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This is the Friends of History Debating Society, I'm John Bachelor, Victory Day.

May 9, 2023, Red Square. Victory Day, May 9, 1945, Red Square.

The empire that existed in 1945 is gone. However, the reviewing stand

containing the leadership of the Kremlin, plus a great number of senior officers,

all the metal and senior. Reviewing the parade witnessed a T-34 tank that dates to 1945,

flying a hammer and sickle red flag of the Soviet state, the disgraced and failed Soviet state.

That symbolism, I welcome Professor H.J. McInder, International Relations, to comment on Ukraine

from the point of view of six capitals, and we begin in Moscow for Victory Day. Professor,

what do you see when you see the hammer and sickle on a red flag flying from a T-34?

Do you see a museum piece? That was then, this is now, or do you see a promise to recover

the Soviet empire, as Vladimir Putin has remarked in the past? Good evening to you.

To be frank, I see a museum piece. I think that the Soviet Union is finished, and it was,

was finished in 1991, and as one rather astute commentator, I thought, says, why did it go down?

And he said, because it didn't occur to anybody to save it. In other words, nobody was really

invested. It wasn't really good for anybody. They tolerated it. So when it started to go down,

it went down. Now, the Russians initially were heading in a direction quite different from what

Putin has turned the model in the last dozen or more years, and they greatly reduced their military

expenditures and the size of their army and all the rest. And there's absolutely no question that

the standard of living of the Russian people has risen dramatically since the end of communism.

...