Paul Goble
Staunton, March 5 – Sixty-eight years ago today, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin died. But his physical demise did not end his influence or prevent the rise of Vladimir Putin who shares with his predecessor “a severe paranoia, vindictive cruelty and hatred of humanistic European culture” which both viewed as a threat to their tyranny, Igor Eidman says.
Moreover, the Russian commentator says, Putin, just like Stalin, “is sincerely convinced that he is surrounded by enemies and spires who have been sent by the accursed West to overthrow him” and who invariably acts to defend himself and his power regardless of what that means for Russia (newsru.com/blog/05mar2021/pgp.html).
“Putin is also close to Stalin in his paranoid fear for his own skin.” Like Stalin with his heavily protected “nearby dacha,” Putin has his heavily protected “bunker,” a place no one is allowed to enter without passing through “a disinfection tunnel” lest he be struck down by an unseen enemy.
According to Eidman, “the paranoia of the dictator is transferred from top down like a serious disease, and already the country is beginning to be infected with a persecution complex that ‘the entire world is against us.’” Putin and his propaganda regime promote this vision just as Stalin and his did the same before his death.
One result of this, the commentator says, is that “two-thirds of Russians believe that the coronavirus pandemic is the result of a conspiracy.” And that shows that in our unfortunate times, “the paranoid tyranny of Stalin has gotten a second birth in the form of the paranoid rule of Putin.”
“Today,” Eidman observes, “is the anniversary of the death of the previous paranoid tyrant. As is the case with tyrants, Stalin died alone and in fear. Such an end to another ruling paranoid is not all that far ahead,” he suggests.
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