The Soviet Heart and the anti-Soviet Brain

“Whoever does not miss the Soviet Union has no heart. Whoever wants it back has no brain.” ~ President of Russia Vladimir Putin, The New York Times, February 2000

I agree with Putin. From the vantage point of the twenty-first century, the Soviet Union seems like a sort of mythological project for creating a utopia for all of mankind. The utopia transmogrified into a hell which, in 1991, collapsed under its own weight. The failure was so calamitous that no political movement will dare to implement this kind of a project in the foreseeable future. 

There are two aspects of the Soviet Union—first, the noble intentions (which appeal to the heart); second, the disastrous aftermath (which the brain must examine to learn the right lessons). The heart is with the Soviet Union but the brain rebels against it.