Mikhail Gorbachev has died • Hacker News Board

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#541

Post by sbaiddn » Wed, Aug 31, 2022, 3:53 AM UTC

wahern wrote: post #372

pastacacioepepe wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

> NATO kept expanding east You make it sound like NATO was unilaterally pushing for this. Eastern European countries were begging to join NATO. All of them had been independent multiple times over the centuries, always ending up under Russian control. NATO offered a plausible mechanism to end the historical cycle--an historical cycle for which Russia, in 2022, is proudly nostalgic and not afraid to go to war to conti…

What US interests are served (thats all of NATO, really) antagonizing Russia over Latvia?

And NATO's "peaceful resolution" of European conflict is bunk - ask the Cypriots or the Greeks how NATO tampers Turkish ambitions.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#542

Post by sbaiddn » Wed, Aug 31, 2022, 3:56 AM UTC

bediger4000 wrote: post #4

I was taught that Ronald Reagan ended the cold war and gave us the longest lasting economic boom.

Reagan did a lot of things wrong, but he understood one thing better than anyone in DC - nuclear war cannot be won.

With this conviction he was able to defuse tensions. He was a great, if flawed, president (and as a Latino, Im on the receiving end of his mistakes)

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#543

Post by unmole » Wed, Aug 31, 2022, 4:01 AM UTC

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 take away the nukes from Russia

And how exactly would they have accomplished that?

> and let Ukraine have their nukes

Why would anyone in their right mind want to give nukes to a smaller, less stable country?

This is just recency bias run amok.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#544

Post by sammalloy » Wed, Aug 31, 2022, 4:03 AM UTC

selimthegrim wrote: post #511

sammalloy wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was not really a base for capitalism to take hold and effect. It needs a basic rule of law and democracy to work. All it got was brief window of chaos, before the kleptocracy returned. This is my understanding as well, from everything I’ve read. The more interesting question is why Russia, both as a nation state and a culture, has no history or tradition of democracy. I’ve never received an answer to this questi…

You might want to check out the history of Novgorod.

Thank you! I briefly looked at the Wiki article to see what you were talking about. Apparently, some of the cultural history in regards to democracy is unknown, as the article mentions that the exact nature of the democratic experiment was lost to time.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#545

Post by smsm42 » Wed, Aug 31, 2022, 4:08 AM UTC

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…

You can't force democracy on people. US - as a state and as private persons (Soros in particular) invested a lot into trying to build up democratic institutions (at least as they understood them) in Russia. It didn't work, and in part it didn't work because Russians seemed not to value the same things Americans value. Now, I am talking in generic, in broad strokes - which is never 100% true for any society, it's always more complex. But you can identify the major tendencies and likelihood of certain ideas to win or wither.

At least significant part of Russians seems to be ok with having no free speech, no real elections and no independent judiciary or other democratic institutions - as long as they are reasonably safe, physically and economically, and the bad things only happen to those who speak up or somehow do something "wrong" (which includes demanding to have those institutions publicly). They have been living this way for decades, and they have been living in much worse way - where bad things happened to pretty much everybody, regardless of what you do - for decades before that. Looks like they developed some habits that make their society very atomized and politically inert. Couple that with significant resentment of formerly having great empire (it was nominally "Soviet", not "Russian", but everybody knew where the capital was - in Moscow, right?!) and now being forced to play by the rules they did not write - and you get the full Weimar picture, and you know where that leads. Not to the thriving democracy. I don't think any "Marshall Plan" would have helped - and Russian wouldn't accept this magnitude of intrusion anyway.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#546

Post by d0mine » Wed, Aug 31, 2022, 4:09 AM UTC

romwell wrote: post #12

chitowneats wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I laughed so loud at this my wife yelled at me from across the house, "What's so funny?!"

There's no way that comment wasn't sarcasm, right?

It is not a sarcasm: thanks to a well intentioned but too trusting politician, NATO moved to East and Russia has to fight for survival against vastly superior opponent.

If you are interested, we could look at the map, compare some numbers (weapons, population, media control, the number of countries bombs, etc)

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#547

Post by bryik » Wed, Aug 31, 2022, 4:11 AM UTC

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…

To anyone interested in this topic, I highly recommend "Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union" by Vladislav M. Zubok. This comment reminded me of one of my notes:

Near the end of the book, George HW Bush tries to convince the US government to provide economic aid to stabilize the fledgeling Russian state but this fails. Earlier in the book there is talk of a "Grand Bargain", a theory that for $100 billion the US could convert the USSR from an enemy into a friend similar to how the Marshall Plan and Berlin Airlift converted the Germans into close US allies. Japan is another example of this. After WW2, instead of razing Japan and Germany as Rome did to Carthage, the US raised them from their knees. It helped rebuild and rehabilitate these countries.

There was no Marshall Plan for Russia. Many of the Russian politicians and economists expected significant economic aid from the West. This aid did not materialize, at least not in the form and magnitude that was expected. The transition from state socialism to capitalist market economy was traumatic; during the USSR the poverty rate was 30%, after the collapse the poverty rate was 80%. The average lifespan of a Russian man was 66 during the USSR, after the collapse it was around 55.

The loss of super power status, of territory, and of economic strength created significant political backlash in the years following the collapse. These conditions promoted nationalism, populism, and authoritarianism which Putin used to seize control. Russia does not have a cultural history of democracy so maybe this was inevitable, but perhaps greater Western support would have avoided it?

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#548

Post by bigcat12345678 » Wed, Aug 31, 2022, 4:14 AM UTC

agumonkey wrote: post #535

bigcat12345678 wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

That part thanks to confuscious tradition

Look at China, Confucius is the God of Asia....

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#549

Post by testrun » Wed, Aug 31, 2022, 4:15 AM UTC

catominor wrote: post #470

hestefisk wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Countries like Poland and Hungary have huge social issues and struggle with corruption. A lot of political research points to the recent rise in fascist nationalism in these two countries as caused by being thrown from one political ideology to another (e.g. “communism” to ironfisted neoliberalism / Washington Consensus). It’s pretty evident none of them worked. If anything the country that was LEAST worse o…

The DDR/BDR wealth/income divide is still significant, even today and in spite of the government's fairly aggressive taxes explicitly earmarked to develop the former DDR.

And if you compare current eastern Germany as opposed to the DDR, current inhabitants have it so much better. Another group that did not improve are the stans (Kazakstan and related countries).

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#550

Post by hackerlight » Wed, Aug 31, 2022, 4:16 AM UTC

idlewords wrote: post #61

Gorbachev secured his place in history by what he didn't do. While never endorsing the end of the eastern bloc, he made it clear beginning in the late 1980's that unlike his predecessors, he would not oppose democratic reforms in Eastern Europe by force. To general astonishment, he kept this promise, and with the regrettable exception of Lithuania this commitment to not repeating the crimes of his predecessors is Gor…

From everything I've read about him, he was a true liberal and egalitarian. How does someone like that rise up the ranks of an authoritarian USSR in the first place? Did he hide his beliefs and present as just a competent bureaucrat until he got to the top?