I think you're right in a certain strict sense, however I think most people understand that statement to be hyperbole. The sentence perhaps should have ended with 'in some respects', but I think that kind of goes without saying.
Secondly, in America everyone knows about the Holocaust, and the right wing's been using it for months now to bash healthcare reform and their own twisted definition of socialism. People will mangle history because it suits their purposes, not because of some little article in Foreign Affairs.
When people try to rewrite history to suit their purposes we should hold those people accountable through debate. Those who chose to use hyperbole (e.g. this article) or misrepresentations (e.g. healthcare reform) have their right to free speech but they should be ready to face facts and to respect rights of others to have a different opinion.
Hey, I agree with those principles, I just think this guy was using a tiny bit of artistic license, and he had a reasonable expectation that his readership would understand that he did not mean that Russia was now exactly like the USSR under Stalin.
Good, so we do agree on something :) However there is a problem once we take the artistic license to its logical conclusion: Bill Browder, the author of the article, has an artistic license to voice his biased opinions. Given that he welds a certain amount of influence needed to publish in Foreign Policy, he is given an artistic license to persuade less influential readers. Thus we are faced with a situation where strong (i.e. influential) weld more powerful opinions than the weak (i.e. those who can't influence opinion by publishing in Foreign Policy). We can call this state of affairs a "rule of force". How is the rule of force with respect to opinion different from the rule of force with respect to money?
The implication that he is only able to convince less influential people with his writing is a mistake. IMO, his goal is to also influence people that have far more ability to effect change than he does and to entertain people who already agree with him on core issues. When you influence people with money it tends to target people with less influence than you have. (Excluding direct bribes.)
Outside of specific narrow areas our society is still more predicated on convincing people with power than those without it. Elections tend to ride on a tiny number of issues like abortion and outside of major issues like Chinese trade and Iraq there is little point to convince a Midwestern voter that you are correct.
Secondly, in America everyone knows about the Holocaust, and the right wing's been using it for months now to bash healthcare reform and their own twisted definition of socialism. People will mangle history because it suits their purposes, not because of some little article in Foreign Affairs.