[lbo-talk] Stalin, democrat

[Doug Henwood]

Unlike a lot of my comrades, I'm not hostile to Putin - I think he's 
kept Russia from going down the drain. But his retrospective judgment 
on the USSR now isn't a very reliable guide to much of anything. Had 
the USSR stayed together, I'm sure he'd still be a loyal functionary.

Doug

Peter Lavelle wrote:


>Sorry, I am way over the posting limit, but:
>
>What difference does it make what Putin said in the 80s and 90s? 
>What is important is what he has done and said in power. Putin is 
>the most accidential leader of our time. He is a former KGB 
>functionary and Bush Sr headed the CIA for a time - which one has 
>shown himself to have a learning curve?????
>
>Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
>Peter Lavelle wrote:
>
>>Putin is on the record saying: "the outrageous price our country and
>>people had to paid for that Bolshevist experiment" or calls
>>communism a "road to a blind alley."
>
>That's what he says now. What was he saying when he was in the KGB?
>
>Boris Kagarlitsky said years ago that the old Soviet elite was a
>model of flexibility - they went from being Stalinists to s! ocial
>democrats to pure neoliberals in just a few years.
>
>Doug
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