"I’m aware of the intense nostalgia faced by the post-soviet peoples. I myself would probably fall into despair seeing such a system ripped from under my feet."

Comrade—as I understand it—you possess a soul; otherwise, you are being disingenuous.

Assuming you are not being disingenuous, do you not find that you acquired this soul through the ideals of socialism—however materialistic those ideals may have been?

You may be quite surprised to learn that my parents actually supported Perestroika—and even the collapse of the USSR. From the early 1980s onward, they tuned in to Radio Liberty. They put their faith in Seva Novgorodtsev and Alexander Solzhenitsyn; his books were even read aloud, live on air. This propaganda campaign was specifically engineered to target the "thinking" intelligentsia. In doing so, they effectively poisoned the intelligentsia. As for the common people, they were poisoned with Western culture—a toxic brew of sex, violence, and drugs. I remember how alluring that "forbidden fruit" seemed to me back then. At the time, I didn't understand any of it; but now, looking back, I see it all with crystal clarity. I can trace, step by step, the CIA's covert operation to dismantle the Soviet Union.

I will go even further: to this day, there remain a great many people in Russia who still haven't grasped what truly happened. These are the individuals who quickly adapted to the new reality and set about making money. These are the very people who, during the Soviet era, were nothing more than petty traders and profiteers—individuals whose activities were, by the standards of that time, considered criminal. It was precisely these people who rose to the top with astonishing speed. And now, you would be hard-pressed to convince them that life was actually better under the Soviet system. These individuals—who have amassed fortunes and now occupy the highest rungs of Russia's social hierarchy—are the ones shaping public opinion. Nowadays, the Russian people are being hoodwinked with notions of "God and Tsar"—specifically, the idea of ​​a Tsar as God's anointed sovereign. And this utter nonsense is currently being hammered into the heads of ordinary Russians with dead earnestness. Their nostalgia is not for the USSR, but rather for Tsarist Russia... These profiteers are never satisfied; they crave more—specifically, they crave even greater power over the people. Only now, they are no longer noble aristocrats—but noble profiteers and thieves.

And when all of this unfolds against the backdrop of red flags at a parade in Moscow—with the Mausoleum, for some reason, hidden away from everyone—it looks like a farce!

"despite being its own unique form of juche socialism."

I didn't know that word. What I gathered from the videos I watched—made by Russian bloggers traveling to Korea specifically to experience a return to the USSR—was this: on the positive side, I really admired the way the youth are raised. It is exactly like it was in the Soviet Union—it actually brought a tear to my eye... :)

As for the downsides: the Party there constitutes a separate, privileged class. Isn't that precisely what that term signifies—the one I can't quite pronounce... Juche?