Russia – from atheist Stalinism to the New Czarism

The headline in Euronews did merit a second glance, I thought: "Russia shows strength on Unity Day?" And the patriotic parade viewed by tens of thousands "had a distinct flavor of defiance against the West".

If you are my age (67) you recall a very different, still proud, but intensely ideological nation that scared the hell out of American people with their "Sputnik" rocket launch back in 1957.

"We will bury you", their leader warned. Scary Russia (called the Soviet Union back then) was a bastion of atheistic communism. It had all begun with a euphoric overthrow of the Russian Czar in 1917.

World War I had brought nothing but defeat and misery to the long suffering Russian people. Vladimir Lenin's Bolsheviks, perhaps the most REVOLUTIONARY bunch of all time, backed by millions of Russian workers and peasants, seized power. Overnight the private property of the rich was converted into state property.

Leon Trotsky, a leader of this great revolution, explained a mere ten years later- now in exile- that the great ideals of the Bolsheviks had been betrayed by Joseph Stalin and his lackeys. Trotsky warned that the New Regime, having created a new aristocracy, was psychologically capable of actually restoring CAPITALISM in Russia.

Forward to PRESIDENT FOR LIFE – Vladimir Putin's regime, almost three decades into the post Soviet Union era. See Putin, their GREAT LEADER, viewing this Unity Day parade almost on the same day that once tens of thousands celebrated the triumph of Lenin's Bolshevik Revolution.

The Unity Day parade commemorates Holy Russia's defeat of the Polish invaders in 1612. In the film clip Czar Putin is standing next to a figure in religious garb who must be the Russian Orthodox Pope. Putin declares that threats from the West (brought on by civil war in the Ukraine) "will not force us to abandon our values and ideals."

What country in history ever changed its "values and ideals" so drastically and so soon? How could the Socialist Ideal have collapsed virtually over night? The rot must have been going on for years in this "new aristocracy"- as Trotsky described it in "The Revolution Betrayed."

Soon after the  GREAT COLLAPSE of 1991 "state property" must have been divided up by the New Robber Barons, jealous of the openly arrogant and unapologetic ruling classes of the capitalist West.

Has any Russian insider, not besotted by the new pro-capitalist values, told this strange story? How could  a whole class of Russian billionaires emerge in a few short years unless they were very connected to the old corrupt Communist Party?

Putin–himself a new billionaire, had said that the collapse of the Soviet Union was "a great historical tragedy." HE should know!

Is there such a thing as a "guilty communist conscience" ?