[kgran]

In Putin's mind, USSR and Russia might be one and the same. But I'm not sure Putin's words about the ideals and politics of a historical state which was originally built after a revolution led by a radical Marxist faction, the Bolsheviks, should be taken seriously. After all, the first anthem of the Soviet Union was "The Internationale" up until sometime in the 1940s. I am not completely sure about what was on Lenin's mind though, so I might be wrong - maybe he was secretly nationalist (or a left-wing fascist, if I could use this other loose term).

[int_19h]

Consider policies like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korenizatsiya. Early USSR was already totalitarian for sure, but I don't think it could be described as nationalist in any meaningful sense.

Whether it was socialist or not is another interesting question. Some would say that it wasn't, on the basis that real socialism cannot be non-democratic, as that precludes meaningful common ownership of property - and Bolsheviks were consistently anti-democratic very early on, what with shutting down the Constituent Assembly, instituting kombeds to suppress local councils that were in opposition to them, and even explicitly writing a formula into the constitution that made urban (i.e. predominantly worker) councils have 5x voting power of rural (i.e. predominantly peasant) councils. But even ignoring that, it's hard to reconcile socialism with suppression of trade unions in politics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers%27_Opposition) - which also happened under Lenin.