They do things their own way in Russia.

They do things their own way in Russia. The 60th anniversary of victory in World War II brought out onto the streets of Moscow parades of elderly men in bemedaled uniforms, and enthusiastic younger Communists as well. Here and there in the country, they are putting up statues to Stalin. President Vladimir Putin has a message for everyone: The collapse of the Soviet Union was "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century." One can debate about these things, but Communism was at least the equivalent of Nazism as a criminal regime, and left more victims. Putin's words sent a shudder through the Baltic republics, Poland, and the rest of the former Soviet bloc, where the collapse of the Soviet Union at last replaced the oppression of the population with sovereignty and freedom: a miracle rather than a catastrophe. Russians, it is true, have to pick up the pieces strewn over their landscape by the collapse of the totalitarianism that Russian Communists imposed on them. Putin's increasingly authoritarian behavior, and his creepy nostalgia, isn't making it easy for them.