Putin’s Insistence that Soviet Union was Russia Leaves Russians with No Choice but to Reject Him and His System, Savvin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 29 -- The anti-Bolshevik White Movement was unalterably opposed to the Soviets because the latter sought to destroy Russia in the name of a world revolution, and it did not accept the idea that anyone was doing anything more than supporting the lesser of two evils when some of its members fought against Hitler, Dimitry Savvin says.

            This movement never accepted the argument of those that Stalin had somehow restored the old Russia and represented its continuation, the editor of the conservative Russian Riga-based Harbin portal says. But the acceptance of that notion is exactly what Putin is now demanding and something Russians must reject (harbin.lv/belaya-neprimirimost-kak-psikhicheskaya-i-moralnaya-norma).

            The argument Putin makes and that some Russians unfortunately accept at their psychological and political cost is that yes, there was Lenin and the crime of Brest-Litovsk, but after Lenin died, “Stalin purged ‘the Leninist guard,’” and then showed in the Soviet-German war that he had made the USSR into Russia.

            That is dangerous nonsense, Savvin says. The Soviet Union was antithetical to the existence of Russia and not just another name for the country as Putin and his minions insist. And that means that Russians who want to be true to themselves must reject not only the Soviet Union as the White Russian movement did but reject efforts to restore the USSR as well.

            The first step a Russian must take is to reject how much of a lie what Putin and others are putting out about the equation of the Soviet Union and Russia. Once you have done that, Savvin continues, everything else follows, including irreconcilable opposition to those who make the opposite argument.

            That comes with real costs which the Putinists and their friends will seek to impose, “but there is no other means for a Russian who recognizes himself as a Russian to preserve both his psychological and moral health. Either you go along this path or you will again be ashamed to look at yourself in the mirror.”