Soviet Premier Putin personally sewed the nazi flags and painted those black sun tattoos on our brave Azov freedom fighters while they slept
:marx-ok: https://twitter.com/jonashelwig/status/1635150780352319489
So Russia is communist for raising the Soviet flag and celebrating Stalin, but Ukraine is not nazi for waving OUN flags and celebrating Bandera
Bandera wasn’t a nazi!!
I’m assuming that’ll be the defense
Hasn’t Putin been openly critic of Stalin and Lenin? “Celebrate” is a bit of a stretch lol
Yeh I’m starting to think the liberals took that Simpsons episode as theory or fact.
Putin is a nationalist and pro-capitalist who stabilized the oligarchic class in their ascent during Russian capitalist transformation. He clearly sees a key part of his historical role as stabilizing and allowing for more sustainable development of the private sector. He didn’t want to slow down privatization (Imo this showed he is astute as a politician because he understood the nature and relation of a state to its capitalism society). His promotion of capitalism does also seem like a kind of pragmatic, instrumental choice by a nationalist, who thinks that stable capitalism is what is in Russia’s national interest. Recent pressure on the more liberal central bank indicate this political pragmatism.
He despises Lenin due to his limits on private capitalist initiative, his atheism and because he blames the Bolsheviks for their federalism wrt Ukraine etc. For a great russian nationalist like Putin Ukraine and Belorussia are still Russian, just part of the greater Russia.
When he says that he thinks the fall of the USSR was one of the great tragedies of the 20th century he is speaking as a Great Russian nationalist. The USSR seems to have had an ideological function for him (like many modern Russian nationalists and fascists) insofar as, if you’re going to appropriate anything in championing Russia’s historical successes in every domain of life, it makes sense to appropriate aspects of Soviet history, because Russia was never more powerful or successful.
Yes, repeatedly. He occassionally evokes the USSR alongside Tsarist Russia when invoking a past, more powerful Russia to placate a few older folks, but it’s always paired with criticisms and dismissals of the actual ideology and politics of the USSR in particular.
But these people have never actually read a transcript of his speeches. They’ve just internalised propaganda headlines half-remembered from internet posts.
Its kind of frustrating how many American liberals especially seem incapable of grasping this concept because it really shouldn’t be that hard for them post Trump/MAGA. Whatever public praise Putin has given for the USSR or Tsarist Russia has basically fuck all to do with actual ideology or policy. Its just a nationalistic dogwhistle to say “REMEMBER WHEN WE WERE A MAJOR WORLD FUCKING POWER!!! FUCK YEAH!”
Whether or not that means Communists will eventually get back into power in Russia, time will tell.
They won’t. Subsuming communism into nationalist mythology neutralizes it as a real political movement. Right wingers praising Stalin is evidence that they don’t fear his memory.
You have to understand that communism just means “when country bad :(”, Russia is communist, China is communist, Iraq can have little a communism as a treat. Words mean nothing to these fuckers.
Socialism is when flag, and communism is when a lot of flag
