Cold War Soviet ideology preferable to Mideast religious lunacy ?

   Vladimir Putin - who might yet emerge as the hero in the present Fall- of- Iraq crisis- said a few years back that the collapse of the old Soviet Union was an historic tragedy. Did not the whole world seem less divided and chaotic in Cold War era ?  Everywhere in the under-developed  world (  the Mideast, Africa, Asia, Latin America ) potential young rebels were introduced  to the Marxist ideology of " class struggle " - which- though fanatical in its own way-rejected irrational violence for the POLITICS of mass movement.  An " historical materialist " would never plan or welcome  the diabolical terrorism we see in these regions of endless bloody conflict today.
              No Marxist-even of the Stalinist stripe- would ever have demonized Western Civilization- the cradle of Judeo-Christian morality and the very  source of modern popular democracy and
 modern Science itself.  Now  I see why the late great humanist Carl Sagan wrote " The Demon Haunted World " in which he made some very sympathetic comments about the assassinated Bolshevik, Leon Trotsky . Read Trotsky's " The Revolution Betrayed " for a deeper understanding of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
           In the 1960s the New Left in the United States was convinced that young people should turn to revolutionary POLITICS -not bloody violence- to change the world.
      Even Pope Francis today is showing the world a better way to economic and social justice than the deranged fanatics of Islam.  But is Reason dying, are the lights going out everywhere ? Is there a candle in the dark ? asked-and answered- the late great humanist Carl Sagan.