The differences between the rule of the Romanovs and Stalin’s regime are principally threefold. Stalin redefined socialism until it was unrecognisable from the aims of not only Karl Marx and the wider socialist movement, but also at odds with the Bolshevik revolutionaries of 1917 and Lenin. This article argues, however, it was not so much hypocrisy as Stalin hijacking the Russian Revolution and creating a system whose structure and principal function was to keep him in power. Sebag Montefiore also suggested there was a hypocrisy inherent in a socialist/communist regime oppressing its own people and being ruled by an autocratic or totalitarian leader. It relied upon central control, terror and murder for its existence and to carry out its goals. Stalin’s regime was as undemocratic as the one overthrown in 1917. This article does not disagree with that.
The term ‘Red Tsar’ was used in the title of Simon Sebag Montefiore’s Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar (2004), its intention being to portray him as autocrat and blood-soaked villain. However, he aspires to a type of rule and embodies a variety of narrow nationalism which were evident in both tsarist and Stalinist Russia. Putin’s policies and actions are nothing like the murderous, paranoid rule of Stalin, and he is a populist rather than an autocrat.
How can we reconcile this admiration for two historical regimes apparently diametrically opposed to each other? Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that Stalin and the tsars were not really so very different in some major respects. The rehabilitation of Uncle Joe inches forward daily in Russia it seems. Yet Putin is also on record declaring that Joseph Stalin was no different from Oliver Cromwell and has praised the communist tyrant for his patriotism.
Moreover, when he condemned secularism and claimed that the world lives by biblical values, the claim that he has been gradually assuming the mantle of the pre-1917 tsars crystalised a little more. This chilling worldview merely confirmed and amplified the widely-held perception of the Russian president as a narrow-minded authoritarian.
At the June 2019 G20 Summit, Vladimir Putin condemned liberal democracy as obsolete, declared that a homogenous nationalism was preferable to multiculturalism, and added that immigrants and refugees from Syria and Central America were rapists and murderers.
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