Vladimir Putin , it turns out, is more Stalin than Lenin. In his speech justifying his recognition of rebel enclaves in Ukraine and deployment of troops in the region, the Russian president launched a diatribe against the Soviet founder. It’s not the first time. He disputes the legitimacy of Ukraine’s statehood by saying it was Lenin’s big mistake to have advocated Soviet federalism and supported the creation of independent nations, among which was modern Ukraine. “Modern Ukraine was entirely created by Russia, more precisely, Bolshevik, communist Russia. This process began immediately after the revolution of 1917…,” Putin said. “As a result of Bolshevik policy, Soviet Ukraine arose, which even today can with good reason be called ‘Vladimir Ilyich Lenin’s Ukraine’. He is its author and architect. This is fully confirmed by archive documents … And now grateful descendants have demolished monuments to Lenin in Ukraine. This is what they call decommunisation. Do you want decommunisation? Well, that suits us just fine. But it is unnecessary, as they say, to stop halfway. We are ready to show you what real decommunisation means for Ukraine.” Besides his questionable account of Ukrainian history, Putin also revives the “national question”, a forgotten controversy that plagued European Marxism, from its inception with Marx and Engels through the Second International to reaching an ideological split in the big debate between the ultra-internationalist Rosa Luxemburg and Lenin himself during the first world war. In the end, the controversy over nationalism, internationalism and the right of self-determination of peoples was brutally resolved by Stalin. Like Tolstoy in War and Peace , he launched the Great Patriotic War by appealing to Mother Russia, not the Great Proletarian Revolution. Ukraine crisis: why the word ‘invasion’ matters, as Russian troops move in Putin is now channelling Stalin by appealing to Russkiy Mir, the Russian world, the Russian civilisation, the Russian sphere of influence. “Announcing the decisions taken today,” he said, “I am confident in the support of the citizens of Russia. Of all the patriotic forces of the country.” In a speech in 2016, Putin openly denounced Lenin for killing the last tsar and his whole family, and blamed him for placing “a time bomb” under the Russian state by drawing administrative borders along ethnic lines. Putin isn’t just playing the victim by claiming to rectify injustices suffered by Russia after the Cold War; he is correcting a perceived historic mistake made by Lenin by swallowing up chunks of Ukraine, if not the whole of it. A scary thought!