If you keep stirring the soil, nothing will grow.... Why must we shake things up ever few years? Fight important things like corruption and keeping freedom.

There will never be an “ideal Russia” until Russia acknowledges the crimes against humanity which Russians, in the service of the Soviet state, worked upon its neighbours, and until it brings closure to that lamentable era of its history by expressing its sorrow and seeking genuine reconciliation with its neighbours. Russia does not need to apologise for the criminal policies of the Soviet Union, but it does have to acknowledge responsibility for crimes which untold numbers of Russians committed against neighbouring countries under the Soviet flag. Until this happens, there can never be an “ideal Russia,” because those crimes will have had no closure, will continue influence in a real way Russia’s present and future relationship with those countries, and will continue to affect those countries’ view of Russia. In short, Soviet era crimes will continue to hang as a millstone around Russia’s neck. In a precisely corresponding way, any talk of an “ideal Germany” would not even have been worth hot air if post-Nazi Germany had not atoned for the enormous crimes that Germans had committed in the service of the Nazi state. Had Germany refused to bring appropriate closure to its Nazi history and instead tried to tip-toe past it as if nothing had happened much like post-Soviet Russia does in its own case, Germany still would be the pariah of Europe, and have the same degree of respect amongst its neighbours as Russia, in fact, has amongst its neighbours. Russian think tanks may push these realities away from serious consideration. But they are all too evident to Russia’s neighbours, who live in the real world.

Marzipan6@ What "criminal actions" of the Soviet state are worse than crimes that you Westerners did against your colonies,and still starving milions every year in Africa.Germany only accepted kiling 6 milion Jews,not the kiling of 16 milion Soviet civilians.This crimes are delibaretly overstated,so that Communist country will look worse then it was.Western history (and presence) is writen in blood,West is just to big hypocrite to admit that.If West would admit it's crimes,there is no enough water in the world to wash away all the blood on your hands.