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Mikhail Gorbachev has died

reuters.com

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Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#591

Post by mantas »

type0 wrote: post #311
pastacacioepepe wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> who were demonstrating for democratic reforms. You seem to comment to better inform readers, yet your comment distorts the truth. Even the article you linked talks about Lithuania declaring independence from the USSR, not asking for democratic reforms. Despite what your article says, if you read the story on Wikipedia, Lithuania did in fact unilaterally declare independence from the USSR in March 1990. Just as an e…

Spain isn't a union state

More like Spain constitution doesn't have an article detailing exit process.

Meanwhile USSR constitution had such article. Which was used by Lithuania when declaring independence.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#592

Post by morsch »

cpursley wrote: post #384
einpoklum wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Fwiw, Russian PPP is not far behind Germany.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locat...

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#593

Post by avmich »

trasz wrote: post #412
avmich wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the today's war in Ukraine one country - Russia - fights directly, not from proxies, and the other side - mostly USA, but also other Western countries - supply weapons, volunteers, intelligence services, training. It is comparable with Vietnam war, right, but not already with Afghan war of 1980-s, or small conflicts around the world. The scale of war is also quite large, the level of directly fighting forces is mu…

The other side is Ukraine, not USA. USA is merely providing support. Generally speaking, proxy wars happen between superpowers. In this conflict there is only one, and it’s supporting Ukraine.

Should we admit that world wars don't need to involve superpowers - or at least only superpowers? The term wasn't that much applicable before end of WWII.

So here we can argue that in WWIV a non-superpower fights - Ukraine, on its territory, a superpower - USA, merely - but with principal results - supporting Ukraine, and the rest of the West. We may not call it a proxy war - I agree, it's a rather poor comparison - but for WWIV term it is another matter.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#594

Post by dmitriid »

marcinzm wrote: post #536
justsomehnguy wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

We had our neighbors (who we thought our friends) break into our apartment and steal stuff.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#595

Post by mantas »

pastacacioepepe wrote: post #207
nradov wrote: post #135

For those unfamiliar with what happened in Lithuania, in 1991 Gorbachev used military force to kill 14 Lithuanian civilians who were demonstrating for democratic reforms. https://www.rferl.org/a/lithuania-soviet-crackdown-1991-krem...

> who were demonstrating for democratic reforms. You seem to comment to better inform readers, yet your comment distorts the truth. Even the article you linked talks about Lithuania declaring independence from the USSR, not asking for democratic reforms. Despite what your article says, if you read the story on Wikipedia, Lithuania did in fact unilaterally declare independence from the USSR in March 1990. Just as an e…

USSR constitution did allow such unilateral exit declarations.

Of course, USSR constitution declared many things that were far from truth. But ultimately words on paper do make a difference, even in totalitarian regimes.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#596

Post by jillesvangurp »

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…

I don't think it's that simple. Unlike post war Germany, the Russia that emerged from the cold war wasn't a functioning democracy but more of a kleptocracy. Yeltsin got put in power by a military that saw him as a convenient stooge.

And with Yeltsin, corruption and nepotism flared up almost immediately. So any kind of Marshall plan would have deteriorated into providing billions to oligarchs. Which is of course what happened in any case. And of course eventually the KGB and Putin took over with all their institutional paranoia regarding the west. Allegedly, Putin might actually be the richest person on this planet at this point. It's hard to estimate his exact wealth but he's not a poor man, to say the least.

You are also forgetting, that Russia was still a powerful nuclear capable force after the wall came down. There was no military defeat. And there were plenty of olive branches in terms of investments and collaboration. But, the Russians weren't exactly open to the US dictating them how to run their country. Germany had no choice in the matter. It was occupied by the allied forces and ruined by WW II.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#597

Post by al_mandi »

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 help Russia transition to democracy

You mean like how they "helped" countries like Iraq and Afghanistan transition to democracy? Leaving behind millions dead and diplaced?

It's astounding how some people in the West think they reached enlightenment.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#598

Post by avmich »

romwell wrote: post #523
avmich wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Cold War wasn't a good thing, but it didn't have to end with the dissolution of the USSR, and the dissolution of the USSR didn't have to end with a coup, followed by chaos, which nevertheless kept all the appartchiks in charge. We may almost always wish things were better than they actually were. For example, USA went through a minor recession at the end of the Cold War - was it necessary? In case of USSR thing…

Hindsight is 20/20, sure, but the 90s were a time where a lot of people didn't have anything to eat, a time where everyone's life savings turned to dust overnight, a time where many people ended up homeless, a time where highly educated people became unemployed without warning (or couldn't get salaries for years on end) and were better off sweeping streets than working at science institutes... And that set a basis fo…

> but the 90s were a time where a lot of people didn't have anything to eat, a time where

True, it was a quite big transformation of lives for everybody - fortunately without a major civil war, though with many lesser wars in less centralized regions. Yet the result was an improvement on average, in Russia it started to feel in 1999, and even earlier in Baltic countries. Wouldn't be sure about Asian countries though.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#599

Post by pc2g4d »

hetman wrote: post #562
bryik wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I see this claim pop up pretty frequently but I think it ignores a rather important factor and that was that those countries suffered complete defeat at the hands of the US, that meant the US could impose any ideology they wished on the country. This was never the case with Russia. Now for sure, the USSR ended its life as a failed economic state, and the Russian Federation that emerged may have been willing to accept…

You may be right that "unconditional surrender" and occupation are prerequisites for the sort of transformation that Germany and Japan underwent. But the collapse of empire as experienced by Russia vis-a-vis the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact may have been sufficiently traumatic that such a transformation could have been triggered.

The tragedy of not having a "Marshall Plan" for the former communist bloc is that we will never know if it would have worked. There was no guarantee, but at this point, to me it seems like a terrible lost opportunity.

But perhaps, as China's dominance becomes increasingly uncomfortable for Russia, things in time may change. A reformed Russia integrated into the "western" alliance... one can still dream, however faintly.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#600

Post by pelasaco »

htowieuro234 wrote: post #473
bhupy wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It wasn't great even for DDR.

regarding DDR, Netflix has a doc, that talks extensively about it.. https://www.netflix.com/de-en/title/81022994
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