Is there a lesson here?

Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a long speech at the Valdai Discussion Club in Sochi. RT has the story. These bits jumped out at me:

‘Monstrous’ newspeak about gender in the West

“Those who risk saying that men and women still exist, and that this is a biological fact, are virtually ostracized” in the West, Putin said, calling the situation “a total phantasmagoria.” . . . 

He added that the situation reminded him of the ‘newspeak’ invented by “Soviet culture-warriors” in the 1920s, in hopes of redefining people’s values and creating a new sense of consciousness.

Cancel culture and reverse racism

Another Western practice that reminded Putin of the early Soviet days was the push for “social justice” through affirmative action and cancel culture.

“The fight against racism is a necessary and noble cause, but in the modern ‘cancel culture’ it turns into reverse discrimination, reverse racism,” Putin said. “We see with bemusement the process unfolding in countries that have grown accustomed to viewing themselves as flagships of progress.”

"It is with puzzlement that in the West today we see practices that Russia has left in the distant past."

What ‘conservatism’ means in Russia

Asked if such views made him a conservative, Putin quoted the Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev – exiled from the USSR and died in France in 1948 – who said that “Conservatism is not something that prevents you from going up and forward, but something that prevents you from going back and down into chaos."

Wikipedia has an article about Nikolai Berdyaev.