soviet Union, within the KGB there was de facto freedom of speech, and a raging debate about whether or not state atheism had been a hideous mistake. Putin, according to a biographer writing in The Atlantic Monthly a few years back, was on the ‘it was a hideous mistake’ side. I wonder whether there was a similar debate about central planning.

Yup, Russia’s got Christian religious education in its government schools, a flat income tax, lower tax rates (both individual and corporate), a media less subservient to the party in power (despite the odd assassination), and no more cronyism betweeen its major corporate shareholders and CEOs and the government than we have.

Whether Obama’s bent on imitating Lenin or Hitler, I just hope Marx was right when he wrote “History repeats itself, the first time is tragedy, the second is farce.” Lots fewer people tend to die in farces than in tragedies.

[brooklyn dave]

Great comments

[AdmSmith]

A small correction: Putin was never the head of the KGB. He rose to the rank of Colonel in the KGB.

Do not forget that on 25 July 1998 Yeltsin appointed Vladimir Putin head of the FSB (one of the successor agencies to the KGB), the position Putin occupied until August 1999. In my world FSB and KGB is the same.