Putin Brings Back Stalin-Era Labor Medal

Credit: Reason

Russian President Vladimir Putin has awarded five people the Hero of Labor medal in St. Petersburg. The name of the medal has been changed slightly from its original Stalin-era name, the Stalin's Hero of Socialist Labor medal. Putin has previously denied that he wants to reinstate Soviet practices, and last week said that there is nothing in modern Russia that is reminiscent of Stalin.

From Reuters:

(Reuters)—President Vladimir Putin likes to deny that he is taking Russia back to the USSR, but on Wednesday he dusted off another communist relic by restoring a labor medal introduced under Josef Stalin.

A week after telling the nation there was nothing in Russia that smacked of the late Soviet dictator, Putin pinned the Hero of Labour award on five recipients in St Petersburg, the cradle of the 1917 revolution that swept communists to power.

Happy May Day everyone.

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Comments

[Pro Libertate]

I’m disappointed. I was hoping they’d restore the tsardom when they went openly authoritarian.

[Warty]

That reminds me of a great, partially insane thing I read in Pravda a while back.

Americans never give up your guns

This will probably come as a total shock to most of my Western readers, but at one point, Russia was one of the most heavily armed societies on earth. This was, of course, when we were free under the Tsar.

[Ray]

Everything’s relative.

[EDG reppin' LBC]

Interesting. Thanks for linking.

[entropy]

Pravda is a trip. They’ve gone from being the mouthpiece of the Soviet state to sounding like something run by Murdoch.

It must say something about the US that most of our news now makes Pravda and Al Jazeera look like pretty decent, down-the-middle news organizations by comparison.

[Jon Lester]

Not every idea Stalin had was necessarily bad. Personally, I wish we had buffets at our polling stations.

[ant1sthenes]

Putin strikes as more of a fascist, really, despite the KGB background. He’s even got his own brownshirts enforcing social order.