TIL people can't tell the difference between Soviet communists, and Russians.

If Putin can barely tell the difference why should we?

I've never heard Putin say much in favor of either Bolshevism or Soviet command economics; other than how the collapse of the former resulted in a terrible situation for the post-soviet Russian economy.

Different flag. A little less land. Fewer people occupied.

Same people in charge. Soviet government officials are now Russian government officials.

Those same people would have to have been hired (at the latest) in 1991. Most ex-Soviets have retired or passed on by now.

This whole thread is very off topic for HN so I shouldn't even engage, but this comment just seems so bizarre that I feel weird not responding: The current leader of Russia is Vladimir Putin, who certainly can be described as an ex-Soviet, having begun his career working for the Soviet intelligence service. His inner circle mostly share that same background.

Am I missing your point?

Yes.

He worked for a Communist state, he was not personally invested in the ideology beyond what was necessary to succeed in his organization. This describes many, many Russians.

I think "you can't call people who were in the KGB ex-soviets because they did not have strong attachment to communist ideology" is an indefensible assertion.

If these people were a farmers or factory workers or something, sure. But these were people who worked and fought for the soviet state, not just workaday citizens.

If the current government of the US collapses, and whatever government we end up with afterward is eventually run by a cadre of career CIA agents, it will be very fair to call them whatever the equivalent of "ex-soviet" will be, even if they don't ever talk about their ideological attachment to constitutional republics.

It's entirely defensible, in that I don't consider most people who used to have/could've had a USSR passport to be doctrinaire communists, or even in a position to make policy. The # of people who were politically committed Russians in the mid-80's who are even alive now is vanishingly small. It was always a gerontocracy.

Likewise, in 1986 there were close to 500,000 KGB employees. How many of them do you think were in leadership positions then, that are also in leadership positions in the FSB/GRU now?

The imperial mindset of Russians who think lands outside their borders belong to them gives me the same "look and feel" as Soviet communists

There is certainly much truth to that observation; but there is a difference in principle.

I mean, we covered this in my Russian Politics class in detail. Even during soviet times, every non-russian soviet state had russian politicians working behind the scenes. And many of the leaders/powerful people in Russia today are the inheritors of the power structure of the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the soviet union. I suspect many people you think are ignorant are actually quite aware of the subtle relationship between the two.

“Inheritors of the power structure”; i.e. they had inherited authority in what was effectively a new state in economic & demographic collapse. Do you think that all of them believe, now as then, that the situation they found themselves in in 1992 was entirely exogenous to the Soviet system?