Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I'm saying that a catastrophic decomposition through a coup that left most of the Soviet apparatchiks in power (Lukashenko, Yeltsin/Putin, etc) is barely better than nothing at all. The problems it caused to people in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and many other former Soviet republics aren't minor by any account — and they are a direct reason for why Putin managed to hold power for so long. The way in which the USSR dis…
Mikhail Gorbachev has died
561–570 of 971 posts
Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died
#562The 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 cou…
For example it needs the firm rule of law to be established, yet it is not clear there's anything the US could have done to prevent the divvying up of state resources amongst clever individuals who appropriated vast wealth, through usually dishonest means, becoming today's oligarchs. Nor could the US do anything to eliminate the Russian pride that remained in their former empire, which placed fairly unique pressures on Russia's leaders ("we may be poor but at least everyone else is afraid of us" was not as much of a fringe attitude among the common people as one might think).
So I don't think the conditions were at all similar between Germany and Japan on the one hand, and the Russian Federation on the other, and I don't think any kind of Marshal plan could have ever worked without these missing conditions.
After all, for decades we thought of China that if we just made them all rich, they'd all see the benefits of Western democracy and become more like us ideologically. So the West encouraged open trade with China and... the end result was a country which now had the resources to reäffirm their state ideology. Today we see a China pushing to strengthen the Maoist values it was founded on, rather than dismantling them.
Unfortunately, without utter national humiliation that completely breaks the people's belief in their former state ideology, I just don't think ideological transformation in any kind of short period of time is possible.
Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died
#563good 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…
Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died
#564Earlier quoted context omitted.
Russian citizen here, and one with enough self-honesty to talk about 199X without selling self-pity, unlike my compatriot here. > 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. Total bullshit. The West did put in nearly as much money as part of GDP in aid to early 199X Russia as US did in Europe…
> to SCALE UP the pressure after the USSR collapse to force genuine reforms Reforms such as? The countru had new borders, new constitution, new everything. There isn't a legal reform that would have magocally solvednthe problem. > US totally failed to empower the right kind of people back then with its aid. Wouls it be realistic and possibpe for a US obserber to know who the right people are?
Russian Federation is RSFSR left intact with its borders and regional partition.
Crushing parliament with tanks in 1993 left the country without any checks to presidential power.
Yeltsin constitution gave enormous power to president. For example he can introduce general attorney (the only one who can open investigation on president). Or judges of supreme and costitutional courts (that can introduce changes to constitution itself). Once you've got a puppet parliament, you're free to go, unchecked power.
All regions besides Moscow (or hyper loyal enclaves like Chechnya) are ruled by capital as colonies.
It's evident not only in Russian regions but also occupied territories of Ukraine and Crimea. The assets are quickly divided between Moscow, Chechen and local gangs. Dissent is crushed and voices are forever silenced.
Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died
#565Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
When the Berlin Wall came down, there were not a few people still around with vivid memories of what 'Unified Germany' had got up to in the 20th century, so there was that. Just sayin.
Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died
#566Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the big difference is the oligarchs. The USSR had already been transitioned to a resource state, and there was no actual rebuilding that needed to happen. The Marshall plan was almost easy because you could tally up all the broken bridges and say “itll cost us $X to fix”. What’s the equivalent for post USSR? What ended up happening was oligarchs swooped in to take over from the central planners, and it’s not…
I think you have this upside down. The oligarchs didn't swoop in and ruin everything. The Russian government did not want their resources and industry controlled by foreign share holders, so they were dead set on privatizing the economy by selling to Russians only. With this constraint, the handful of Russians who were able to raise capital in such a short time, without foreign counter bids, got the privatized busine…
Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died
#567May future generations know your name good Sir.
Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died
#568The 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…
We are also dealing today with blowback from the perceived claim that "Not One Inch" [1] of NATO expansion to the East could be expected as Western policy. The Partnership for Peace program may have started off in the right direction, but, as the military hawks took policy control like good generals the only thing they actually cared about was "securing the nukes". And expanding NATO to the East. Ps I worked with a g…
What people who complain about NATO expansion seem to forget is that the countries being "expanded into" still have living memory, within one generation, of Soviet tanks rolling through their streets to put down any attempts at independence in governance. There was Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland... the US didn't coërce these countries to join NATO, these countries were practically begging to be included.
Then the Russian Federation made the demand at the beginning of 2022 for NATO to remove its troops and equipment from Central/Eastern Europe as if they ruled over those nations. The gall to think to dictate the international military security policy for a population totalling twice the size of their own is astounding.
Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died
#569Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you heard about a single moment in time when people liked the leader of their country?
FDR after he gave up to the requests of the communists and created the largest welfare program in US history?
Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died
#570Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.