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Mikhail Gorbachev has died

reuters.com

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Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#231

Post by hahaitsfunny »

lucideer wrote: post #184
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…

> The United States didn't do enough I think if you dig into the history a bit more closely, you'll quickly find that the United States did in fact do plenty[0][1]. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/27/world/10.2-billion-loan-t... [1] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-07-09-mn-22423-...

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Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#232

Post by berkut »

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…

That joke was told about many of the soviet leaders...

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#233

Post by dang »

avgcorrection wrote: post #164
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…

Quoted post unavailable.

I understand the activation but please let's keep internecine punctuation conflict off HN.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#234

Post by hahaitsfunny »

avmich wrote: post #192
anon_123g987 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Russia today is a faint ghost of the former USSR. Russia was only a part of the USSR. Their main problem is that they, too, believe that they are the former USSR, and try to restore the former glory. Well, the state of the war in Ukraine (another part of the former USSR) clearly shows how wrong they are.

> Well, the state of the war in Ukraine (another part of the former USSR) clearly shows how wrong they are. I assume you mean "Russia believe that they are the former USSR". It's interesting to note that Russia in 1990-s focused on economic modernization - and while it went through highly criminal years, they built a good market economy by 1999 - while Ukraine was mostly (more) doing political reform - and they had e…

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Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#235

Post by ZoomerCretin »

Beltalowda wrote: post #217
ZoomerCretin wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it wasn't real capitalism?

There is no such thing as "real capitalism"; it's a broad and somewhat vague set of ideas with many possible implementations, none of which are more "real capitalism" than any other, although I'd argue that some implementations definitely better than others (and 90s Russia is a good example of that).

Capitalism is just an economic system with predominantly private ownership of the means of production. Whether a country's set of economically productive organizations are owned by shareholders via a stock exchange or by whomever was powerful enough to take control of them by corrupt means seems irrelevant, no?

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#236

Post by avmich »

AdamJacobMuller wrote: post #141
Apocryphon wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was a very different situation, those were states that were militarily invaded and then occupied by American forces, who were involved in reconstructing countries devastated by war.

I'm not sure the average Russian would have seen the situation much differently. Look at the people today who decry chinese investment in the US economy? I'm not even saying those people are wrong. All it takes is for one person or group in the country to poke us enough to the point where we feel the need to strengthen our security posture there (read: add more troops) and then some terrible situation like Abu Ghraib…

What's your proposition then? How it's best to go forward from where we are, if you don't trust the current organization abilities?

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#237

Post by paganel »

ajross wrote: post #226
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> [Western-driven reconstruction was] complete disaster for both your average Russian person I think that's overstating the case. In fact the "average Russian person" was living in destitute poverty through most of the cold war, and none of that meaningfully changed with the advent of a market economy. Except that Russians of the 2000's could get eat better food and watch (much) better TV. It's absolutely true that m…

> was living in destitute poverty through most of the cold wa

Genuinely asking, did you live East of the Wall back then?

Because I did live East of the Wall (not in the former USSR, though), and I can assure you that we were most certainly not living in "destitute poverty" (my dad was a civil engineer, my mum had graduated from a hydro construction faculty). My parents did end up living in destitute poverty, as in having to get back to literally subsistence agriculture in order to survive, but that only came in the second part of the '90s, once democracy had already been in place for a few good years (and democracy had come with privatizations and price liberalizations).

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#238

Post by pastacacioepepe »

idlewords wrote: post #225
pastacacioepepe wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> who were demonstrating for democratic reforms. You seem to comment to better inform readers, yet your comment distorts the truth. Even the article you linked talks about Lithuania declaring independence from the USSR, not asking for democratic reforms. Despite what your article says, if you read the story on Wikipedia, Lithuania did in fact unilaterally declare independence from the USSR in March 1990. Just as an e…

The parent comment is correct, Lithuanians were demonstrating for the right to self-determination. The Baltic States were forcibly annexed to the Soviet Union in 1940; the comparison to Catalonia or US states is specious. Over two million people participated in peaceful protests in 1989 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Way ), the Soviet decision to suppress this movement by force is a black mark on Gorbachev's…

> The parent comment is correct

I'm sorry but it's not, and I already stated why with reason. They were not asking for "democratic reforms", but for independence.

Call it self-determination if it makes you feel better. Debate my comparisons, fair enough, I just tried to put things in perspective.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#239

Post by nradov »

romwell wrote: post #87
avmich wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Some did, some didn't, the way it happened. The Cold War wasn't a good thing, but it didn't have to end with the dissolution of the USSR, and the dissolution of the USSR didn't have to end with a coup, followed by chaos, which nevertheless kept all the appartchiks in charge. 30 years later, we can see how the people who were in charge of the USSR are the reason if fell apart: because they are still running Russia, an…

You can't seriously claim that the USSR should have been held together as a single empire, contrary to the wishes of most people who lived outside of Russia. The dissolution of the USSR was absolutely, unambiguously a positive event for the human race despite the minor problems which resulted.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#240

Post by ghostwriter »

ZoomerCretin wrote: post #195
ghostwriter wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's good, as the US is a constitutional republic

Democratic republic, which is what everyone means when we say democracy.

Hardly everyone, but left zoomers who are unable to understand the key founding papers and who refuse descriptive comments of the founders on the matter most certainly do. [1]: "While often categorized as a democracy, the United States is more accurately defined as a constitutional federal republic. What does this mean? “Constitutional” refers to the fact that government in the United States is based on a Constitution which is the supreme law of the United States. The Constitution not only provides the framework for how the federal and state governments are structured, but also places significant limits on their powers. “Federal” means that there is both a national government and governments of the 50 states. A “republic” is a form of government in which the people hold power, but elect representatives to exercise that power."

Federalist No_14 also had a lot to say on the matter: “In a democracy, the people meet and exercise the government in person; in a republic, they assemble and administer it by their representatives and agents. A democracy, consequently, will be confined to a small spot. A republic may be extended over a large region.”

[1] https://ar.usembassy.gov/education-culture/irc/u-s-governmen...

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