Putin wants return of Soviet Union, but not Soviet Union!

[Mr Khan]

mai said:

Mr Khan said:

The inability of the Soviet Union to stamp out ethnic identity (or at least melt it away like we largely have in America, where a White American would primarily identify himself as such, as opposed to a Soviet citizen who was very much still a Russian, Kazakh, Lithuanian, Ossetian, etc) played a part, since the country was relatively easy to divide along ethnic fault lines

Russian isn't ethnicity. Your quote is like saying "furniture, chair, table, sofa". It's effectively was playing the same role as American in pre-Soviet era in this part of the world. But I understand the confusion, it's may seem like ethnicity after some 1200 years of history for a foreigner.

National policy is indeed the weakest point of Soviet internal policy in general (outside Iosif Vissarionovich, maybe), but for a completely different reason.

There's a difference between Russkiy and Russitskiy, right? The former is the ethnicity, the latter people who fall under the Russian national heritage