It looks like the Soviet Union isn’t dead after all. Vladimir Putin has spent years gutting every democratic institution in Russia. No more free media or free speech. No right to assembly, no independent judiciary, etc. Now, it appears that Putin is putting the icing on his totalitarian cake with a new “Treason bill” that is expected to become law.

New legislation backed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin would allow Russian authorities to label any government critic a traitor—a move that rights activists said Wednesday was a chilling throwback to times of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.

The bill, which is expected to become law, would expanded the definition of treason to include damaging Russia’s constitutional order, sovereignty or territorial integrity. That, rights activists said, would essentially let authorities interpret any act against state as treason—a crime punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

Activists said that would catapult Russia’s justice system back to the times of Stalin’s purges, calling it “legislation in the spirit of Stalin and Hitler.”

“It returns the Russian justice to the times of 1920-1950s,” the activists, which included Moscow Helsinki Group head Lyudmila Alexeyeva and Civic Assistance director Svetlana Gannushkina, said in a joint statement.

This is the final death nail for any kind of free speech in Russia. Putin’s grip on the country is now complete. Russia is once again a Soviet dictatorship with a KGB man at its head. Up to this point, Russia hasn’t been able to declare open season on human rights, because victims of the regime could complain to the European Court of Human Rights. These complaints are made through NGO’s and the new law will effectively neuter all NGO’s in Russia.

Putin will be free to re-open the gullogs and be the KGB strongman he’s always wanted to be. America haters love to call president Bush a ‘war criminal’ but somehow miss the fact that Vladimir Putin actually is a war criminal. The atrocities committed in Chechnya by the Russian military make Iraq look like Disneyland.