Putin can’t reconstruct the regime that Stalin built, or save Russia from chaos, writes Sidney Tarrow, Emeritus Maxwell Upson Professor of Government, in Washington Post analysis.
“As Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggression continues in Ukraine and his regime tightens the screws on the opposition at home, the claim that Russia is returning to Stalinism is found in the media almost daily — both in Europe and in the United States,” Tarrow writes in the piece. “Evidence of atrocities committed by Russian troops as they retreated from areas like Bucha and as they laid siege to Ukrainian cities like Mariupol invite stark parallels between the present and Russia’s most notorious totalitarian period from 1927-1953. In Europe and the United States, the idea that Putin is “Sovietizing” Russia has only gained currency as Putin cracks down harder on internal dissent."
