Russian Historian Warns Putin's Regime Approaching Stalin-Era Brutality

A Russian historian has warned that Vladimir Putin's regime is increasingly resembling Stalin's totalitarian system, with some practices becoming even more brutal than the Soviet era. The comparison comes as Russia has imposed a 13-year prison sentence on someone for writing numbers on a bus stop, deleted judicial statistics, engaged in systematic torture of Ukrainians, and rehabilitated Felix Dzerzhinsky, the organizer of the Bolsheviks' "Red Terror" campaign of mass executions in the early Soviet period. The historian's assessment highlights how Russia is returning to the worst practices of Soviet authoritarianism, suggesting the current crackdown on dissent and violence against perceived enemies has reached levels comparable to, or in some cases exceeding, the repressive measures used during Stalin's rule in the 1930s and 1940s.