Toro
Diamond Member
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- #61
SS: So, doesn’t that make Putin a softer version of Stalin, and an equally dangerous leader?
TS: He’s different. Stalin never doubted the existence of the Ukrainian nation and in a way, he was cautious of it, hence the Holodomor famine and the 1930s Great Terror in the Ukrainian SSR. Putin, who believes no Ukrainian nation exists, has a more radical perspective compared to Stalin; it takes us back to Hitler’s idea of human masses that can be quickly broken by willful violent actions. …
Even in Russia, there has been no historical precedent for treating the Ukrainian nation in this way. Only Hitler had a similar plan. The Soviets believed that the Ukrainian nation existed and that they could achieve some sort of compromise. At the time of the Russian Empire, there was no concept of a modern nation. And it’s not like the empire meant that the Russians could rule over others, for example, Ukrainians. The elite of the Russian Empire was not at all ethnically Russian and didn’t think in those terms.
Putin, on the other hand, constantly refers to his own historical and mystical concepts, and what he proposes –
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