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Mikhail Gorbachev has died

reuters.com

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Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#531

Post by sbaiddn »

wawjgreen wrote: post #497

good riddance. he was an uneducated idiot, who is indirectly responsible for the millions that were killed in Afghanistan, in 1992. In 1989, when he pulled the red army out of Afghanistan--he also cut all aid to the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. the then-president of DRA went to Moscow to persuade Garbageoff to not to do so, predicting that the terrorist zealots would overrun his government leading to chaos in…

Ya, 20 years of war and a loss and the West still doesn't know the basics of Afghan history.

We think we fared better than the Soviets did.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#532

Post by sbaiddn »

nradov wrote: post #227
photochemsyn wrote: post #100

"Arsenals of Folly" By Richard Rhodes is one of the best records of the Gorbachev era with respect to negotiations over arms reductions with Reagan (which resulted in a highly fractured US administration, with opponents (Cheney etc.) fighting advocates (Shultz etc.) over what policy Reagan should support), the immense effect of the Chernobyl disaster on the Soviet Union (something many nuclear energy proponents still…

I won't attempt to defend NATO interventions in other countries, but disbanding it like the Warsaw Pact was never a real option so long as Russia continued to maintain a significant military capability including nuclear weapons. The Warsaw Pact was never a real thing to begin with. It was a total fiction, not a voluntary alliance of (somewhat) equal sovereign states like NATO. All of the other Warsaw Pact members wer…

NATO is voluntary? Please! Gladio, P2 in Europe, the Greek civil war and coups in Turkey beg to differ.

The post war equilibrium was decided in Yalta explicitly defining how Europe would be split with zero input from continental Europeans.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#533

Post by d0mine »

iknowstuff wrote: post #479
thrown_22 wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet populations are collapsing in every former communist state. I don't know what you call it when a country loses 10% of it's population, like Ukraine did, but decimation is the dictionary definition.

Uh you might want to re-read that definition.

"the killing of one in every ten of a group of people as a punishment for the whole group (originally with reference to a mutinous Roman legion)."

10% is "one in every ten"

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#534

Post by sbaiddn »

legerdemain wrote: post #279

The Reuters article describes Gorbachev as "the last Soviet president." This is technically correct, but misleading. Gorbachev was also the first and the only person to hold that office. Heads of the Soviet Union held the office of the general secretary of the party.

I thought there was a non general secretary head of state before Stalin made the secretary the top post. I can recall what it was called though

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#535

Post by agumonkey »

bigcat12345678 wrote: post #339
agumonkey wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

> isn't it cultural ? On the one hand, in the scale of brutality, every nation in history is at least 1 level below the Imperial Japan in WWII. On the other hand, after the decisive show of force, beaconed by the nuclear bomb, Japan realized that brutality is going to cause the doom of that nation. So they naturally bowed down. After that brutality is no longer necessary, like a beaten dog that would not really need…

It's one way to see that. But after such brutal events it's easy for a people to fall into despair or hate but Japan bounce back better than a lot of country. They rapidly absorbed and mastered electronics better than a lot of country. I always find it rare.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#536

Post by marcinzm »

justsomehnguy wrote: post #414
marcinzm wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was in Poland in the late 90s and there were fairly large economic issues with a lack of job projects for many people. This in turn resulted in fairly high rates of crime as it was one of the more guaranteed ways to make a living if you were young. Many other people left the country to make money which in the long turn led to some of the Brexit issues. I literally didn't meet a single person, including myself, who…

> Four point locks and steel doors were the norm for apartments and houses (and that didn't always help). Because whose who installed them of course now knew where are someone with something worth protecting with a steel doors.

This isn't the west where you worry about a small percentage of semi-professional burglars. This was a pretty massive number of fairly amateur burglars who did it simply because it was easy. If you did nothing then you'll get robbed by them due to sheer numbers. Guaranteed. If you do something then you'll face the much smaller percentage of more professional burglars. Then you're only somewhat likely to get robbed.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#537

Post by [deleted] »

agumonkey wrote: post #310
MichaelCollins wrote: post #283

Earlier 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)

[deleted]

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#538

Post by sbaiddn »

bishnu wrote: post #96
avmich wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Andrei Piontkovskiy, in addition to two known World Wars, considers the Cold War as the World War III and the current war in Eastern Europe as the World War IV. His parallels are that WWII was fought by Germany dissatisfied by the results of WWI, and WWIV is fought by Russia dissatisfied by the results of WWIII.

This analogy doesn't hold for "WWIII" though, right? By this analogy, I would call the current crisis "Cold War II".

The Cold war wasnt cold. Not in Asia, Africa or Latin America.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#539

Post by unmole »

iknowstuff wrote: post #479
thrown_22 wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet populations are collapsing in every former communist state. I don't know what you call it when a country loses 10% of it's population, like Ukraine did, but decimation is the dictionary definition.

Uh you might want to re-read that definition.

decimation /dɛsɪˈmeɪʃ(ə)n/

(noun)

the killing of one in every ten of a group of people as a punishment for the whole group (originally with reference to a mutinous Roman legion).

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#540

Post by gumby »

starik36 wrote: post #411
insane_dreamer wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeltsin is very much to blame. Russia would have transitioned much better if Gorbachev had been the head of the post-USSR Russia instead of Yeltsin. That said, the former Soviet Republics that transitioned well are those that were smaller, already edging their way towards a market economy before the USSR collapse, and received substantial help from (and eventually joined) the EU (Baltics, Hungary, Poland, Czech Rep.,…

> much better if Gorbachev had been the head of the post-USSR Russia Gorbachev wanted to keep USSR intact. He didn't want a post-USSR Russia. He initiated referendums to that end. But USSR was already on the train to dissolution and nothing was going to stop it.

> Gorbachev wanted to keep USSR intact.

Indeed. He didn't weigh in on the current debacle but he praised Putin's seizure of Crimea.

He was a product of his upbringing and honestly he always seemed like a weak player to me -- but really I have no idea how difficult it might have been to bring off the reforms he did under Andropov, Chernenko and then his own premiership.

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