As if the world didn’t already have enough proof that Russia’s proud KGB spy ruler, Vladimir Putin, intends to return his nation to the days of cold war and totalitarianism, next month something will happen in Russia’s famous Red Square in Moscow that hasn’t happened in nearly two decades.

Tanks will roll through. On little cat feet.

Reuters reports that Putin has reinstituted the Soviet-era tradition of holding a military parade through Red Square (where the Lenin mausoleum is still proudly on display) on “May Day” (May 9th), complete with tanks and missiles. Putin’s tanks, though, will be “fitted with rubber pads to protect the cobble stones on Red Square.” Over 100 of them will be on the move.

Neo-Soviet moves continue in the halls of government as well.Reuters also relates the rumor that Putin (who will become Prime Minister in May after his so-called successor, the sycophant Dimitri Medvedev, becomes “president”) intends to seize personal control of Russia’s local government systems. Reuters states: “Early in his presidency, Putin created seven superdistricts led by the presidential envoys, who are charged with making sure the regions in each district obeyed federal law. [The Russian newspaper] Vedomosti cited unidentified United Russia officials and a source in one ministry as saying that the role of the presidential envoys to the seven federal districts should now be economic and that they should answer to the government, which Putin is to lead as prime minister. Sources confirmed that a reform within the Kremlin administration was being considered, Vedomosti said.”

So, first Putin obliterated the independence of local government by decreeing that local officials like governors would be appointed by the Kremlin rather than elected. Then Putin created a supervisory body to dominate and control the local leaders, accountable directly to the Kremlin. Next, he remains in government as his own “successor’s” prime minister, making it impossible for that successor to be an independent leader. And finally, just in case that successor gets any funny ideas about actually running the country, he is packing a key political body up in his suitcase and taking it with him to the prime ministry.

The totalitarian buildup continues apace in the commercial sector as well. The Moscow Times reports:

Russian Railways has expressed an interest in bidding for the huge Udokan copper field in Siberia. This is another example of how the government’s economic policy is increasingly shifting from free-market reforms to the creation of gigantic, state-controlled “national champions.” It would appear that the goal of Russian Railways is to build another state-controlled behemoth a la Gazprom, which, in the absence of much-needed cost controls, has also been allowed to acquire a mind-boggling number of noncore businesses in such sectors as telecommunication satellites, television, farming and medical clinics.

Putin will do via the prime ministry what he once did in the presidency. Russia will do through corporatism what it once did through Communism. The Russian shell game goes on, with zero real reform and hence zero prospects for real progress. Vladimir Putin’s KGB rule over Russia is a national catastrophe, one in which the people of Russia have been willing and mindless collaborators, a disaster that is unprecedented in world history.