Letting Russia Burn

From relentless Ukrainian drone strikes to soaring inflation and fuel shortages, Russia is paying an ever-higher price for Vladimir Putin's war of choice. But the war has become the organizing principle of Putin’s regime, leaving no path to lasting peace without a fundamental political transformation. MOSCOW—Karl Marx once wrote that theory becomes a material force the moment it grips the masses. Soviet leaders took that line and ran with it—straight into catastrophe—again and again. Vladimir Lenin turned it into a rationale for revolution, while Joseph Stalin used it as a license to starve and work millions of people to death in pursuit of rapid industrialization and a “bright future” that never arrived. Nikita Khrushchev, for his part, invoked it to legitimize de-Stalinization in 1956, as though history could simply be ordered onto a different path. https://prosyn.org/YsmKrUm Register an account to continue reading with a $1 trial MOSCOW—Karl Marx once wrote that theory becomes a material force the moment it grips the masses. Soviet leaders took that line and ran with it—straight into catastrophe—again and again. Vladimir Lenin turned it into a rationale for revolution, while Joseph Stalin used it as a license to starve and work millions of people to death in pursuit of rapid industrialization and a “bright future” that never arrived. Nikita Khrushchev, for his part, invoked it to legitimize de-Stalinization in 1956, as though history could simply be ordered onto a different path.