I'm not blaming the Russian people. I'm blaming the USSR, that is the regime in power at the time. I guess what went wrong in this debate - and it was my fault

I'm not blaming the Russian people. I'm blaming the USSR, that is the regime in power at the time. I guess what went wrong in this debate - and it was my fault as well - is that for a democratic country, we can often get away with using sloppy language that conflates "country" and "people". But for undemocratic regimes, that no longer works.