Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mikhail Gorbachev has died

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 971 posts

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#41

Post by baxtr »

lapcat wrote: post #22

The United States didn't do enough to help Russia transition to democracy in the 1990s. There was no "Marshall Plan" after the Cold War like there was after World War II. This was a huge mistake, and we see the consequences now, with Russia having turned back toward totalitarianism and imperialism. Sadly, it seems that Gorbachev's efforts were mostly for naught. But it was courageous at the time to open up the Soviet…

I once heard someone say that any country needs two attempts until democracy works out properly. Maybe it’s the same here.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#43

Post by insane_dreamer »

laserbrain wrote: post #37

»A Soviet man is waiting in line to purchase vodka from a liquor store, but due to restrictions imposed by Gorbachev, the line is very long. The man loses his composure and screams, ›I can’t take this waiting in line anymore, I HATE Gorbachev, I am going to the Kremlin right now, and I am going to kill him!‹ After 40 minutes the man returns and elbows his way back to his place in line. The crowd begin to ask if he ha…

This is not a joke. I was in Russia during the Gorby era (and early Yeltsin) and people indeed hated Gorby for his attempt to crack-down on drunkenness by limiting the purchase of vodka.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#44

Post by avmich »

woodruffw wrote: post #28
flavius29663 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He did. It's just that leftists in the US won't accept that and pretend that the Cold War just "ended" one day, because of the goodwill of the Russians, not because the US policy forced them into bankruptcy.

There's a disconnect here: the US policy in question took place over decades, not the 8 years that Reagan was president.

It's easy to argue that it's USSR people, not Western, who benefited most from the end of the Cold War.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#46

Post by lapcat »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #34
lapcat wrote: post #22

The United States didn't do enough to help Russia transition to democracy in the 1990s. There was no "Marshall Plan" after the Cold War like there was after World War II. This was a huge mistake, and we see the consequences now, with Russia having turned back toward totalitarianism and imperialism. Sadly, it seems that Gorbachev's efforts were mostly for naught. But it was courageous at the time to open up the Soviet…

On the contrary, the "shock therapy" approach that Russia took in the Yeltsin years was, in many ways, prescribed by the West, and ended up being a complete disaster for both your average Russian person, and for capitalism and democracy as a whole, because most people just learned to associate these things with the kleptocracy that occurred in the 90s.

> On the contrary

I agree with everything you said, so I don't take it as contrary to what I said.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#47

Post by romwell »

flavius29663 wrote: post #9
bediger4000 wrote: post #4

I was taught that Ronald Reagan ended the cold war and gave us the longest lasting economic boom.

He did. It's just that leftists in the US won't accept that and pretend that the Cold War just "ended" one day, because of the goodwill of the Russians, not because the US policy forced them into bankruptcy.

Yeah right, because the USSR had never before gone through hardship, and it's the "bankruptcy" that led to ousting of Gorbachev in a coup after his reforms (including a de-facto Prohibition, in Russia of all places!).

Let's also ignore that little thing that Russia is now doing in Ukraine, and put up a "mission accomplished" banner on the clusterfuck that happened in 1991.

The USSR didn't fall apart because of any goodwill, but it did fall apart because Gorbachev fucked up.

Reagan deserves as much credit for this as Obama does for the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceleand in 2010.

If you disagree, note that the burden of proof is on you here; and you're welcome to point out which specific effects of actions of Reagan's administration caused the collapse of the USSR, along with an explanation why much more severe hardships experienced by people of the USSR in the earlier decades did not.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#48

Post by thriftwy »

avmich wrote: post #30
lapcat wrote: post #22

The United States didn't do enough to help Russia transition to democracy in the 1990s. There was no "Marshall Plan" after the Cold War like there was after World War II. This was a huge mistake, and we see the consequences now, with Russia having turned back toward totalitarianism and imperialism. Sadly, it seems that Gorbachev's efforts were mostly for naught. But it was courageous at the time to open up the Soviet…

Was the absence of Marshall plan happened because of the West or because of Russia's decision? > Sadly, it seems that Gorbachev's efforts were mostly for naught. Russia today is a faint ghost of the former USSR. The events in Eastern Europe show that to an extent.

It's smaller all right. But it is also much more robust.

Late USSR was the kind of society where most everything was in short supply and which has even failed to feed itself. Yes, it had a lot of hardware and people. All of that was for no good, given the awful system in place.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#49

Post by mturmon »

bediger4000 wrote: post #4

I was taught that Ronald Reagan ended the cold war and gave us the longest lasting economic boom.

/s, I assume? (you never know!)

Having read a couple of Cold War histories, most recently Tony Judt's excellent Postwar, I learned that what's often missing from American pop-level summaries is the work put in by the people behind the Iron Curtain to bring it down -- for examples, the Polish Catholics and union members, and the Czech dissidents such as Vaclav Havel.

Generally American pop-level accounts like to emphasize American agency in what happened.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#50

Post by [deleted] »

wcarron wrote: post #31
lapcat wrote: post #22

The United States didn't do enough to help Russia transition to democracy in the 1990s. There was no "Marshall Plan" after the Cold War like there was after World War II. This was a huge mistake, and we see the consequences now, with Russia having turned back toward totalitarianism and imperialism. Sadly, it seems that Gorbachev's efforts were mostly for naught. But it was courageous at the time to open up the Soviet…

You can lead a horse to water; but you can't make it drink. It wasn't the US' responsibility, it was the Russian peoples'.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN