With tongues protruding into their cheeks, many writers have compared the Bush administration to the early Bolsheviks. The points of overlap include ideological rigidity, messianic internationalism, contempt for traditional diplomatic norms and Old Europe, a tolerance for torture camps scattered far and wide, and a propensity to nationalize large industries.
Having said all that, the comparison is deeply unfair. Whatever else you want to say about the Bolsheviks, we should never forget that it was the Red Army that crushed Hitler. By contrast, the Republicans haven’t even been able to defeat the Taliban, who will be governing Afghanistan again soon enough.
The Soviet peoples made enormous blood sacrifices during the Great Patriotic War. It was their heroism and suffering that ensured that Nazism would be utterly destroyed, never to rise up again. I don’t see the Bush administration leaving a comparable legacy.
“The Soviet Peoples”, eh?
“Soviet peoples” was a deliberate word choice. The USSR was a multi-national state with many peoples so I didn’t want to say either “the Russian people” or the “Soviet people”. I thought “Soviet peoples” was more accurate.