Putin and Communism: Since the invasion began, I've come to believe that he was and still is a Communist:
- in his first career, he was a KGB officer (1976-1991)
- he has said that the collapse of the USSR was a catastrophe
- in 2017, he gave the opening address to a meeting of a Communist youth group in the Russian city of Sochi
- in another thread, I posted a news story that included a photo of a Russian armored vehicle flying a Soviet flag during the current war. One vehicle flying this flag is one thing, but it’s something else when this image is part of a video published by the Russian Ministry of Defense.
Putin has never publicly repented of saying/doing any of these things, and he has not expressed any regret or remorse for them.
In the following examples, Putin has followed the the Communist pattern:
- Unprovoked invasions of other countries: Stalin invaded the eastern section of Poland in 1939, Finland in 1939-40, and all of the Baltic states in 1940. Putin invaded Ukraine on February 24.
- Deportations of civilians: On June 14, 1941, 15,000 Latvians were herded into railroad cars and deported to the Soviet Union. During the present war, I've read about "filtration camps" and Ukrainians being sent to Russia.
- Genocide: If Solzhenitsyn was correct, 66 million Russians were murdered by Stalin. Only the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has murdered more. Putin hasn't killed people on this scale, but neither has he publicly chastened anyone in the Russian state media who has made cavalier remarks about nuking Britain or New York. Also, when Biden accused him of being a killer, Putin didn't deny it. Instead, he said that it takes one to know one.
Putin is a Bolshevik, he is following the Communist pattern, and he is the dictator of the country with the single largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world. Communists are just as dangerous as they were in the past, and they must be resolutely opposed at every turn.