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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   33771 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023

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??? Since when has Putin endorsed Bolshevism?

Anyone who doesn't regret the passing of the Soviet Union has no heart, Anyone who wants it restored has no brains.

Above all, we should acknowledge that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the century. As for the Russian nation, it became a genuine drama. Tens of millions of our co-citizens and compatriots found themselves outside Russian territory. Moreover, the epidemic of disintegration infected Russia itself.

People in Russia say that those who do not regret the collapse of the Soviet Union have no heart, and those that do regret it have no brain. We do not regret this, we simply state the fact and know that we need to look ahead, not backwards. We will not allow the past to drag us down and stop us from moving ahead. We understand where we should move. But we must act based on a clear understanding of what happened.

This is the closest he gets to endorsing the Soviet Union, let alone Bolshevism. He's clearly not one, he regrets the collapse of the Soviet Union seeing as it led to a decade of complete disaster. I reckon your average leftist (or perhaps ilforte) would have a breakdown upon hearing that Putin was a Bolshevik or a Soviet. He's a grossly corrupt economic liberal, a Russian nationalist. What does any of that have to do with Bolshevism?

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday compared modern Western values to Bolshevik dogmatism during his speech at the Valdai club forum and called for “rational conservatism.” The president recalled that the Bolsheviks showed an “absolute intolerance” to any opinion other than his own, they tried to destroy the values that were formed several centuries ago. In this sense, he stressed that “looking at what is happening in various Western countries” now, we see the practices that Russia left in the distant past.

I swear some American coverage of Putin and Russia generally is at least 30 obsolete. Times have changed!

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