Kerry privately urges Poroshenko to provide evidence of Kremlin involvement with separatists in Ukra

[Tommy_Carcetti]

91. The Deutschlandlied was written long before that country's darkest era.

On the other hand, the music to the current Russian National Anthem was written specifically for Stalin at the height of his power. To revert back to it (with a switching around of the lyrics to make it more palatable) is bizarre.

And the Russian Federation isn't continuous with the USSR (just as modern day Germany isn't continuous with the Third Reich). That's exactly my point. So why all the Soviet nostalgia? You have the city of Volgograd that now goes back to calling itself Stalingrad a few days out of the year, and from the news today apparently Putin has come out and said he'd support a referendum asking whether the name should be reverted permanently.

Lest you think I'm just being hard on the Russians for this because I'm just a mean old guy, there actually is a relevant basis for my concerns here. When you have Putin namedropping Novorossiya or bemoaning the loss of the Soviet Union, the imperial mindset that existed both in the Soviet Union and in the Russian Empire before it begins to seep back into the forefront. And going back to my original point, it makes it seem that Putin's interest in at least Eastern Ukraine is a lot more vested, far beyond simply wanting to see a cessation in hostilities. Thus, there is certainly a basis where Russia would actively be involved in seeking to aid the separatists in their efforts if the end game is those regions petitioning to join Russia (and that is the stated endgame of the separatists).

Also, you are aware that the Soviet Union was far, far more about old school Russian imperialism than it was about promoting Marxist economic ideology. Back in the early 20th Century, the Tsardom began to disintegrate and Russia's status as an empire seemed to be coming to an end. Knowing that the people were no longer interested in belonging to a monarchy, Russian nationalists struggled to find some sort of way to reboot the old empire in a new form to ensure its survival. Ultimately, the prevailing mechanism was to use Marxist economic theory to appeal to populists. However, as much as they pretended the Soviet Union to all be about communism and Marxism, Moscow really just needed a way to stay at the top of its game, and communism/Marxism was just a means to an end. Eventually, the charade fell apart, and the countries that had been subjugated under both the Russian Empire and the USSR for centuries finally were able to break free of Moscow's chokehold. You would think that would be a good thing, but a strain of Russian nationalism echoed here by Putin bemoans this fact greatly. And while it might be tempting for western Marxists to think of the USSR as some sort realization of Marx in the real world, it was actually all a bloody, brutal sham that had little to do with Marx and everything to do with Russia. A Potemkin village of sorts, if you pardon the pun. The Soviet Union ought not to be emulated or celebrated in any respect, especially at its very worst under Stalin.