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Mikhail Gorbachev has died

reuters.com

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Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#391

Post by trasz »

practice9 wrote: post #251
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…

What the US (and Europe) should have done was to take away the nukes from Russia, and let Ukraine have their nukes after the fall of USSR. Russia definitely has more history of imperialism than Ukraine (which has none of that)

What the US and Europe should have done was to strip Russia off all its colonies, not just some of them.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#392

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#393

Post by sph »

paulpauper wrote: post #72

Like Bill clinton, he helped define 90s geopolitics. It's remarkable how he faded away like he did. Nelson Mandela, Yassir Arafat , Ariel Sharon..that whole era.

They were too moderate for the modern age. Centrism has gone out of fashion.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#394

Post by hotpotamus »

avmich wrote: post #236
AdamJacobMuller wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I used to find that drinking a lot helped but then my insides started to hurt. I'm thinking about maybe growing psilocybin mushrooms now.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#395

Post by t6jvcereio »

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…

Also, there was no effort to dezombify the Russian population.

I read recently that only in the 60s the German public opinion started moving towards "Nazis are bad", and that was because of an external effort to reeducate them (I had just assumed that after they lost the war, the population would automatically see the Nazis were bad).

No such effort happened with the Russians, so they're still trying to conquer Europe, as they have been since tsarist era.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#398

Post by hilbert42 »

Such sad news but not unexpected.

Recently, I saw the hour-long documentary of Werner Herzog interviewing Mikhail Gorbachev and it was not only riveting television but also one of the saddest and most upsetting I've seen in a long while.

I'm not going to go into details as I don't think I could convey the tone and atmosphere of the conversation and do it justice. All I can say is that if you haven't seen it then you should make an effort to do so.

YouTube doesn't have the full video but there are a few short excerpts from it of a minute or two in length.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#399

Post by DubiousPusher »

onepointsixC wrote: post #367
DubiousPusher wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The U.S. held a lot of sway in the post USSR. They lent a lot of credibility to Yeltsin. If the U.S. had pushed for a system that actually would've held the resources in trust for the people and allowed them to be developed by market capital, that very likely could've happened. But the reality is that across every region of the globe, the U.S. in the constant purity quest of its foreign policy had purposefully aliena…

>If the U.S. had pushed for a system that actually would've held the resources in trust for the people and allowed them to be developed by market capital, that very likely could've happened. No, this is purely wishful thinking. The Soviet System was one fundamentally incentivized and propagated corruption. Those who had previously been in control or had knowledge of the workings of the Soviet Economy were always goin…

You may be right about the lack of ability of the U.S. to have much impact. Though I don't think the outcome of the was so forgone.

There was lots of corruption in the Soviet Union. But we're talking about orders of magnitude difference here. Soviet corruption revolved around small bribes for services, lies on official documentation, etc. For 30 years now, Russia's resources have been looted to enrich several dozen people. We're talking about one of the largest shifts in wealth inequality in the history of the world.

The current crop of Russian oligarchs are generally not former communist party officials. They did gain their resources from former party members and largely by bribing these people.

Much of this could've been prevented however with an orderly transition away from the single party system. By outlawing the party, Russia broke the central disciplining and organizing structure of government, the economy and law. This left in place the people but without discipline or oversight which allowed the looting to take place.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#400

Post by vladTheInhaler »

koheripbal wrote: post #314
lapcat wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. There's a lot of evidence that US kleptocrats collaborated to help turn Russia into a kleptocracy. Practically encouraged rather than discouraged that outcome.

You cite no evidence for this conspiratorial claim.

https://www.thenation.com/article/world/harvard-boys-do-russ...

American consultants were instrumental in organizing the massive selloff of state assets, and quite a few of them turned around and used their knowledge of the system they created to become quite rich. Andrei Shleifer said as much in an interview on the topic, though I can't find it now.

edit: it seems like someone else posted the same link while I was looking for the interview.

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