If you remember, there was a Russian leader in the mid-nineties propped up by Western advisors and money. That was back in the day when we weren't having this famous "Cold War II". And even then a journalist was using the buzzword that you are getting so excited about. I include that writers' article for your consideration:

"When Leonid I. Brezhnev was alive and ailing, the Soviet leader entrusted his health and astrological fate to a well-known psychic healer. In the increasingly superstitious Kremlin of President Boris N. Yeltsin, that role is filled by a high-ranking officer of the widely feared presidential security service, who is said to monitor the President's health and horoscopes.While the horoscopes may seem a relatively minor bit of deja vu, there are increasing signs of a return to Soviet-style governance, both in the fears it created and the favors it bestowed.

Presidential advisers conduct sensitive conversations on scraps of paper, which they quickly burn, fearful that their offices are bugged. The perks and privileges, the apartments, cars, dachas and special services that once sustained the Soviet elite are back, too.Even in these days of fiscal constraint and budget cutbacks, members of the new nomenklatura -- many of whom moved there seamlessly from the old Communist elite -- are not just reclaiming their old privileges, they are also creating new ones.Those privileges include free medical care in the best hospitals, visits to nature preserves and vacation areas that had been reserved for the Soviet elite, access to exclusive grocery stores, special license plates and even preferred treatment in the cafeteria of the agency that is the successor to the K.G.B.Russia's romance with democratic populism is long past. Mr. Yeltsin, who began his climb to power railing against the privileges and intrigues of Mikhail S. Gorbachev's Kremlin, now presides over a power structure that some Russians say is at least as secretive and corrupt as any in the post-Stalinist era.Now the fear that Russia is reverting to the totalitarian era is stronger than ever."The regime did not succeed in getting rid of Soviet habits and the Soviet way of life," said Sergei Par khomenko, an investigative reporter for the newspaper Sevodnya. "They did try, two and three years ago. There was an effort to rip up it all by the roots, but it didn't work and those roots only went deeper."Mr. Parkhomenko can testify that fear is back. He wrote a two-part series, "Merlin's Tower," about the new power bases in the Kremlin, but it ran in the anti-establishment weekly Moscow News after it was turned down by his newspaper.Vladimir Gusinsky, the banker and news media tycoon who owns Sevodnya and who has a longstanding feud with Mr. Yeltsin, considered it too dangerous.Though there is no official censorship anymore, newspaper owners and television executives are increasingly afraid of angering powerful Government and business interests. After Mr. Yeltsin's personal security guard ordered a raid on Mr. Gusinsky's offices in December, he left the country and has been living in London. He frequently says he fears for his life.Perhaps the most vivid and politically significant example of the comeback of the old elite was the President's decision last month to create a new centrist party, led by Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin. Officially called Our House -- Russia, the party was immediately dubbed "the Party of Power" by the press and other politicians.It is backed by wealthy banking and business interests and consists almost entirely of Government bureaucrats and provincial governors and administrators, including many former Communist officials and even some Politburo members.Its first meeting, on May 12 in Moscow, had a familiar flavor, with black Volga limousines snaking up the drive, turgid speeches and limited press access.Unlike Mr. Yeltsin, Mr. Chernomyrdin was never a member of the old Politburo, but he did head the gas industry under the old leadership.Political analysts here say that Mr. Chernomyrdin's connections to that sector of the economy have made him a rich man and keep him closely allied with the essentially unchanged fiefs in the provinces.Kremlinology, only recently dismissed as an obsolete art form, is enjoying a revival."Now there is a return to old-style Soviet politics, with Yeltsin in the middle and four or five powerful groups around him," said Michael A. McFaul, a Moscow-based senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment for the Humanities. "We get hints of how it works, but we are not privy to the inner workings the way we were two or three years ago."Mr. Chernomyrdin's party was crafted to act as a centrist alternative to Communists and ultra-nationalists in next December's parliamentary elections. Another party, left of center, also created with the Kremlin's blessing, is to be led by the Speaker of the lower house of Parliament, Ivan P. Rybkin.But some find the symbiotic relationship of these two new parties with the Government a bit troubling -- a little too reminiscent of the days when the Communist Party ran the state."The introduction into the political arena of a two-party nomenklatura system would mark the decisive victory of the state over society," Vitaly Tretyakov, the editor of Nezavisimaya Gazeta, a liberal daily, wrote in an editorial.The old Communist political apparatus is not all that is left of the Soviet system. The infamous Russian bureaucracy is, if anything, more bloated than ever.And the newspaper Izvestia reported that Parliament is about to consider a bill to give civil servants free transportation, pension raises and funeral subsidies.The gigantic network of special clinics and hospitals known as the Fourth Department, which once catered to the Communist Party elite, still exists, though it has been renamed the Medical Center of the Presidential Administration.After the fall of Communism -- and the subsequent change in zeitgeist and drop in financing -- many of its units, including the prestigious Kremlin hospital, opened their doors to paying clients.The Government is now seeking to improve the hospitals and clinics and return them to their original function: providing better care than is available to other Russians free to Cabinet officials, high-ranking bureaucrats and members of Parliament and their families. The medical center agency plans to limit the percentage of paying customers to 25 percent."It would not be correct to put someone, let's say, of a not very stable social class, or a shady businessman, in the bed next to a Government official," said Sergei P. Mironov, who was recently made Deputy Chief of Management for the medical centers. "We cannot admit just anybody who is willing to pay money."The budget of this health bureaucracy, then and now, is secret.State game preserves -- the vast, closed areas of forests and lakes where Brezhnev and other Soviet leaders would take cronies and visiting dignitaries fishing and bear hunting, were closed in the first wave of democratization. They have quietly reopened -- but only for the Government elite.A new food store opened this spring in a high-rise residential building in Mitino, in northeast Moscow, where many members of Parliament have received free furnished apartments. Some of these deputies have quietly privatized the apartments they were allotted by the state by renting or selling them.Only people with special passes or parliamentary identification cards are allowed to shop in the food store there. Parliament plans to open a members-only shopping center next to the market.It was never much of a mystery why the Communist elite sent their drivers to Granovskovo Street to pick up their special grocery parcels every week. Delicacies were scarce in those days.It is less clear why the new power elite, many of whom have made plenty of money from suspected bribes or from brokering business deals, cannot buy their groceries at the many supermarkets in Moscow. But old habits of hierarchy and veiled behavior die hard."The old warriors have reappeared with their old customs and traditions," said Alla Y. Gerber, a liberal member of Parliament.The new reformed and renamed K.G.B. has reverted to at least one custom of old: this month, the hierarchical pecking order in its cafeteria service was restored. Tables, service, food and even flatware vary according to rank.Under Communism, the cars of party officials had special license plate numbers that let the traffic police know not to bother them. After Mr. Yeltsin came to power, new plates were issued that made little distinction between official and private cars. This spring, new plates are being issued to top officials that are marked by a small Russian tricolor to signal their immunity from traffic rules.There is little press scrutiny or public outrage about the perks of power. Many Russians, fatalistic and cynical, expect nothing else. If anything, resentment has been muted by the fact that goods and services that were available in the old days only to the nomenklatura are now accessible to ordinary citizens, provided they can afford them.Most tabloids and television programs focus on the more novel ostentation of the new rich.But last week, Izvestia published a detailed article charging that Mr. Rybkin, the Speaker of the lower house, bought patio furniture for his dacha while on an official trip to Washington and brought it back on a plane provided by the Government.The newspaper reported that Mr. Rybkin, his plane weighed down with personal plunder, refused to transport a shipment of American aid items for needy Russian children that the Russian Embassy had asked him to bring home.Mr. Rybkin denied that he had bought patio furniture, saying his cargo had been entirely made up of office supplies for Parliament. But he conceded that he had refused to carry the aid shipment.Few of his colleagues were shocked. "It's typical Soviet-style behavior," Boris Fyodorov, a former Finance Minister who now leads a pro-business faction in Parliament, said with a shrug. "The only surprising thing is that he got caught.""

Alessandra Stanley, May 23, 1995, New York Times.

The title of the article, by the way, was "Russia's New Rulers Govern, And Live, in Neo-Soviet Style".

I fail to see what this has to do with crime, travel or the term "neo-Soviet". If you are offering this as a submission for publication, it is rejected. If you think it is related to the forum topic, please explain. Otherwise it will be deleted.

Aha, so you delete both posts and comments now, do you?

Took another beating on the last google post, so you removed it altogether!

Hilarious stuff.

VANIA: The Google post is still there. You are rather confused and/or dishonest.

It's also rather sick for you to complain that an editor would correct errors and modify content in response to reader suggestions. The New York Times makes corrections in every issue. Ever heard of Jayson Blair? But since you don't have your own blog and are an anonymous little nothing, I guess you think the proper thing is for editors to leave mistakes in place and ignore readers. Or, alternatively, to be like you and never MAKE mistakes.

I didn't delete the comment, I asked how it was relevant to the topic of this forum. If there is no answer, it is spam. i delete spam. I also delete calls for violence and abuse of fellow commenters. If you don't like my policy, find another blog to read.

You are a childish, dishonest, jealous little microbe and I pity you.

The term was in the title, which I clearly included in the comment posted after the text of the piece. My point, as if it wasn't already clear enough, was that an American journalist was using it to describe the Yeltsin era, when Russian enjoyed full financial and moral support of the West. It enjoyed the support of the West, even though it was perpetrating a policy of cruel injustice (among other things the start of the Chechen campaign) that far outranks anything we can see today.

And to comment on Vania's remark, there was indeed an earlier post on Google that is no longer on the site. It is no longer there because it was based on a flagrant and exposed falsehood, and in rare credit to La Russophobe, it has been removed.

REITH:

OK, I think I've figured it out now. Sorry, I'm kinda slow sometimes.

It's like with that Guardian article. You're trying to HELP me. You're AGREEING with my point(here, that my use of the term neo-Soviet is not unusual, but common, showing that I'm mainstream, not a crazed extremist). So you're providing me with some further evidence, again, to back up my point.

Sorry I got confused. I've added your evidence to the blog content again. Thanks for the help. Next time, to avoid confusion, say something like "here's some further support for your point that it's perfectly normal to talk about a neo-Soviet union" right up front, and I'll probably get it. Just a little writing tip there.

It's just that when you keep calling me a mendacious liar all the time, for some reason I get the idea you are my enemy, so I look for criticism in your posts, not compliments and support. I know, I should work on that.

By the way, you might want to know that Alessandra Stanley has been outed for making a huge number of errors in the Times, at a far higher rate than most of its reporters, and I think her days may be numbered (if she hasn't been fired already, I haven't kept up with it).

Nice try.
Neo-Soviet is not an appropriate or even remotely accurate term to describe Putin's administration. The point is that these attempts to broadly characterise the Russians in Western media have been around since forever, but that doesn't make them any more correct. The fact that you adopt supposedly mainstream terms (which neo-Soviet is not) does not preclude that you are unerringly mistaken in your extrapolations about the Russian people.

REITH:

1. Putin is a proud KGB spy.

2. Putin has revived the Soviet national anthem and the hammer and sickle.

3. Putin was "elected" with over 70% of the vote without debates or any signicant non-communist choice on the ballot.

4. Putin has abolished the election of governors and appoints them by fiat.

5. Putin is waging a bloody unsuccessful war of imperialism in Chechnya with zero public opposition.

6. Putin has destroyed the media establishment.

Yes, you're quite right, those of us who call Russia neo-Soviet have NO EVIDENCE at all to support our position. ONLY YOU see the "truth" of Russia. Just like Chamberlain was the only one who really understood Hitler.

How about trying "delegative democracy" for size, among many other more helpful and accurate. This accounts for the fundamental differences between the Soviet Union and modern Russia in terms of political culture, economic policy and foreign policy.
Many of the issues about lack of democratic accountability that you raise were existent under Yeltsin. Nobody is denying that Russia is not a healthy democracy, for to suggest as much would be obviously foolish. Yet, your simplistic and fundamentally ill-informed historical parallels are no more sensible.

When in the WORLD did I state or imply that Russia was not neo-Soviet under Yeltsin?? More mendacious lies.

However, Russia wasn't singing the Soviet anthem then, now was it? The point is that Russia is getting MORE neo-Soviet every day.

What you don't seem to realize is that although Putin may not be STALIN right now, there was a time when STALIN wasn't Stalin either. Stalin had to BECOME Stalin, and by the time he did there was nothing anyone could do about it. The time to stop someone from becoming Stalin is BEFORE he does.

More of those "mendacious lies".

The kind of lies spread my mendacious liars and cunning cunning people, right?

You actually have a semi-decent argument on your side in this one, Russoph. But you undermine it by the hysterical rants and hyperbole.

Calm down a bit and you'll make more sense. People will also listen to you a bit more.

Parks, green spaces, nature, other people (real, live ones), etc. All important. Switch off the PC and take a walk for a while. It would be good for you.

IVAN: Perhaps you have never heard the old adage, "the squeaky wheel gets the grease." A lot of people called King and Gandhi hysterical too, you know. As I look across the landscape I see very few people "hysterically" attacking Russia, and I see Russia slipping ever faster into the abyss. So perhaps what we need is not less "hysteria" but more.

Perhaps.

Or perhaps you're just a bit too hysterical to be taken seriously.

Perhaps.

Or perhaps you're too insignificant to even have a name, much less a blog that is taken more seriously than this one.