Mikhail Gorbachev has died • Hacker News Board

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#821

Post by raxxorraxor » Wed, Aug 31, 2022, 12:24 PM UTC

kunagi7 wrote: post #741

rixrax wrote: post #680

Earlier 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…

First of all, RIP Gorbachev. The Soviet Union ceased to exist in December 26, 1991 [0]. Russia is not the USSR, and it's almost impossible it will never be anything remotely close. Most of the former USSR industrial capabilities where either abandoned, razed or looted. Russia's modern industry (including military) depends heavily on European (now sanctioned and obtained via third countries) and Chinese imports. This…

> gigantic former USSR reserves

Heh, I doubt such a thing exists or has ever existed. Resource trade is a large part of their income.

edit: Ah, you meant military capacities...

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#822

Post by simonh » Wed, Aug 31, 2022, 12:24 PM UTC

tylersmith wrote: post #374

patentatt wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard variations of this story a lot. Common people and workers received a share of the company they work for, but times were so dire most people sold them to those with money for a pittance. So foreseeable, why was it allowed to happen?

Some people chose to put their assets to work for later and others to sell their assets for cash right now. Why shouldn't people be allowed to make those decisions?

Do you really, genuinely believe that these people had credible options, and were not deliberately coerced and engineered into desperate economic conditions in order to squeeze them into selling their shares for a pittance?

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#823

Post by wobbleblob » Wed, Aug 31, 2022, 12:28 PM UTC

hetman wrote: post #566

wobbleblob wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Which ever way the cause and effect happened, I think parent's point stands that there was little the US could have done to intervene.

Not only that, it would have been highly inappropriate for the US to intervene in another country's domestic affairs uninvited.

The assumption everything bad is always our fault is just the other side of the coin of the narcissistic belief that we're the greatest of all time at everything and therefor always right.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#824

Post by vintermann » Wed, Aug 31, 2022, 12:28 PM UTC

qikInNdOutReply wrote: post #646

michaelwww wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I remember as a far off observer was the Soviet Union went through a few very old and ineffective leaders after Brezhnev died, while their war in Afghanistan drained resources so they couldn't possibly keep up with Reagan's Star Wars initiative. Gorbachev was a young, vital fresh face with new ideas that they had to go with to try to reform and survive.

It was a gerontocracy, with old dryed husks dying on the throne pre gorbachev. It was also mostly resource exporting back then, econimically dependent on the west. The oil prices during the gulf war killed them.

We call it a gerontocracy, but all those guys were considerably younger than the current and previous US presidents, at 79 and 76 respectively.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#825

Post by shipman05 » Wed, Aug 31, 2022, 12:30 PM UTC

ironcurtain wrote: post #658

jakuboboza wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good ? What about sending tanks against Lithuanians and you know...killing people. How good is this ? 700+ injured and 14 dead doesnt sound like something "genuinely good person" does. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_Events_(Lithuania)

Quoted post unavailable.

Interesting reaction to the phrasing here. I read OP as framing Lincoln through the eyes of the people who suffered the consequences of his decisions. History is messy. Even unambiguous positives like ending slavery come with a ton of collateral damage. If that collateral damage is your husband or brother coming home in a pine box, you're likely to have a poor view of those who caused it.

A few questions to consider:

1) If Texas or California were to secede in 2023, should the rest of the United States declare war on them and force them to return to the union? What if that war costs the lives of 500k people? 1 million? How many deaths is too many deaths to maintain the geo-political status quo?

2) There are places in the world today where slavery or near-slavery like conditions are a fact of life. Does the United States have a moral obligation to intervene? US interventionism in recent decades has led to unaccountable suffering for the people of Afghanistan and Iraq. The American South suffered a similar fate during and after the civil war.

All that to say, big evils like slavery or Nazism tend to distort historical objectivity. Any cost seems small, any act defensible, as long at it helps end the big evil. Once a historical figure becomes canonized, the negative consequences of their actions get glossed over.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#826

Post by dale_glass » Wed, Aug 31, 2022, 12:34 PM UTC

ajvs wrote: post #800

dale_glass wrote: post #766

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But do you think this conflict is worth it? For Russia, no. For Putin specifically, maybe. Russia is going to end up in a much worse position without any significant (and maybe any at all) gain. Putin is in a position where backtracking is difficult and dangerous, so he probably won't until things become completely untenable. For Ukraine it's very worth it because they're fighting for their own existence. > Do you…

> Russia is going to end up in a much worse position without any significant (and maybe any at all) gain. Judging by how bad the inflation and energy poverty is in the West, as well as the continued loss of ground and billions in Western funds in this war whilst the ruble stays strong, I don't have the same optimism whatsoever.

All the more reason to help Ukraine smash Russia quickly. Ukraine is friendly to the West, and has its own gas and oil resources.

But personally I don't mind that much, it's long been time for us to wean ourselves off gas and oil. It'll hurt a bit, but will be a huge benefit on the long term.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#827

Post by micv » Wed, Aug 31, 2022, 12:38 PM UTC

nivenkos wrote: post #731

poushkar wrote: post #711

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here we come again with the "Ukrainian nationalism" and "coup". So boring. Will you ever update your guide on Russian propaganda? Even the russian troll factory stopped using these arguments like 2 years ago.

I'm not pro-Russian. But here in Europe we've had 25% of our savings and purchasing power destroyed almost overnight, for a conflict that really has nothing to do with us (CIS borders and nationalism after the USSR). Why can't we just be neutral? We didn't do this for Georgia's claim in Ossetia or Armenia's claim with Azerbaijan (both similar scenarios), or the Iraq-Iran war, etc.

This isn't a simple territorial dispute. Russia has abducted vast numbers of people to camps from where we have no idea what happened to them, vanished Ukrainian children into their adoption system, and massacred huge numbers of civilians wherever it has taken control. They are clearly trying to wipe Ukraine and its identity off the map.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#828

Post by lenkite » Wed, Aug 31, 2022, 12:43 PM UTC

notahacker wrote: post #807

least wrote: post #744

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It doesn't really make sense in that context. The Thirteen Colonies seceded from Great Britain, something not in dispute even in the UK. Great Britain sent troops into the United States to oppose the secession. But it's not referred to as "the War of British Aggression". You're making the mistake of assuming that every conflict must follow a strict naming convention when in reality it'd usually be called something…

Just because there isn't a strict naming convention doesn't mean there isn't a longstanding convention in English-speaking countries of giving wars boring names based on the participants or theatre, even when it's absolutely unambiguous that the other side was the belligerent. Picking a ludicrously overblown name like "Northern Aggression" for a failed secession makes no sense in that context, but plenty of sense in…

Well you can bet the Chinese will be calling the annexation of Taiwan as Chinese Reunification War.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#829

Post by raxxorraxor » Wed, Aug 31, 2022, 12:44 PM UTC

tomasaugustus wrote: post #242

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…

Don't forget Putin was a darling of the US and the West for a long time. Read the praises The Economist sung of him.

Putin even said at some point he could imagine joining NATO. I believe the last 20 years of diplomacy destroyed formerly successes in the late 20th century. It was a real slaughter.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#830

Post by lenkite » Wed, Aug 31, 2022, 12:47 PM UTC

vintermann wrote: post #655

88840-8855 wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fully disagree. Economic reforms were trash, the Chinese did them better. Political reforms broke the system. The Chinese avoided doing them and look at them today.

Today they are rich and poweful, but have pretty much abandoned any pretense at worrying about capital exploitation of labour. It's a nationalist, corporatist, authoritarian state, ironically closer to Chiang Kai-shek's ideal state than Mao's, let alone Marx's. That was not the outcome he wanted. People often paper over that he was a true believer in Marxism-Leninism, unlike his predecessors.

The Chinese have successfully uplifted most of their citizenry out of poverty while their neighbour India - despite a head-start - is yet to manage the same. Looks like the corporate nationalist approach works well at overcoming the lower levels of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.