Posted on 01/27/2016 12:39:27 PM PST by GodGunsGuts
Putin still has his Communist Party card, likes socialist ideals
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday revealed he has kept his USSR Communist Party membership card, and still has a soft spot for socialist ideals.
"I didn't throw out my party card, I didn't burn it," said Putin, a former KGB agent in East Germany, at a meeting with supporters, quoted by Interfax news agency. "My card is lying round somewhere."
To older Russians, holding onto a Soviet Communist party card -- once compulsory for top officials -- shows a degree of nostalgia for the previous regime.
"I wasn't a party member through necessity. I can't say I was totally an ideological Communist but I did really treasure it (the card)," said Putin, pointing out that he served for nearly 20 years in the "armed wing of the party".
Putin -- who has revived some Soviet traditions and state controls over his years ruling Russia -- said that he still "really likes" the ideals of communism, even if they were not implemented properly by Soviet leaders.
"I still really like the communist and socialist ideas," he said, calling these "very like the Bible."
"They are good ideas -- equality, brotherhood, happiness, but the practical embodiment of these great ideas in our country was far from what the Socialist Utopians came up with."
He criticised the regime of communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin for murdering the ex-tsar Nicholas II and his family, servants and doctors in 1918 in "mass repressions."
Putin also criticised Lenin for backing killings of members of the bourgeoisie and priests.
The Russian leader gave a vague answer to a question on the possible burial of Lenin, still lying in the Red Square mausoleum -- a step that would outrage many communists.
"As for burial and other questions like this, you know, I think that we need to approach this cautiously, to avoid steps that would divide our society," said Putin. "On the contrary, we need to bring it closer together."
It was the second time Putin -- whose rule has seen an elite around him amass vast fortunes -- has mentioned Lenin in a week.
Last week he suggested Lenin's ideology was like an "atom bomb" that eventually led to the fall of the Soviet Union, explaining this was because Lenin allowed the republics the right to leave the USSR.
Putin has called the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 a "tragedy."
A 2012 poll by independent polling centre Levada found that 25 percent thought Lenin's body should stay in the mausoleum, while 53 percent thought he should be buried.
Another poll by Levada in 2015 found only five percent thought Lenin's ideas would influence people in the future.
Bernie still carries his, too.
Putin has called the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 a "tragedy." ...What he called it was “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the (20th) Century”. There can only be one reason for calling it that, and it is all about anti-Americanism.
As a colonel in the KGB.
I wish Putin had not assassinated Khaddafi and turned Libya into a jihadi playground, or he should not have tried to install the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and start a civil war and Christian pogram there.
Putin also should not have worked with the Saudis and Turks to supply arms to “moderate” muslim gangs in Syria, which was the excuse for 2 million muslims going to Europe.
Oh wait a minute - I’m thinking of another, more powerful America-hater. Sorry.
“I still really like the communist and socialist ideas,” he said, calling these “very like the Bible.”So “abolition of the family” is “very like the Bible”?? How about Marx’s calling money the Jews’ real god??
“They are good ideas — equality, brotherhood, happiness, but the practical embodiment of these great ideas in our country was far from what the Socialist Utopians came up with.” …
A Communist doesn’t criticize the secular Communist god Lenin - his methods, intentions or policies.
Putin admits that while he spent a good part of his life in the party, he never saw its ideals put into practice in the Soviet time.
And a Communist didn’t hang out with democratic reformers like Leningrad’s Anatoly Sobchak in early 1990s.
There is not much to said about the Soviet period because Communism was the god that failed.
No one in Russia mourns its demise.
Came for a Russian tu quoque logical fallacy. Left satisfied.
Sure they do, disavow in all moral rules allows them to do pursue any strategy to victory that they please:
“Karl Marx and V.I. Lenin are widely known as the founders of Communism. However, not everyone who professes the ideology of Marx and Lenin is a true Communist. Lenin himself defined Communism as an international organization, akin to the Mafia, whose members would constitute an elite corps of professional revolutionaries.40 As he described it in 1902, “In form such a strong revolutionary organization in an autocratic country may also be described as a ‘conspiratorial’ organization… such an organization must have the utmost secrecy.”41 Shortly after seizing control of Russia in 1917, Lenin revealed the secret of Communist success in a booklet, declaring that “The Bolsheviks could not have maintained themselves in power... unless the strictest, truly iron discipline prevailed in our Party.”42 Naive believers in Marxist ideology are constantly purged from the Party, for the organization can rely only on those people blindly willing to obey orders.43 Communism explicitly disavows all moral rules, and its members must constantly shift tactics, sometimes even carry out seemingly anti-
-Marxist actions, as its leadership adapts the revolution to changing circumstances.44 Thus Communists possess the fanatic discipline needed to carry out deception on a scale beyond the imagination of most outsiders, including staging their own alleged “collapse.”
It wasn't like that in the bible, Jesus said to some Jews, "ye are of your father, the devil", and communism has caused more misery in the world than any other system.
Socialist Utopianism is that just that - a flight of fancy.
In reality, the Soviet Union was a repressive dystopia.
Which belied the beautiful ideals professed by the ruling ideology.
And I read these posts to see how the cold war lives on in the hearts of some, 25 years after it ended. Who knew that Russia was a perpetual enemy and completely irredeemable?
I was quite taken with the Walden books (the modern ones) and am glad that I didn't get caught up in it. I think the hippies communal movements and occupy today were based on communist ideals. When you said "beautiful ideals", I didn't understand what could be beautiful about any of it.
PGR88, I lived through the cold war, maybe my friends were shielded from it, but I was aware of most of what was going on. I had high hopes after the "fall" of communism, and did until I read a couple days ago about Putin.
Well, seeing that the Russians themselves admit the Cold War is still on, and act accordingly, what also hasn’t changed is what their tools in the West say.
And why is the cold war still on?
Something many conservative have said for years - especially the part that socialism only works when its in a small voluntary enterprise like a church operation or small country in Europe.
An oldie but goodie. Resurrecting it from the dead.
Exactly Neo-Soviet Czarist President Premier Putin is still a harden communist to the core he’s taken a page out of Stalin’s book revived some Russian Czarist ideals in order to keep his phony image intact while exploiting the hyper partisan divide here in the U.S. between the left and the right
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