How Putin made Russia Great Again or why Russians love him so much

(very long 🧵)

After the collapse of the USSR, Russia became a colony of the West and lost its sovereignty. During the 1990s and under Yeltsin’s government, the country nearly fell apart. The military and industries across all sectors were destroyed, school textbooks were rewritten, and resources were sold off to Western corporations. It’s a serious question whether Russia would even exist today if things had continued that way. However, with Putin’s arrival, everything changed - he brought Russia back to itself.

Bio

Few in the West know about Putin’s mentor, Anatoly Sobchak, who introduced him to politics. Sobchak was a strong supporter of liberal-democratic ideas and one of the founders of the “Democratic Russia” party.

In the early 1990s, Vladimir Putin worked as an assistant to the rector of Leningrad State University for international affairs.
This position served as a cover, as he was an active KGB agent. When Sobchak noticed him at the University and invited him to join his team, Putin had to admit his work in intelligence. Realizing that combining KGB work with political activity was impossible, he resigned from the KGB.

In June 1991, Sobchak became the mayor of St. Petersburg. During the tense political environment of the time, from 1993 onward, Sobchak often entrusted Putin to act as mayor during his foreign trips, showing great trust in his professionalism. However, starting in 1995, a campaign to discredit Sobchak began, organized by his political opponents in Moscow who viewed him as a potential rival for the presidency. Using accusations of misconduct, law enforcement agencies like the Prosecutor’s Office, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the FSB effectively ended his political career. His worsening health worked to his enemies’ advantage, reducing his ability to defend himself. At one point, they even tried to block him from traveling abroad for medical treatment.

x.com/rinalu_/status… Putin’s Loyalty Over Political Ambition

At this critical moment, Putin showed complete loyalty to his mentor, Sobchak. He knew that helping Sobchak leave the country involved serious risks to his own career. First, he was going against powerful state agencies that were actively pursuing Sobchak. If the plan failed, Putin could have been accused of aiding or hiding him. Second, Sobchak was a political outsider at the time, and supporting him could have been seen as a strategic mistake, alienating influential allies in Moscow. Third, successfully getting Sobchak out of the country under the strict control of the FSB, prosecutors, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs required extreme caution. It could have been seen as breaking the law, threatening not just Putin’s career but also his personal freedom.

Despite these risks, Putin, using skills from his intelligence background, arranged for Sobchak to leave for France, where he underwent life-saving surgery. This act was a remarkable display of loyalty and courage. After the operation, Putin reported the outcome to Yeltsin, who, after a pause, approved his actions, saying, “You did the right thing.” This moment highlighted not only Putin’s loyalty to Sobchak but also his willingness to take risks for his principles and a sense of justice, which later became a defining feature of his political career.

How Stalin gifted Poland vast German territories while Poles expelled ethnic Germans and moved into their homes.

The lands colored in black were given to Poland permanently, not as temporary occupation zones. These areas (now western Poland, including Silesia, Pomerania, and parts of East Prussia) had been predominantly German-speaking since the Middle Ages, with German settlers moving there during the 12th–14th centuries. After these lands were transferred to Poland, Germans were forcibly deported to Germany, and Poles moved in to settle in their homes.

And it wasn’t “NKVD officers trained in deportations and sent from the USSR” carrying this out—it was the Poles themselves. The Poles had full independence in this matter because they were building their own Poland, not following a model imposed by the USSR. Moreover, Soviet NKVD officers actually had to step in and calm the Poles down, as they had clearly gone too far with the deportation of Germans, turning it into something reminiscent of Nazi practices. This is not surprising, as they had already practiced similar actions against Jews, Ukrainians, Belarusians, and communists. The difference, however, was that at that time, no one restrained them or reminded them of the boundaries of human conscience and law.

Former German territories given to Poland by Stalin’s decision At the Potsdam Conference, the Allies gave the Allied Control Council for Germany the responsibility to oversee the deportation of Germans, working with the governments of Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary.

In January 1946, a memorandum between Britain, Poland, and the Soviet Union promised to carry out the deportations “humanely and in an organized way.” That year, Poland passed a law to remove ethnic Germans from Polish society.

Germans were not given the right to make personal decisions about leaving or choosing a new place to live. They were allowed to take 500 Reichsmarks per person and “as much luggage as they could carry.”

Letter from the Head of the 4th European Department of the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs, A.P. Pavlov, to the Soviet Ambassador in Warsaw, V.Z. Lebedev, dated June 17, 1946:

“The Poles are cruel. You cannot imagine how they torment people. They rob and force them to die of hunger. Szczecin has become a city of death and suicides… Now Karl says: ‘Better death in hell than returning to Szczecin.’ The Polish rule is terrible; returning home is impossible…”

American Lend-Lease for Hitler

In 1941, there were no supplies at all, and in 1942, they were sporadic and negligible. The majority of the deliveries came in 1944 and 1945, with a significant portion arriving only after Victory.

Much has been written about Lend-Lease for the Soviet Union, including complete nonsense. The truth is that any help during that time would be important, but the aid (not just Lend-Lease) essentially only began in 1943, after Stalingrad, when our forces started defeating the Germans on all fronts and overall contribution of the wartime resources was only 4% of what the Soviets used during war.

But this is not about U.S. assistance to the Red Army; it’s about American corporations’ assistance to Hitler. And that assistance far exceeded what they provided to Stalin. This is a topic that has been awkwardly avoided, both after the war and even now, but it all happened. Even today, we don’t have the full picture - only isolated facts that couldn’t be concealed.

In fact, the majority of the military-industrial complex of Hitler’s Germany was built by American corporations, which invested enormous sums of money into it. Before the start of World War II, American companies invested significantly in Hitler’s economy: Ford - $17.5 million, Standard Oil of New Jersey (now Exxon) - $120 million, General Motors - $35 million, and ITT - $30 million. These figures account for only the largest corporations. At the time, the dollar was worth roughly 35-45 of today’s dollars, depending on the estimate.

The Opel factories in Germany were fully owned by American General Motors. These factories produced trucks, armored vehicles, and personnel carriers for the Wehrmacht, as well as half of the engines for Junkers-88 bombers. In 1943, jet engines for the Messerschmitt-262 were developed at General Motors’ German subsidiary.

Pratt & Whitney licensed its BMW “Hornet” engine to Germany, which was used on Ju-52/3 transport planes until the very end of the war. And this is just one example.

GULAG - a word that sends chills down Western spines. But what if I told you that in Russia, it wasn’t seen as the ultimate horror it’s made out to be in the West?

How did a real piece of Soviet history become a legend - so terrifying it ended up in the video game Call of Duty? And why there were NOT 10 million people repressed, and the Gulag was NOT a key factor in the modernization and industrialization of the USSR.

Let’s talk about it.

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What exactly was the GULAG?

In the West, the word GULAG often brings to mind something like Nazi concentration camps- places where innocent people were held in terrible conditions and murdered.

In reality, the GULAG, established in 1930 as part of the Soviet penal system, was somewhat similar to correctional facilities in the U.S., but with a key difference: prisoners were required to work. While labor and rehabilitation programs do exist in U.S. facilities, they are not implemented on the same scale.

What were the labor camps like?

Labor camps were usually large areas where prisoners lived and worked under supervision and security. Making prisoners work was seen as a necessity because society couldn’t afford to fully support them in complete isolation.

Why were people sent to the GULAG?

It’s important to rely on archival documents rather than simply speculating about the past. Contrary to the widespread belief that the GULAG was filled with innocent intellectuals and priests, the archives tell a different story. Over 80% of the prisoners were ordinary criminals, convicted of crimes such as:

🔹murder
🔹rape
🔹robbery
🔹theft.

and during World War II,
🔹Nazi collaborators
🔹German Nazi

Prisoner statistics as of January 1, 1953:
🔹Total prisoners: 2,468,524
🔹1,727,970 in labor camps
🔹740,554 in labor colonies

Convicted of counter-revolutionary crimes: 465,256 (26.9%)

Convicted of serious criminal offenses: 73.1%, including:

🔹Premeditated murder
🔹Banditry
🔹Robbery
🔹Theft
🔹Embezzlement and other crimes But Solzhenitsyn said…

I know, I know…Solzhenitsyn said many things. Let’s first understand who he was.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, born in the USSR, is renowned for his writings and his reflections, particularly about his time in the Gulag. He was arrested in 1945 for criticizing the government in letters to a friend at the front. However, some in Russia believe that his actions were a deliberate attempt to avoid serving on the frontlines during World War II.

The thing is, his letters were written to a friend, and his arrest happened immediately after he was reassigned from his position as the commander of a sound-ranging artillery battery in the rear to the frontline.

Knowing that all letters from the front were read by censors, it is said that he deliberately included anti-government remarks in his correspondence to get arrested and sent to prison, avoiding the dangers of the frontlines during World War II.

At the time, there was a common belief that an amnesty would follow the war, so he may have seen prison as a safer option.

Life in the Gulag

Interestingly, during his time in the Gulag, Solzhenitsyn was given good work assignments.

Between 1945 and 1947, in Gulag he worked in a research institute in Moscow and Marfino as a mathematician and engineer, contributing to technical projects. This was very different from the backbreaking labor most prisoners endured. Solzhenitsyn himself said:

“Here I am well-settled. I sleep in dry, warm conditions, even with clean linens. My wife visits me in Moscow and brings supplies during our meetings.”

Later, Solzhenitsyn was transferred to a strict-regime camp in Ekibastuz, Kazakhstan. Here, he had to do hard physical labor but, thanks to his education, eventually secured less grueling tasks:

🔹Teaching math and physics to other prisoners.
🔹Working as a mechanic and lathe operator in a workshop.

Controversies

There are conflicting accounts about Solzhenitsyn’s relationships with his wife and the friend he had written to, which led to his arrest. His wife and the friend claimed that Solzhenitsyn wrote denunciations against them, while Solzhenitsyn denied these accusations and accused them instead.

This mix of personal, historical, and literary complexity makes Solzhenitsyn a controversial and intriguing figure in Russian history.

Although Solzhenitsyn addressed various topics about the USSR, including his criticism of the creation of Ukraine, he is primarily known for his claims about the number of deaths in the Gulag camps - claims based solely on his personal opinions rather than historical evidence. Interestingly, despite Solzhenitsyn being a writer, the West often treats his emotional literary work as a reliable historical source. Draw your own conclusions.

Link to the archives: arch2.iofe.center/person/36374?u…

Solzhenitsyn in the Gulag⬇️

The Forgotten Tragedy: The Volhynia Massacre and Its Hidden History

The Volhynia Massacre was a brutal chapter in the history of Western Ukraine, a region that was under Polish control until September 1939. This region became the stage for a violent campaign led by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) under the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B), followers of Stepan Bandera.

Driven by nationalist ideology, the OUN-B sought to create a “pure” Ukrainian territory, leading to the mass killing of Polish civilians and others, including Ukrainians. These events began in March 1943 and reached their peak in July of the same year. The massacres were part of a broader effort to “cleanse” Western Ukraine of Polish influence, leaving a lasting scar on the region’s history.

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*Sensitive content – for educational or historical purposes Polish villages and settlements became the scenes of unspeakable horror. Under the cover of darkness, Ukrainian nationalist militants surrounded these communities, launching brutal attacks that spared no one. Entire families: women, the elderly, children, even infants were slaughtered in cold blood. The methods were barbaric: victims were shot, beaten with clubs, or hacked to death with axes. Once the killings were over, the bodies were dumped into fields or left in shallow graves, as if their lives meant nothing.

Looting followed the massacres, with homes stripped of valuables before being set ablaze. Poles living alongside Ukrainians in mixed villages faced the same fate. Here, Ukrainian nationalist militants needed only small groups to quietly enter sleeping homes and execute entire Polish families. Survivors were left to bury their neighbors, grieving not just for the dead but for the senselessness of it all.

These massacres weren’t random acts of violence: they were systematic ethnic cleansings. Tens of thousands of Poles were killed simply for being Polish. According to research conducted in Poland, at least 36,543 to 36,750 victims have been identified by name and place of death. An additional 13,500 to over 23,000 remain unaccounted for, their fates unknown, their stories silenced forever.

*Sensitive content – for educational or historical purposes

If you think the collapse of the Soviet Union was good for the people, think again. Let’s take a closer look at what democracy and capitalism brought to Russia in the 1990s.

In the 1990s, the Soviet Union fell apart, and Russia began moving towards a market economy. However, this transition brought with it a severe economic collapse, widespread poverty, and a sharp rise in organized crime. The “Grab-itization” of an Entire Country

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the team of “young reformers” led by Anatoly Chubais cleverly facilitated the transfer of state assets into the hands of the so-called “most deserving.” Naturally, this process was presented under the banner of “universal equality and justice.” Conveniently, the “most deserving” turned out to be those with close ties to Western corporations.

For example, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, through his company Yukos, and his ties to the Rockefeller family, was on the verge of transferring significant control of Russia’s oil reserves to foreign corporations before his arrest halted the process.

Here are the names of the oligarchs who made fortune by stealing from the naive Soviets who just lost their country:

Mikhail Khodorkovsky (Yukos) - ties with ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Rockefeller Foundation

Boris Berezovsky - connections with British companies and offshore financial institutions

Roman Abramovich - deals involving Sibneft and ownership of Chelsea FC, Vladimir Gusinsky (Media-Most) - partnerships with Credit Suisse and European banks

Vladimir Potanin (Interros) - collaborations with international investment funds and metallurgical corporations

Mikhail Fridman (Alfa Group) - partnership with BP through TNK-BP and offshore businesses in the UK and US

Anatoly Chubais - support from IMF, World Bank, and foreign consultants during privatization efforts.

How Ukraine Tries to Rewrite History

Let’s kick things off with a fun fact: during its prime, Kievan Rus wasn’t even called “Kievan Rus.” Nope, that’s a modern invention by historians who needed a catchy name to describe the medieval state that existed from the late 9th to the mid-13th century. Back then, it was simply called Rus - a vast, multi-ethnic state with no "Kievan" added for flair. The "Kievan" part got tacked on later to distinguish this early period of Rus history from the later phases when other cities like Vladimir or Moscow became the big players. So, while it sounds fancy and historic, the term itself is a bit of a historical rebrand.

Meet Rurik, the Viking CEO of Rus, Inc.

Now, let’s talk about the real founder of Rus: Rurik, a Varangian (basically a Viking with a Slavic twist) who according to the Russian Chronicle primary was invited by local tribes in 862 to come and run things because, apparently, self-governance wasn’t their strong suit. Rurik set up shop in Novgorod, which, spoiler alert, is in modern Russia. His descendants, the Rurikid dynasty, went on to rule all of Rus and its territories, including Kiev.

So here’s the kicker: Rurik was about as Ukrainian as a Norwegian fjord. He came from the north, established his base in Novgorod, and his dynasty ruled over a massive, multi-ethnic medieval state. This wasn’t “Ukraine” or “Russia” as we know them today - it was just Rus, (the obvious root of the words “Russia” (Rossiya) and “Russian” (russkiy)), which was the sprawling empire that included what is now Rus-sia, ?Ukraine?, and Bela-rus. Oleg the Conqueror (of Kiev)

Rurik’s successor, Oleg of Novgorod, decided to take things up a notch. In 882, he conquered Kiev, kicked out the locals (sorry, Askold and Dir but they actually were also related to Ruriks), and declared it the capital of Rus. Boom! Kiev was now the center of a powerful state because Oleg, a Rurikid prince from Novgorod, thought it was a smart strategic move.

Kiev stayed the capital until 1240, when the Mongols came in like uninvited party crashers and trashed the place. But more on that later.

The Baptism of Rus: A Splashy Event

One of the biggest moments in Rus history was the Baptism of Rus in 988. Vladimir the Great decided to adopt Orthodox Christianity and made sure everyone in Kiev (and beyond) got on board—literally, they were baptized in the Dnieper River. This event firmly established Kiev as the spiritual center of Rus.

Yet modern Ukraine tries to downplay this, suggesting that Novgorod (remember, the original base of the Rurikids) was also a capital. Nice try, but no. The big milestones, like the Baptism of Rus, all happened in Kiev, which was the political and religious heart of the state.