Matthew Kaminski in the WSJ (firewall, alas) on the culture of Great Russian chauvinism bedecked with Soviet faux-stalgia which has driven Putin’s approval ratings into the 80s…

Late the other night at 7 Pyatnits (“7 Fridays”), one of a few fashionable restaurant bars in the Crimean capital, the Soviet national anthem came on the karaoke machine. A couple of guys grabbed the microphone. Their girlfriends and a few others joined in, formed a dancing circle and together sang out the last refrain, “O Party of Lenin, the strength of the people,/ To Communism’s triumph lead us on!”

None of them looked old enough to remember the U.S.S.R. They wore casual clothes and carried smartphones. It’s safe to say their nostalgia wasn’t for class struggle or the Soviet lifestyle. This kind of nod to past Soviet glory is a favored way to express support for a revived Great Russian power in the future.

It comes in various forms in Crimea, parts of Ukraine and Russia itself. There’s all the “U.S.S.R. lives!” graffiti, and repurposed Soviet flags and slogans. There’s the Kremlin’s obsessive anti-Americanism. The orange-and-black ribbons of St. George favored by Russian nationalists are most closely associated with Soviet victory over the Nazis. The war was used to legitimize Soviet rule, and Vladimir Putin has appropriated it for his attack on Ukraine’s supposedly illegitimate and Nazi government. 

The neo-Soviet man is the latest Putin avatar.

Read the whole thing, if you can.

Confucius, Œc. Vol.

Don’t ask impertinent questions like that jackass Adept Lu.