Earlier quoted context omitted.
Death of your people vs death of other people.
what do you exactly mean?
Red army was shedding blood of their own people to keep peace at Afghanistan.
Mikhail Gorbachev has died
691–700 of 971 posts
Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died
#692The 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…
The US actively supported Yeltsin and paved the way for Putin.
This is what they wanted.
And it's working wonders now - the US will make a fortune off of LNG and arms sales, whilst completely destroying competing European industry which suffers gas shortages and uncompetitive energy prices.
It's a masterful long-term play.
Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died
#693Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would he end up in hell?
Because he is a traitor to his people. I know not a single person so universally hated by his own people but Gorbachev. He caused collapse of great country, sold it for dollars and cola. The fact that he’s praised by western people further solidifies it.
If country is great, it can’t be collapsed so easily. USSR was dead, Gorbachev just put it out of its misery.
Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died
#694Earlier quoted context omitted.
But the dissolution of soviet union is not over yet. You can see this nowhere as clearly as in russias attack on Ukraine[0] where imperialistic russians that dream of restoring the glory and borders of soviet union[1] are waging their genocidal war. Meanwhile they are using hunger[2] and energy as their weapons against the rest of the world[3]. If the russians are not stopped in Ukraine, then there is no reason to be…
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> Imagine if Trump had really been a Russian agent and had returned Alaska to Russia, would you expect all subsequent administrations to just respect that it is Russian now?
Huh? You mean: Imagine if Russia just annexed Alaska after they sent their green men over-there, to disrupt and takeover the region.
Since when Ukraine just gave up on crimea? They were bullied off it and same with donbass. Their military was weak and disorganization so puting took advantage then.
Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died
#695Gorbachev 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…
But the dissolution of soviet union is not over yet. You can see this nowhere as clearly as in russias attack on Ukraine[0] where imperialistic russians that dream of restoring the glory and borders of soviet union[1] are waging their genocidal war. Meanwhile they are using hunger[2] and energy as their weapons against the rest of the world[3]. If the russians are not stopped in Ukraine, then there is no reason to be…
> there is no reason to believe that they wouldn't rinse and repeat in.. Alaska
No reason? I can think of 1365 reasons, if Wikipedia is up to date.
Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died
#696Earlier quoted context omitted.
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> the War of Northern Aggression That’s some choice phrasing there. Mind explaining this framing? Pretty sure the only people I’ve seen use this phrasing were people who thought the confederacy and slavery were good things
As non US person i was scratching my head about what exactly that meant.
Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died
#697Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the big difference is the oligarchs The oligarchs were minted in the late 80s and 90s. They weren’t a preëxisting power structure. Putin came to power with their and the FSB’s help. (He was also popular for not being incompetent.)
Wasn't the preexisting power structure the Soviet military? I thought that that Soviet generals stationed near large and valuable resources simply decided that these large and valuable resources had become their private property. Organized crimes and powerful politicians filled in the gaps.
No, none of the oligarchs were generals. They were usually entrepreneurs (Russia always had them, openly under Perestroika) who were well connected with one or more of
* The state apparatus
* The gray/black economy (or the criminal underworld)
* Foreign interests
The Soviet military was tightly politically controlled, they were well aware of the dangers of popular generals.
Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died
#698Rest in peace Sir. Because of you hundreds of millions of people are living a better life. A pity that Putin came shortly after and is in the active process of destroying a country (or two). But you couldn't control that. You did more than most people in the world to move humankind towards a better place.
I'm really astonished. In what kind of echo chamber do you live in? Have you been in Russia in 90's? It was not only an economical disaster, more than ten years we lived in a constant bombardment by the media of "revelations" about our lives before, kinda non stop shit storm (we even believed this was the press freedom as the west sees it). In the hindsight it seems like it was impossible to devastate a country to su…
But that’s on Yeltsin, not on Gorbachev. What’s on Gorbachev is that all the Eastern European countries got to be free. I was born there. Life now is many times better than it was during Communism.
Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died
#699Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dissolution as it did was quite organised. Especially when you take into consideration that the society could barely function in market economy after decades of living sovietism. And economically it was a mess with too much focus on military complex. The rest being terribly inefficient. The only way to stay away from the old apparatchiks would have been management by occupational forces for several decades. And that…
Right. I'd add that it was, judging by historical parallels, rather happy dissolution - not perfect, as GP mentions, but hardly a cause for too much annoyance.
Well, for the annoyances part, Russia did great work to setup future annoyances that they're now exploiting. Rebel republics in Georgia that were exploited in 2008. Nagorno karabach in Armenia is hot since late 80s and probably will stay such in foreseeable future. Then Moldova's Padniestre is ripe and would have been next after Ukraine. Crimea with special status of Sevastopol was perfect setup too.
Here in Lithuania we narrowly avoided a similar issue as well with an attempt to establish an „autonomous republic“ in early 90s.
Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died
#700Earlier 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...
> Instead NATO kept expanding east... You mean Eastern countries wanted to join NATO.
Not how it works. NATO is invite only.