Doug Henwood Talks

Unlike a lot of my comrades, I’m not hostile to Putin - I think he’s kept Russia from going down the drain. But his retrospective judgment on the USSR now isn’t a very reliable guide to much of anything. Had the USSR stayed together, I’m sure he’d still be a loyal functionary.

Doug

Peter Lavelle wrote:

Sorry, I am way over the posting limit, but:

What difference does it make what Putin said in the 80s and 90s? What is important is what he has done and said in power. Putin is the most accidential leader of our time. He is a former KGB functionary and Bush Sr headed the CIA for a time - which one has shown himself to have a learning curve?????

Doug Henwood dhenwood@panix.com wrote:

Peter Lavelle wrote:

Putin is on the record saying: “the outrageous price our country and people had to paid for that Bolshevist experiment” or calls communism a “road to a blind alley.”

That’s what he says now. What was he saying when he was in the KGB?

Boris Kagarlitsky said years ago that the old Soviet elite was a model of flexibility - they went from being Stalinists to s! ocial democrats to pure neoliberals in just a few years.

Doug

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