Fantastic show -- thanks, Happ. Extremely unusual that the interviewer brings up Russia's moral record. I tho't I was the last person on earth doing so -- mebbe I'm the last person demanding an accounting, apologies and reparations where they're still possible.
What great news that "the nature of exile has changed" allowing him to have creature comforts, see movies and teach at Princeton. (Princeton, an academic USSR in the bowels of Jue Jersey???? Times are changing.)
In his website on history's democides, the Late Dr. Rummel says the USSR holocausted 61,911,000 people. You'd never know it today, however – just 24 years after the nightmare putatively ended.
Putin was a KGB man from 1975 to 1991, a period neatly enclosing the Soviet-Afghan war. But apparently the largest "country" in all history – five times the size of the Roman Empire – never existed as far as he's concerned. He never brings it up. How about that the size of the USSR. It was more than twice the size of China, for crying out loud!