Stalinism is linked with a cult of personality and massive violations of the law, with repression and camps. There is nothing like that in Russia and, I hope, will never again be.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The great drama of Russian history has been between its state and society. Put simply, Russia has always had too much state and not enough society.
Putin and many of his gang may have once been Communists, but they are not that today. Rather, they have embraced a new totalitarian political ideology known as 'Eurasianism.'
Criticism in the universities, I'll have to admit, has entered a phase where I am totally out of sympathy with 95% of what goes on. It's Stalinism without Stalin.
The Yanukovych regime is a mafia, which regularly threatens, imprisons, murders, or disappears political opponents as well as those whose possessions it covets.
Early on I saw the repression and idolatry of Stalinism, and when it cracked, I was open to religion again.
Of course the biggest mafia in Russia has always been the government; in Soviet times, the Communist Party, and now a circle of former KGB and FSB.
Stalin's policies pushed the world into the Cold War. Putin has the potential to be equally as dangerous.
We became convinced that, regardless of Stalin's awful brutality and his reign of terror, he was a great war leader. Without Stalin, they never would have held.
The Marxist analysis has got nothing to do with what happened in Stalin's Russia: it's like blaming Jesus Christ for the Inquisition in Spain.
Even now we feel that Stalin was devoted to Communism, he was a Marxist, this cannot and should not be denied.