Russian President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin has been re-elected for a fifth term with a record 87% of the vote thus reaffirming his indisputable dominance in the country's political arena.
The Russian elections took place in the midst of the imperialist war in Ukraine and while the government has silenced any political power that opposes the “Special Military Operation”. Therefore, there couldn't be any presidential candidate who would express a different view concerning the strategic choices of Putin's government. The President's “opponents”, including Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF), were all lined up behind the Kremlin's strategy.
Putin's history as a political offspring of counterrevolutionaries like Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin is well known and so are his anti-communist views. Less known is, however, that, 30 years ago, capitalist Russia's undisputed Tsar had expressed his support for one of the most ruthless fascist regimes of the 20th Century: Pinochet's dictatorship in Chile.
Alyona Agheeva reminded us of an interesting report published in “Westdeutscher Rundfunk” (West German Broadcasting- WDR) in December 1993, just a few years after the counterrevolutionary events that led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Among others, the report was stressing out:
“St. Petersburg. 1993 Vladimir Putin, deputy mayor of St. Petersburg and chairman of the international relations committee of the city of six million, has made it clear to German business representatives that a military dictatorship on the Chilean model would be a desirable solution to Russia’s current political problems. This was reported by WDR in the TV program “Aufbruch nach Osten”. Putin answered questions from representatives of BASF, Dresdner Bank, Alcatel and others gathered at the former Consulate General of the GDR in St. Petersburg. Putin distinguished between “necessary” and “criminal” violence. Political violence is criminal if it is aimed at eliminating the conditions of a market economy, “necessary” if it encourages or protects private investment. In view of the difficult path of the private sector, he, Putin, clearly approves of any preparations by Yeltsin and the military to establish a dictatorship along the lines of Pinochet. Putin’s speech was met with friendly applause from both representatives of the German company and the Deputy Consul General of the Federal Republic of Germany who was present” (“St. Petersburg politicians want dictatorship: Pinochet as a model.” WDR, 12/31/1993).
Alyona Agheeva reminded us of an interesting report published in “Westdeutscher Rundfunk” (West German Broadcasting- WDR) in December 1993, just a few years after the counterrevolutionary events that led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Among others, the report was stressing out:
“St. Petersburg. 1993 Vladimir Putin, deputy mayor of St. Petersburg and chairman of the international relations committee of the city of six million, has made it clear to German business representatives that a military dictatorship on the Chilean model would be a desirable solution to Russia’s current political problems. This was reported by WDR in the TV program “Aufbruch nach Osten”. Putin answered questions from representatives of BASF, Dresdner Bank, Alcatel and others gathered at the former Consulate General of the GDR in St. Petersburg. Putin distinguished between “necessary” and “criminal” violence. Political violence is criminal if it is aimed at eliminating the conditions of a market economy, “necessary” if it encourages or protects private investment. In view of the difficult path of the private sector, he, Putin, clearly approves of any preparations by Yeltsin and the military to establish a dictatorship along the lines of Pinochet. Putin’s speech was met with friendly applause from both representatives of the German company and the Deputy Consul General of the Federal Republic of Germany who was present” (“St. Petersburg politicians want dictatorship: Pinochet as a model.” WDR, 12/31/1993).
Putin endorses Pinochet dictatorship in Russia (1993)
Concerning Putin's 1993 remarks, Agheeva stresses out among others: “As we see, in the 1990s, the future Russian leader admired Augusto Pinochet and openly supported all the initiatives of then President Boris Yeltsin in the field of direct state terror and violence, “if it encourages or protects private investment.” Being the deputy mayor of St. Petersburg, V.V. Putin directly recommends that President Yeltsin’s office and post-Soviet security forces follow the example of the Pinochet dictatorship in order to quickly and effectively overcome the “difficult path of the private sector” by the future bourgeois class of Russia […] In 1993, Putin’s imagined Chilean-style dictatorship was still many years away. V.V. Putin still had to finish what Yeltsin started and finally establish the dictatorship of finance capital on the fragments of the socialist state […] It is worth noting that at the above briefing, the future president of Russia not only voices his political guidelines, he also directly articulates the justification for the fact that literally two months before this statement, Boris Yeltsin gave orders to shoot from tanks and automatic firearms the House of Soviets in Moscow and hundreds of thousands of citizens who took to the streets to defend it, wanting to show active distrust of the first capitalist government” (ilgridodelpopolo.com).
There should be no illusions whatsoever about Vladimir Putin's political ideology. As we pointed out before, he is an offspring of the counterrevolution and a representative of the most offensive Russian imperialism. He himself has publicly expressed his admiration for Ivan Alexandrovich Ilyin, a prominent Russian ideologue of fascism, as well as for fascist novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Following Yeltsin's legacy, Putin has officially adopted the Nazi narrative on the Katyn massacre, blaming Stalin and the Soviet Union while, at the same time, he has used the well-known “western” slanders against the Soviet Union and its leaders: “Totalitarian regime”, “Stalinist dictatorship”, “Red oppression”, etc.
Those self-proclaimed “communist” forces in Russia and elsewhere in the world which, under the false pretexts of the “war against NATO”, “denazification of Ukraine”, etc, continue supporting Putin's reactionary regime, bear immense responsibility and will be, sooner or later, reap the fruits of their flagrant anti-marxist and anti-leninist stance.
There should be no illusions whatsoever about Vladimir Putin's political ideology. As we pointed out before, he is an offspring of the counterrevolution and a representative of the most offensive Russian imperialism. He himself has publicly expressed his admiration for Ivan Alexandrovich Ilyin, a prominent Russian ideologue of fascism, as well as for fascist novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Following Yeltsin's legacy, Putin has officially adopted the Nazi narrative on the Katyn massacre, blaming Stalin and the Soviet Union while, at the same time, he has used the well-known “western” slanders against the Soviet Union and its leaders: “Totalitarian regime”, “Stalinist dictatorship”, “Red oppression”, etc.
Those self-proclaimed “communist” forces in Russia and elsewhere in the world which, under the false pretexts of the “war against NATO”, “denazification of Ukraine”, etc, continue supporting Putin's reactionary regime, bear immense responsibility and will be, sooner or later, reap the fruits of their flagrant anti-marxist and anti-leninist stance.
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