211–220 of 971 posts
My late grandfather was a really good and kind man. He never argued or blamed people. The only person that I remember that my grandfather had really negative feelings for was Gorbachev. I never learned why.
Or did he sympathise with communism? Gorbachev arguably accelerated it's decline.
My late grandfather was a really good and kind man. He never argued or blamed people. The only person that I remember that my grandfather had really negative feelings for was Gorbachev. I never learned why.
Was he Lithuanian by any chance? Gorbachev killed protestors there, arguably the biggest stain on his otherwise surprisingly decent record. Or did he sympathise with communism? Gorbachev arguably accelerated it's decline.
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…
The huge metal show in Moscow shows just how much optimism there was in that moment. If you've never seen this footage, definitely look: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_W7wqQwa-TU 1.6 million people in an airfield at a free concert that lasted all day. There's a documentary about it but I've not watched it. It's so disappointing the world couldn't bring that optimism to fruition, and instead kleptocrats took over.
> However, Lars explained in the conversation that he doesn’t know the exact number how many people were in the concert, but he heard at the time that there were half a million people attended the show.
> “Listen, it may go up by 100,000 people each year! I heard at the time it was around half a million. Whatever it was, it was a f*ck-load of people.
https://metalheadzone.com/lars-ulrich-clarifies-the-myth-tha...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ah yes, the world was such a utopia before the US.
That doesn't invalidate the point that the US has created incredible amounts of instability around the world.
Note that in Russian doctrine as tought in universities, the Cold War never ended.
This seems like needless pedantry at least for a conversation outside of school. The USSR (with whom the Cold War was being fought) was dissolved and Germany was reunified. For all intents and purposes it did end, just a new conflict (now with Russia) began.
Quoted post unavailable.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
p.s. I don't think the joke was mean-spirited.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32654981.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not "ideas" failed the people, but the implementers - which turned out to be straight up robbers, dividing past empire's industrial base amongst them, like western idol Khodorkovsky or Berezovsky. Where the politicians were less corrupt, the free market worked spectacularly well, like in Poland.
So it wasn't real capitalism?
Quoted post unavailable.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's naive to think that a Western-style democracy could've been instilled in Russia just through some extra effort. The fact that it works elsewhere doesn't mean it's a suitable model for other countries. Especially when there's a lot of prior baggage of being ruled by a single person, be it a tzar or a head of Politburo.
> Especially when there's a lot of prior baggage of being ruled by a single person, be it a tzar or a head of Politburo. This describes Hungary, Czech Republic, Romania and Poland, all former Soviet bloc countries. They've all had varying levels of success transitioning from communism to democracy and from a planned economy to market. So it can happen. Could it have happened for Russia? Who knows? Based on the above,…
Yes, but neither the Baltics nor Warsaw Pact countries want anything to do with communism in the first place. It was forced onto them. So transitioning back to a democracy and market economy was far more straightforward.
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…
Your comment makes it sounds like you believe the U.S. had the power to decide whether or not Russia would turn into a kleptocracy or not. Maybe I'm misinterpreting you, but if I'm not, I'm skeptical. Marshall plan notwithstanding, I would give credit to the people and government of Japan for their post-war success: it could easily have gone another direction, and the U.S. couldn't have stopped that from happening. L…
There's a lot of evidence that US kleptocrats collaborated to help turn Russia into a kleptocracy. Practically encouraged rather than discouraged that outcome.