What will Russia look like in 50 years? And what will Putin's legacy be by then?

[smoltchanov]

Russian leaders are either fondly rembered at home and despised abroad (e.g. Stalin), or the other way around (e.g. Gorbachev).

I guess in Putin's case it will be the former.

And even if Russia happens to be a fully fledged democracy in 50 years, Russian "conservatives" may still admire Putin then... just like many Spanish conservatives still have a thing for Franco till today.

Stalin is liked in Russia WTH that just cant be true. He was the 2nd most evil person in human history , and most of his victims were people in the USSR itself.

It's bad, but mostly true. At least 1/3 of Russian population either likes or openly admires him. As a person "who made Soviet Union great, won the war, established order" and so on. There are virtually no survivors of GULAG now (i am old enough to speak with some of them in my childhood), and Stalin's rule has a sort of "romantic fleur" among many of Russian young, who shudder remembering "stormy 90th", but know almost nothing about Big Terror of late 30th...

[smoltchanov]

smoltchanov is ofc correct but this is also an outcome based on MASSIVE china-style revisionism and make-believe. sovjet nostalgia is sooooo common and normal, it makes me mad.

well, what did you expect in a country where the communists and the church kind of made a deal to blame the failings of the SU on a bunch of unknown "foreign elements" who tried to kill the russian culture or something linke that.

+100. This - too, and it's a very important factor. Especially - with practically ALL mass media controlled by "them"))))

[smoltchanov]

smoltchanov is ofc correct but this is also an outcome based on MASSIVE china-style revisionism and make-believe. sovjet nostalgia is sooooo common and normal, it makes me mad.

well, what did you expect in a country where the communists and the church kind of made a deal to blame the failings of the SU on a bunch of unknown "foreign elements" who tried to kill the russian culture or something linke that.

Well, but Brezhnev-style nostalgia, not Stalin-style. There were huge amount of films, series, documentaries on TV about cruelty of Stalin regime during last 20 years. Putin, Medvedev, Eltsin, a lot of public figures criticised totalitarian USSR (1930-1950). But it doesn't help. In my opinion, the reason was connection in mass opinion between failed USSR-Russia authorities in 1985-1999 and antistalinism.

That's too. "Democracy" is a "dirty" word now in Russia exactly by that reason. As well as "liberalism", used in modern Russia almost exclusively in the same vein. As for Brezhnev-style - yes, most still doesn't want to risk their asses, as routinely happened in Stalin's time. But real democracy has a long way to go in Russia. I am not sure that i will see it's fruits in my life. My son (who is 15 now) - another matter.

[smoltchanov]

imho putin should be afraid of the youth.

not cause the new generation is liberal or something but harder to control and more nationalist....they could wish for more and not accept the limits of the russian economy.

maybe the call for a less corrupt "real" nationalist is going to start soon.

May be. But we have one relatively successfull nationalist on political scene for more then 25 years, and he has it's limits of popularity...