According to Igor Torbakov's article for
Eurasianet, Russian pundits say Bush's current democracy-spreading tactics owe something to the Comintern:
Immediately after Bush announced the formation of the ARC, Russian political analysts expressed the belief that ARC’s operations would be aimed at post-Soviet states, and began comparing it to the Moscow-controlled Communist International, or Komintern, which promoted the spread of communism prior to the Second World War. Vyacheslav Nikonov, the Kremlin-connected head of the Politika Foundation think tank, asserted in a commentary published by the Trud daily that Bush’s vision for the ACR "doesn’t differ much from the Komintern’s policies." The methods, instruments and even slogans used by the Bolsheviks and those employed now by the Bush administration are basically the same, Nikonov wrote.
During the early Bolshevik era, the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs sought to develop mutually beneficial relations with the world’s leading capitalist countries. At the same time, the Komintern carried out subversive activities in those same countries. For some Russian pundits, there’s a clear analogy between the Komintern’s tactics and present-day US foreign policy in the post-Soviet lands. On the one hand, they say, Washington seeks Russia’s help in the global war on terror, while on the other; US officials are keen to undermine Moscow’s strategic stature in its traditional sphere of influence.
Russian government officials have not publicly embraced or endorsed such "politically incorrect" comparisons. But they most likely share at least some of the Russian conservative pundits’ perspectives on US foreign policy. Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, for example, recently reiterated that US attempts to "export democracy" to CIS countries and encourage "non-parliamentary methods of fighting" can lead to destabilization and new conflicts.
