As the Russian, I'm of the opinion that Gorbachev is traitor. I hate communism, so it's good that he helped us to get rid of that. But why getting rid of communism had to include letting Americans to take reign in many government agencies of Russia? What would be your opinion of US president, if he goes to to retire in Russia? I'm reading some Russian news site, and almost universally Gorbachev is hated by Russians.
> But why getting rid of communism had to include letting Americans to take reign in many government agencies of Russia? Wow. Such a claim. I'm sure you have mountains of examples of this happening just one time.
Mikhail Gorbachev has died
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Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died
#322RIP Gorbachev, one of the few genuinely good people in politics. After he retired from politics, he was featured in several advertisements: - In 1994 for Apple Computer: https://www.upi.com/Archives/1994/10/07/The-first-advertisem... - In 1998 for Pizza Hut: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorbachev_Pizza_Hut_commercial - In 2000 for the ÖBB, the Austrian railways: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLscz8kEg6c - In 2007…
For the West he was a hero, for the Russians he was a disaster https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/Russia/Death_rate/ . I don't blame Gorbachev for this. Just as in the case of Nikolai II Russian totalitarian state and lack of checks and balances washed out an inept person to rule the country.
The communist system is responsible for that, not Gorbachev. Centralized gov't controlled economies create corruption which results in ultimate economic collapse.
Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died
#323Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
If the cold war did end, why didn't NATO dissolve as well? It was born exactly to contain the USSR! Instead NATO kept expanding east...
So USA can force europeans to buy their fighter jets.
Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died
#324Earlier 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…
You're kidding. Watch a Soviet movie, estimate the level of poverty people lived - if the difference with reality was too great, people wouldn't watch them.
Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died
#325The 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…
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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.
Given the utter unmitigated disaster of the Russian economy in the 90s, I'd daresay that it certainly had the ability to influence it away from the hard swing towards strongman authoritarianism that followed.
The Washington Consensus was a disaster, and strongly soured the country on working with the West.
Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died
#326Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The U.S. put its thumb heavily on the scale More than a thumb. The Constitution of Japan was written by Americans. America stomped on the scale, and that time it seems to have worked.
isn't it cultural ? japanese seems to be ok struggling under american control and keep reaching higher. People say US money made Japan thrive but so many time throwing money at a large problem fails.. I think the population was just more mentally compatible. Or maybe the post soviet Russia was dealt a bad hand. Hard to know (just like here, you can find infinite streams of contradictory arguments)
Hard to say. I suspect the horrific bombing of Japanese cities probably had something to do with their willingness to submit. Leaving their Emperor intact as a figurehead probably helped a lot. Perhaps American willingness to help Japan rebuild immediately after such a bitter war also played a role.
There were probably innumerable factors that went into it. But there are a lot of differences between that situation and the fall of the Soviet Union.
Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died
#327Earlier quoted context omitted.
> [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…
Check life expectancy of russians… it is not the same… it has gone worse.
Unimpressed. How much worse? USA life expectation went worse for last couple of years - is it enough argument for the lack of an argument?
Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died
#328Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interestingly, South Carolina declared its independence December 20, 1860, and the US Civil War didn't begin until April 12, 1861, when the Confederate Army attacked Fort Sumter. It's an intriguing historical question what would have happened if Fort Sumter hadn't been attacked. Would the Union have eventually made the first move? Would peaceful negotiations have eventually resulted in some stronger guarantee in the…
I’m not sure your specific speculation is on the list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War_alternate_h...
Wargaming political negotiations is far less popular than wargaming, well, wars.
You might be able to have a little fun with the first option -- the Union attacks first -- but it's still going to largely end up political questions:
1. If the Union attacked immediately after South Carolina seceded, how would it have changed which States would follow suit?
2. If the Union attacked in 1862, would more States have seceded by then?
3. Would the Union have lost any supporters -- either notable generals or even member States -- if it had fired first?
After those political questions are answered you could have fun wargaming out the subsequent war with new sides, but trying to answer the political questions is not as easy or fun.
Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died
#329Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There was no "Marshall Plan" after the Cold War l There was such a plan, at least in the twisted minds of the people behind the Washington Consensus. They were calling it privatization or price liberalization or some other non-sense like that, thing is the common people got the very, very short stick (like my parents, who lost their jobs, their city apartment and who had to resort to literally subsistence agricultu…
The transition to a market economy went very well for most of the former Soviet Republics except Russia. https://economistwritingeveryday.com/2022/03/16/the-transiti... A lot of Russia's issues stem from the way the government sold off their state owned corporations, which created artificial monopoly/oligopoly owners overnight — often insiders/cronies to begin with. This can be contrasted with traditional market econ…
Tell that to people in Belarus or Ukraine (not talking about the situation since 2014), Kazakhstan etc. Not sure about the situation in the others. A post talking about "GDP per capita" rather than what people's lives are like is kind of a joke.
Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died
#330Earlier 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?
Every economic system has capital, even socialist ones, it just means property. What distinguishes capitalism is that individual rights over capital are respected.
Capitalism is based on private property rights, and individual economic freedoms to buy and sell your labour or property. That means it’s fundamentally reliant on the robust rule of law to enforce those rights, the rights of those purchasing property and services, etc. It’s those rights that enable the trust required for a functioning market. Corporatist, oligarchic and cartel based systems are often described as capitalist, but they’re really not capitalist because they don’t respect individual rights over capital any more than communism does. Like communism they’re just stitch-ups.
The role played by the rule of law often gets down played or even criticised by libertarian free marketeers. They think it’s needless regulation and just government interfering in free markets. But without the rule of law you get bloody free for alls like in Russia in the 90s.