Putin Sanders’ associate?

By what stretch of columnist Christine M. Flowers’ imagination could democratic socialist Bernie Sanders and autocratic nationalist Vladimir Putin be “associates?” (Gloria Steinem is showing her age, Feb. 14).

During the Stalinist era, Social Democrats were considered enemies of the Soviet state, charged with espionage and subversion, tortured and sentenced to long terms in the gulags, where many perished.

Those deemed especially dangerous were sentenced “without right of correspondence.” In other words, they were taken to the basement of Lubyanka prison and shot.

Cut from the same cloth as Stalin and a former KGB lieutenant colonel, Putin would regard Sanders’ politics with a jaundiced eye, to say nothing about his being a Jew.

This story was originally published February 15, 2016 at 8:25 PM with the headline "Putin Sanders’ associate?."