The Soviet nomenklatura simply transferred their allegiance to the new state. Unlike Eastern Europe, there was no true decommunization in the sense of completely repudiating the Soviet past.
The victory in the Great Patriotic War is where there’s a national consensus and feeling of genuine national pride but after that the consensus breaks down.
There’s regret over the loss of the big country and the promise to restore it attracts chauvinists to the likes of Zhironovsky, who promise to restore the Russian Empire.
Nostalgia, while a strong feeling has limits.
Putin’s legitimacy is ever more reliant upon a positive historical view and understanding of Stalin. I slept under a portrait of Stalin next to a Virgin Mary icon in an apartment I stayed in for several weeks. There you have the spiritual schizophrenia of modern Russia in a nutshell.
Stalin statues are en vogue too. Especially after annexation of Crimea, which revived Soviet glory sympathies to fever pitch.
Benevolent? Autocrat? Easy to say when you are not forced to live under his thumb after having been a spoiled Westerner which is what we are if we have had the privilege to live in this country...
Russians would be a lot richer if they weren’t plundered by Putin and his oligarch cronies whose wealth is stored and laundered in globali$t Western banks and insitutions. Whose estates and investments are in London, Miami, Switzerland, and the like.
Are you even American?! “Benevolent autocrat” is so un-American a statement to make.