" I am surprised by this" said no one ever.
Well, I guess I'm just surprised that Putin is getting this sloppy. Either that or someone did this trying to please him.
I don't know enough about the situation to say as a definite, but it feels like this is a show of how powerful he portrays himself, when I'm not sure how much power he has at the moment, considering the hit his country's economy is taking right now. The sort of power strokes that someone makes when they know they are losing power. But then again, Russia has always been on the 400 year world domination plan, so you never know what the plan is, what power really means, etc. I might be way off in left field. For all we know There could be a board of shadowy figures that Putin is just a puppet of. Maybe they see the current economic sanctions to be of no concern (and they're mostly correct), maybe this is a scare tactic to keep US and Nato weapons out of Ukraine, maybe this has nothing to do with international politics and all to do with reminding the Russian people who's boss. I agree, it's definitely going to be a hard decade to be Russian. But then, it's always a hard decade to be Russian, especially if you live outside one of the major centres.
I think it's simpler than that. Putin is a charismatic autocrat in a country whose brightest historic periods were under the control of charismatic autocrats. The way to cement your autocracy is to be autocratic; the way to cement your charisma is to be charismatic. Consider: before Kim Il Sung turned North Korea into The Hermit Kingdom it was just northern Korea. He pushed it to The Darkest Place on Earth through pure cult of personality and kept it there through absolute godlike authority. Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko, Gromyko, Gorbachev. That's 70 years of Soviet rulers and Gromyko, Andropov and Chernenko were only like 6 years of that. Historically speaking, Russia seems to like its Tsars, even if they're "elected."
Unfortunately that's sooo true :( My grandmother went to Stalin's funeral and she got lucky because she didn't get trampled. So many people showed up to pay their respects that many may people died at the funeral. My great-grandmother apparently cried for a week... Stalin was always very loved. Gorbachev was too permissive and progressive and that's when everything went to shit. The second Putin shows a sign of weakness, he's probably out. He's gonna be solidifying his grip and sanctions are only helping him right now. There's a big "them vs us" mentality in Russia, and sanctions only cement that belief. "The US and NATO started the war in Ukraine, and Putin only wants peace" is the kind of shit you hear every day on TV. When the rebels bombed Kharkiv, Russian TV said the Ukranian government did it, which make no sense. Why would the government bomb a city with no rebels or unrest? Just for the fun of it? The propaganda levels are crazy, reminds me a lot of Serbia in the 90's. Right now, everyone's really disapproving of the fact that Ukraine stopped paying government pensions to people in DNR. So yeah, rebels are there saying "we don't want to be part of Ukraine anymore, but keep paying us pensions while we bomb your towns". URghhh, this whole situation is crap.Historically speaking, Russia seems to like its Tsars
That does seem to be the tale of the tape, doesn't it? Idunno, maybe it's wishful thinking that makes me see this as a "losing power" move.Historically speaking, Russia seems to like its Tsars, even if they're "elected."
I think it's interesting to look at the similarities and differences. Putin is an old school soviet operative, a KGB man if there ever was one. But curiously, his propaganda is heavily reliant on the Orthodox Church. Obviously this is anathema to the communist ethos. I think it shows that Putin is in no way interested in ideology, and that his Stalinist fantasies are about him wanting the personality cult without the baggage of an ideological framework. Stalin and the other early Bolsheviks were, by all accounts, committed partisans. Putin seems like he believes in nothing but Putin.
Have you read The Dead Hand? It offers an explanation for the fall of the Soviet Union better than any I've read; the old-schoolers up to Chernenko were all kleptocrats that understood perfectly that the sham that was Communism was supported wholly by the black markets, nepotism and the nomenclatura system while Gorbachev legitimately believed in Communism. So when Gorbachev instituted all these reforms so that Communism could work as intended, the whole artifice crumbled around his ears. It's a hell of a book. As the guy who turned me onto Richard Pipes, I'd be remiss in not recommending it.
My readings on the subject argue pretty convincingly that the reason Leninism had so many differences with Marxism is that Leninism allowed for an easier power grab and more opportunities for the nomenclatura to abuse the system. Further, "Leninism" was a moving target that changed according to the whims and needs of Lenin. It's not a far reach to say that the October revolution swept out the royal family and replaced them with a similarly aristocratic system of cronyism; the difference was the former had royal blood while the latter had street cred.
People also often forget that communism, as Marx envisioned it, was an evolution of capitalism, not a system that could be created out of nothing. Russia was not an ideal place for a communist experiment, because you can't redistribute wealth that doesn't exist. Lenin had his sights on Germany before WWI, but settled for his home country because, as you point out, he was an opportunist above all. This brand of opportunism was shared by Stalin and his team. His foreign minister, Molotov, once remarked, "our ideology stands for offensive operations when possible, and if not, we wait." I would guess Putin is familiar with this line of thinking.
I was told that Lenin was also trying to "kick start" communism. He didn't want to wait for Marx's evolution of capitalism to happen. Marx, as it was explained to me, basically said things had to get as bad as capitalism could get before the revolution occurred and communism as he saw it came into existence. Lenin wanted to avoid that, mostly because he wanted to see it in his time.
Marx had correspondence with the early partisans in Russia. He warned them that they were doomed to failure, and that he wouldn't support their cause. Apparently, he eventually gave them approval, but in a kind of reserved way. Lenin would have been keenly aware of this, but I suppose he decided that either he was smart enough to figure it out, or his ego was such that he really only desired the personality cult. Probably both. Whatever the case, the failure of Russia in WWI was the perfect opportunity to seize control, and it was actually Germany who was responsible for transporting Lenin from Switzerland, where he lived in exile, back to Russia. To them, it was a type of alternative warfare to bring down the czar from within. It's a great lesson in figuring out if the sure is worse than the disease before implementing it.
The current Patriarch was closely associated with the KGB, that's why he was allowed to become Patriarch. Orthodox church had to be very cooperative to stay in business back in the day and the top brass now is little more than a branch of the security apparatus.