If my father were alive today he would be kicking some ass

[Cha]

24. So if Putin isn't a "communist".. what is he?

“He thinks that democracy stands in his way,” Mr. Gorbachev said. “I am afraid that they have been saddled with this idea that this unmanageable country needs authoritarianism,” Mr. Gorbachev said, referring to Mr. Putin and his close ally, President Dmitri A. Medvedev. “They think they cannot do without it.”

In an interview, Mr. Gorbachev even described Mr. Putin’s governing party, United Russia, as a “a bad copy of the Soviet Communist Party.” Mr. Gorbachev said party officials were concerned entirely with clinging to power and did not want Russians to take part in civic life.

Mr. Gorbachev was especially disparaging of Mr. Putin’s decision in 2004, when he was president, to eliminate elections for regional governors and the mayors of Moscow and St. Petersburg. Those positions are now filled by Kremlin appointees. The impact of this change was illustrated in Mr. Medvedev’s dismissal last month of Moscow’s longtime mayor, who was replaced with a Putin loyalist.

“Democracy begins with elections,” Mr. Gorbachev said. “Elections, accountability and turnover.” Mr. Gorbachev feels that he put Russia on the path toward being a functional democracy, only to have Mr. Putin block its progress. “Russia has a long way to go to usher in a new system of values, to create and provide for the proper functioning of the institutions and mechanisms of democracy — the institutions of civil society.”

More..
http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/europe/item/8703-former-soviet-boss-gorbachev-says-putin-is-more-communist-than-he-was