An Open Discussion on Russian Identity

[Leonardo17]

   Today I wanted to add some perspective on the DNA or the true identity of the Russian state. That’s because I do not really agree with today’s Ukrainian biased / Western perception of the USSR entirely. Especially for the North Americans, the USSR is “The Empire of Evil”. So I want to put that a little bit into perspective if I can.

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   These are the Words of Elena Kotschukenko. A Russian dissident journalist living in Germany (born in 1986) who is likely to have been poisoned last year as a warning from the Kremlin as it has become their way of doing things She says:
 
"I was so sure that we are immune because for Christ's sake, we fought the fascists. My grandfather did,"
 
And also says:
 
 "We have whole movies telling us how fascism works, why it's so dangerous, and how it goes from a nice narrative to mass murders. I was totally sure we were immune."
 
And Adds:
 
"With what's happening in the world, with this turn toward global authoritarianism and the tendencies you also have in your country, it's not safe,"
 
https://www.yahoo.com/news/russian-dissi...p_catchall
 
So I wanted to discuss this a little. As I said before, I don’t think that Putinizm and bolshevism (and/or Leninism / Stalinizm) is the same thing. The Soviet Union was a state based on the Marxist idea of “Proletarian Dictatorship”. This means: No free elections, but a communist project that is designed to support the creation of a socialist state.
 
   Now in History, most of Communist ventures ended up becoming something else. China for instance is an authoritarian state with a market economy allowing public intervention into the private sector. That’s not real capitalism. But that’s not communism either.
   South American Sandinistas, Hugo Chavez’s venture in Venezuela, or even Cuba after Fidel Castro, these are what I call left-wing populist states that perhaps began as socialist ventures but gradually turned into mafia-states.
 
   The Soviet Union is different. It is definitely not what left wing parties in the 60’s etc. believed it to be but it was still something. The economy was a socialist economy. You had free healthcare, free education, public housing. If you wanted a car, they put you on a list and the car was delivered to you after a number of years. In the market (an I saw hat). It didn’t matter if you had cash or not. Everybody had a lot of cash. What mattered was if there was something gto buy or not. If there was something, you would queue for it (for several hours sometimes) than you would get it. Workers has acess to theatre, opera and various types of social / cultural events free of charge. So it was something different + it was something. I describe it as “a socialist venture” or “an attempt to create a Marxist state” (which has failed obviously).
 
Yet that state had some values. And Elena Kotschukenko is right on this: communism is truly anti-fascist in many ways and not just in terms of superficial propaganda. Communism is a society with no social classes. It’s multi-cultural / multi ethnic, it’s universal. (when they went to Afghanistan the idea was to make them communists). And as she said, communists know the way fascism begins and spreads within a society and it sees it as a plague that is worse than capitalism or Imperialism.
 
So what Putin is doing (in my view) is to take whatever is left from the Soviet Union (army, propaganda technique, economical tools, tools of social repression, espionage organization, everything) and put all of that into the service of fascism.

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Now Bolshevism does not exist anymore. The Soviet Union is gone. But there is still this “DNA of the Russian State”. And I believe Putin is the greatest betrayal to this Russian DNA. It is an abomination for Soviet times (as I tried to show). And if there were any Tsarist alive in our time, I think they would agree that it is an abomination to that as well.