Submitted by M Tovey (United States), Oct 6, 2022 at 12:44
Considering that for a long time that the Russian was a hard read as to his background and propensity towards his Communistic influences, Reader Robert offers some interesting perspectives as to 'what floats the Russian's boat' as regards to why the irrationality on display today causes so much grief for those who are tasked with defending against those aggressions against the Ukraine directly and the rest of the world generally.
To be sure, Vladimir Putin is a student of the late Soviet leader Stalin. But so are many 'Americans,' many coming from that era and surviving today in a post Soviet frame of reference, though those numbers are dwindling and interpretations of 'Stalinism' are as variant as they are insidious. To this extent, to say that the Russian is a modern day version of Stalin is interpretive; but not necessarily wrong. Maybe, it is a form of channeling.
Returning to causes and effects, the assertion is that to understand the Russian requires an understanding of Stalin; and to the basic argument, this can be demonstrated by the results. But the results are spotty.
Why does history show photographic evidence of Stalin in sit-down conferences with world leaders as if having tea and pastries were the means of negotiating certain objectives, after which the world found itself dealing with the aftermath until this day. In a world that on the one hand is desiring peace, it finds it must fight tooth and nail against those who are detertmined to impose an inhumane goverance of demonic import for the sake of empire. How was that rationalized as an appropriate outcome?
Why, for example, did part of Germany, Czeckoslovakia, most of eastern Europe and other regions et al, suffer being covered by the darkness that supposedly was defeated after the fall of the Third Reich.
What was the allure?
To point, however, it is under these influences that the Russian was tutored, then taken through an advanced process of learning on his own terms how the Soviet system worked, obviously becoming an advocate such that when Boris Yeltsin ceded control and was succedded by 'President(?) Putin,' (Medvedev waiting in the wings), the die was already cast; the only question left was the timing, now seen as having matured.
To say this was 'communistic' is pedestrian; communism is a philosophical euphemism today; it has many variant interpretations by which many forms of its ideology are imposed with individual displays of understanding, such as displayed in American progressive politics. Calling some of it 'Stalinist' as seen in the ideology of the former American Sec of State under the 44th American Administration is only one in a vast array of institutionalized socialism that plagues the true American (and the world's) search for freedom.
So, in a glancing observation, does the Russian employ what he has absorbed in lifetime of such influences as he releases his 'inner Stalin' and tries to buld a legacy that might rival that of his mentor; or is he on a lifetime mission to be more than that; king of the world, maybe?
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