I hadn’t thought of it that way. Looks like I need to pass it along to my little brother so he can gently pass it along to our sickly big brother, who is a Putin fan.
Imperial aspirations have always been part of the Russian DNA. In that light, the USSR can be seen as the most successful iteration of that phenomenon. Stalin did his level best to subjugate Ukraine (see: Holodomor). Putin would like to build and improve on that.
I’m not sure what fault Putin would find with Stalin except that Stalin didn’t go far enough with the Holodomor. In that light, Putin would seem to be striving to succeed where Stalin failed - he’s not content merely to starve them out, he’s leveling their cities.
That may not be the right comparison, since Stalin was no Russian. He was, well, a Stalinist (and at least gave lip service to socialism and “Marxism–Leninism”).
I don’t think Stalin’s ethnicity is really material here. Arguably he was the head of a Russian movement (or one that was mainly Russian-conceived and directed) that always had designs on empire. Stalin didn’t originate that.
To rescue the OP a bit, I don’t think that he was necessarily thinking of reconstrucing the Soviet Union’s political philosophy so much as reconstructing its territorial network of puppet states, which I think is pretty close what Putin was hoping to start with Ukraine.
Yes, the old idea of a cordon sanitaire dies hard. The trouble for those who think that way in Russia is that the inherited lived experience of the other countries concerned is that they feel they need one of their own against Russia.
Why, that is something weak people and cultures, like the decadent West, use to resolve issues. What kind of unmanly creature just says up front “I agree to just quietly accept being defeated”?
Well of course, one who hopes to live and fight another day, or at least to retire to the lecture circuit, some lucrative non-exec directorships, a book deal and media opinionating (after a decent interval), and possibly some sort of “good cause” foundation. Or (in my country), an appearance in Strictly Come Dancing and/or sundry other TV opportunities, depending on how un-pompous you’re prepared to seem.
But granted, none of those seem likely to appeal to the self-appointed Bonaparte in the Kremlin.