Putin said that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the biggest catastrophe of the twentieth century. Bigger than the creation of the Soviet Union? Putin said that anyone who does not miss the Soviet Union has no heart. Putin refuses to bury Lenin’s body, because he views Lenin as the George Washington of Russia. Putin has defended Stalin’s purges, saying the USA was worse in Viet Nam. Putin is an unrepentant Chekist and Stalin apologist, proud of his lifetime of loyal service to the EVIL EMPIRE, which he never betrayed.
Sorry, but words for public consumption need to be measured against action. And when I look at Putin's actions, I see a man very far removed from Marxist ideology, and quite far from Lenin and Stalin.
Putin's lament about the collapse of the Soviet Union is not out of some adherence to Marxist ideology, but rather a lament of Russia's declining power in the world. One musn't confuse ideology and state power in Russia's case, and that seems to be what you're doing here.
I can't remember the name of the dissident offhand right now, but there was a dissident who defected to the USA and surprised his handlers by informing them that the KGB of Andropov's era was by far the most liberalizing (meaning anti-communist) institution in the USSR and was far, far removed from the Chekists under Dzerzhinsky, the NKVD under Yezhov and Yagoda and the OGPU under Beria. They were also the most nationalist force, which led them into a position in which they sought to preserve the international power of Russia but at the same time reform the state since they worried about its collapse. They however, were outmanoeuvered by Gorbachev.
I look at Putin's 15% flat tax, his restoration of the Russian Orthodox Church (amongst other things) and I see a Russian patriot, not a Marxist ideologue.