The fact that he is the leader of one of the more or less significant opposition parties suggests one of two things:
a) He is a puppet of the ruling regime (but the same can be said about any opposition party).
b) He is an excellent actor who follows the advice of the ancient Chinese philosopher Shen Buhai.
Rude, uneducated, uncouth, self-contradictory... All his prestige rests on the principle of "if you want to appear smarter, shout louder than everyone else"... And in Russia, there are enough fools to last another 100 years (sarcasm).
You're reading my mind. Although, there's a word better than "misunderstanding" - "sabotage."
It's hard to argue with that - in less than a century, far more people were killed than during the entire reign of the "bloody" tsarist regime over the centuries. It's hard to forget!
There is nothing unusual about this, there never was and never will be! Only, if in other countries they don't like to remember this in history, then in our country, in order to build a "democratic society," we have already violated the sacred Russian law "either speak well of the dead or say nothing" 100 times.