Why Do So Many Republicans Love Russia’s Dictator?

I ended my own brief but not very passionate romance with Soviet-styled Communism when I was in college, after realizing that the Young Socialist Alliance leaders were rich-kid ideologues who couldn’t agree on whether Leninists or Maoists were better suited to liberate the proletariat.

But I never understood if ordinary Russians living under communism experienced the same kind of disillusionment or continued to believe in the ideals espoused by their leaders. Years later I read a short story by the great Russian satirist Mikhail Zoshchenko, and discovered that the answer was “neither.” No one ever in Russia ever believed in Communism.

In the story, a Soviet bureaucrat notices a bit of litter on the street and berates the people standing around for not doing anything about this affront to the perfection of the Soviet system. The bureaucrat walks off, and the bystanders discuss the litter briefly, then walk off without doing anything about it.

For Zoshchenko, Russian leaders saw Communism as a series of phony ideals they could use to establish their power over ordinary citizens. And for these citizens the phony ideals were (at best) an annoyance to be endured and ignored. Of course, at worst Communism was a system of repression (as Zoshchenko knew from his persecution by Stalin’s Minister of Culture Zhdanov — and from the exile or execution of many of his fellow writers).

Soviet Communism was simply a new set of clothes for Tsarist autocracy, with a…