Putin vs. Lenin

President Putin of Russia felt inspired the other day to differentiate himself from Vladimir Lenin, the founder of the Soviet Union. Often suspected of totalitarian tendencies because of his KGB past, Putin admitted that he still believes in some of the ideals behind the Soviet Union, but also admitted that "the practical embodiment of these wonderful ideas in our country was very far from what the Utopian socialists had proclaimed." Putin has several problems with Lenin, if not with Leninism. He thinks Lenin went too far in ordering the slaughter of not only the Russian royal family, but many of their servants who,ought to have been recognized as proletarians. His real beef with Lenin, it turns out, is that Lenin was a federalist, a believer in national autonomy on some level whose policies implied a right of secession that Putin describes as an "atom bomb" waiting to blow the country apart, as it did, in his view, in 1991. He further faults Lenin for having to give up a huge swath of territory to the Germans in 1918. In general, Putin seems to take a more favorable view of Stalin, but the standard by which he judges the two leaders is essentially nationalist, since for him the USSR was just another name for Russia. In his recent talk Putin notes that Stalin preferred a "unitary state" from the onset, but was overruled by Lenin. If the question was whether the socialist republics within the Soviet Union could secede or not, an American might ask what was wrong with Stalin's (and Putin's) position, since most Americans, apart from those unreconstructed Rebs, reject the idea that any state can break up our Union. You would have to turn to the Poles, the Latvians, the Lithuanians, the Estonians and, yes, the Ukrainians, as well as unlisted others, for the answer. As far as these peoples are concerned, they were subjects of the Russian Empire, not partners in it. They'd be justified in finding Putin's apparent nostalgia for the pre-1917 empire alarming, though they shouldn't go overboard in their alarm as long as Putin doesn't go overboard in his nostalgia and turn it into imperialist irredentism. Putin may be a hero of sorts to the anti-imperialist left because he defies the U.S. and sticks up for others who do so, but "anti-imperialist" hardly describes Putin himself.

"the practical embodiment of these wonderful ideas in our country was very far from what the Utopian socialists had proclaimed."

More:,
http://tass.ru/en/politics/852069

"the practical embodiment of these wonderful ideas in our country was very far from what the Utopian socialists had proclaimed."

More:
http://tass.ru/en/politics/852069

"the practical embodiment of these wonderful ideas in our country was very far from what the Utopian socialists had proclaimed."

More:
http://tass.ru/en/politics/852069