With Putin talking about the orthodox church being holy and using to justify some conservative bullshit, all I can remember was the bolsheviks going around the country proudly declaring that cities were now "officially godless" and redistributing the church's gold amongst the people and using it to pay for electrification projects.
yah minority and political rights are pretty shit and a lot of stuff is done backdoor. Though honestly I think he could be worse economically, Russia at least makes their oligarchs pay dues to the state rather than the other way around in the west.