‘Russians Fully Reconciled to Capitalism’ and Don’t Want Socialism Back, Shelin Says

Cash, Calculator, Pen

(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, August 21, 2019) Despite all the talk about a revival of socialism in the face of stagnation, Sergey Shelin says, “Russians are fully reconciled to capitalism, consider it completely practicable, and do not want even to think about the socialist past,” a fundamental transformation of Russian values over the last 30 years. […]

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Nearly Half of All Russians Now Say They Can Live without Relying on the State, Sociologists Find

Map of Russia and Russian Flag adapted from images at state.gov

(Paul Goble – Window on Eurasia – Staunton, April 27, 2016) Given everything that has occurred in Russia over the past five years, few have noticed what can only be described as “a quiet revolution”: the percentage of Russians who say they don’t need to rely on the state has increased from 34 to 44 percent, with an ever rising […]

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Interfax: Putin says he likes Communist ideas echoing Bible’s

Vladimir Putin file photo with VOA logo; screen shot from video still

(Interfax – January 26, 2016) Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that he still likes the ideas of Communism and that he has not ditched his party member ID card. “You know, just like millions of Soviet citizens – 20-odd million people – I was a member of the USSR Communist Party, and not just a Communist Party member, but […]

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Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk Digs In To Complex Decommunization Process

Map of Ukraine, Including Crimea, and Neighbors, Including Russia

(RFE/RL – rferl.org – Yulia Ratsybarska – DNIPROPETROVSK, Ukraine – June 10, 2015) As Ukraine pushes forward with the controversial process of decommunization, the east-central city of Dnipropetrovsk has its work cut out. The huge Petrovsky Metallurgical Plant — to take one example — is named after Bolshevik revolutionary Grigory Petrovsky, who oversaw the state security agency in the early […]

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Nazis Triumph Over Communists in Ukraine

Map of Ukraine, Including Crimea, and Neighbors, Including Russia

(Bloomberg – bloomberg.com – Leonid Bershidsky – May 19, 2015) It’s goodbye Lenin, hello Nazi collaborators in Ukraine these days. Laws signed into effect by President Petro Poroshenko require the renaming of dozens of towns and hundreds of streets throughout the country to eliminate Soviet-era names. At the same time, Ukraine will begin to honor groups that helped Hitler exterminate […]

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NEWSLINK AP: Ukraine Erases Communist Reminders as It Tries to Ditch Past

Maidan Square in Kiev, Ukraine

Ukraine’s leaders are eager to be seen as reinventing the nation. And erasing all visible reminders of the communist past, they say, is an important step toward that goal.

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Russians Increasingly Believe State Planning Better Than Market Economy

File Photo of Kremlin Tower, St. Basil's, Red Square at Night

(Moscow Times – themoscowtimes.com – March 27, 2015) Russians increasingly believe in an economic system founded on government planning rather than the free market, a poll by the independent Levada Center showed. Fifty-five percent of respondents said that a country’s economic system should be based on “government planning and allocation,” the pollster said in a report this week. On the other […]

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Interfax: Democracy is bigger lie than Communism – prominent Orthodox priest

Kremlin and St. Basil's

MOSCOW. Oct 24 (Interfax) – Protopope Dimitry Smirnov, the head of the patriarch’s commission on family and protection of mothers and children, believes that democracy is based on lies. “It’s just a lie. Communist is also a lie, but Communism has religious features. Communism seems to take a lot from true religions. The Communists have their own teaching, their own […]

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NEW BOOK: Why Communism Did Not Collapse

Eurasia Map

Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2013 Subject: New book: Why Communism Did Not Collapse From: Martin Dimitrov <martin.k.dimitrov@gmail.com> Martin Dimitrov Associate Professor of Political Science Tulane University New Orleans, LA TITLE: Why Communism Did Not Collapse: Understanding Authoritarian Regime Resilience in Asia and Europe EDITOR: Martin K Dimitrov PUBLISHER: Cambridge University Press (2013) ABSTRACT: This volume brings together a distinguished group […]

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Medvedev Warns Ruling Party to Avoid Communists’ Fate

File Photo of Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin

YAKUTSK, April 2 (RIA Novosti) ­ Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev warned his ruling United Russia party on Tuesday not to repeat the mistakes made by the Soviet Union’s Communist Party. “We do not aspire to be the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, particularly as it did not turn out very well,” Medvedev said at a meeting in Russia’s Sakha […]

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Russia’s Rising Red Dawn

Kremlin and St. Basil's

MOSCOW, October 23 (Marc Bennetts, RIA Novosti) – The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 appeared to have sounded the death knell for the ideas of Marx and Lenin in Russia, but just over two decades on, a new wave of young and increasingly visible socialist activists are eager to hoist the red flag over the Kremlin once more. […]

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