By the end of the second presidential term of Vladimir Putin’s Russia aims to restore its former power. It’s spoken a lot about trying to find new “national idea” and coming back on top geopolitical positions. And it seems that the main idea is to overcome inferiority complex of losers in Cold War.
President Putin refuses to recognize criminal nature of Soviet Union and publicly excuse for Stalin times brutalities. In state-controlled media idea of Russian greatness is being spread daily. That’s why Soviet and Tsar-times past is being appreciated equally as time when Russia was a great state with larger territory. As the only “bad time” is recognized Jeltsin-period when Russia declared to build up democracy and free market. The symbol of hard 1990s’, time of mass selling of state property and wild gangs, is used for intimidating the population.
It reminds us Germany after the World War II. Weimar republic was the first attempt to build democracy there. But hard economical situation and the same inferiority complex gave Nazis a chance to come to power. And they used it.
I’m not going to compare Putins’ team to Nazis. But rhetoric of today’s Russian ruling elite is becoming more and more alike to the Soviet one. And who knows, whether we shall be witnesses of new Cold War exactly as our grandparents were witnesses of new World War in 1939?
