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Yes. And that this difference is enough to fundamentally alter the direction of a nation, towards what I consider terrible outcomes. There is one qualifier, which I'll get to later if I continue this series, and it's that labels can mean fundamentally different things under different people. Early Progressives may have shared the statism of modern progressives, but their vision of progress included 'sterilize the incompetent to improve our gene pool', 'let's resegregate the government' and 'we must preserve the white race' and 'self-determination but only for functional peoples, others need colonialism'.
If your analysis of Stalin and Beria vs. Gorbachev and Chernenko, misses the part where Stalin and Beria were Georgians ruling over Russians and Gorbachev and Chernenko were Russians ruling over mainly Russians, and confines itself to formal ideological labels, it's arguably worse than useless. Groups that understand the tenuous nature of their power are gonna pursue their goals with far greater brutality and indifference to suffering.
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