161–170 of 378 posts
I dunno about Yeltsin and the Houston store, but I do know this: I went on a student tour of the USSR as a college student in 1991, arranged through my University (U of Alabama). I was getting a minor in Russian language, and it seemed like a fun trip. It actually got MORE fun because in the run-up to the trip (in spring, 91) there was some dissent in the USSR and many parents wouldn't let their kids go. In order to…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>It probably doesn't make sense to attribute it to communism, because Russia is doing the same damn throw human life into a meat grinder approach in the modern day despite no longer being nominally communist. Yeah, this is 100% about Russian borders, which are long, exposed, expensive to defend and present an existential threat on a (historically) fairly regular basis. America's geography is pretty much the polar opp…
Yet, contrast USA with Mexico (not communist). Geography is no match for governance. The USSR failed because their system of government, like every other communist state, produced abject poverty.
https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393647013
By the time Yeltsin visited that grocery store, Gorbachev had been working for decades to put himself into a position of power so that he could carefully shift the USSR to a liberal Democratic government with a market economy. The fact that he actually got himself into position to execute this plan is mind blowing. I don’t think I have ever read a book which so radically reshapes how I view a piece of history.
Worth noting this footage of a ussr grocery store (1990/91) : https://youtu.be/t8LtQhIQ2AE Not endorsing the article, I think it's worth thinking beyond just the economic frame and also factoring in community resilience and such. There's arguments such as from writers like Orlov: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Orlov_(writer)
At ~5:45 in the supermarket video, what am I looking at? Is that a Soviet TV dinner? https://youtu.be/t8LtQhIQ2AE?t=345
Worth noting this footage of a ussr grocery store (1990/91) : https://youtu.be/t8LtQhIQ2AE Not endorsing the article, I think it's worth thinking beyond just the economic frame and also factoring in community resilience and such. There's arguments such as from writers like Orlov: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Orlov_(writer)
I dunno about Yeltsin and the Houston store, but I do know this: I went on a student tour of the USSR as a college student in 1991, arranged through my University (U of Alabama). I was getting a minor in Russian language, and it seemed like a fun trip. It actually got MORE fun because in the run-up to the trip (in spring, 91) there was some dissent in the USSR and many parents wouldn't let their kids go. In order to…
Basically it amounted to myself and about a dozen others, organized into a small chamber orchestra going to Russia for a summer, and in exchange a group of Russians formed into folk/pop entertainment group visiting and staying with us for a while during the school year.
I can't say that 1995 in post-USSR Ekaterinburg was incredibly different than 1991's pre-Russia Sverdlovsk. There were a few bits of free market showing up, but the general economic situation there was pretty dire. Even for me, who grew up in a very rural area and quite poor, felt like I came from nearly unimaginable wealth.
A couple years later the State Department and Russia repeated the exchange and I had a chance to show my host mother around the local shopping malls and such. The "change" from communism had already happened, the Russians by then were by and large waiting for America to arrive.
It was an amazing experience, once in a lifetime, and it has given me lots of both wanderlust and perspective that I've carried with me for the rest of my life. I was very happy to see the improvement in standard of living in many parts of Russia over the years, but I'm very sad to see what they're wasting it on at the moment in Ukraine.
The biography of Viktor Belenko [0], a Soviet Mig-25 pilot who defected to America by way of Japan in 1976, has a story about him being shown around the US by some government handlers and disbelieving the grocery store he was taken to, until being shown several more like it. He thought at first that the grocery store was staged, or an unusual example and not the norm. [0] Mig Pilot by John Barron
It's naive to imagine Yeltsin's mind was really changed by a spontaneous visit. He didn't have intelligence on what a US supermarket was like? The premiere of a superpower just randomly decided to visit a grocery store? No. Yeltsin was contemplating reforms and changes and wanted to collect a political tool he could later user if needed. He knew exactly how this visit would go, and it was intended so he could use it…
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Earlier quoted context omitted.
“lifting out of poverty” is defined in terms of consumption. A family living on a farm and providing most of their own needs, living sustainably for generations, is by most definitions “living in poverty” because they consume very little. Now if you strip that family of their land and force them to work in factories their consumption goes way up since they no longer are able to support themselves. That family has now…
Lifting out of poverty is also defined in terms of "not starving to death because the winter was too long or cold", "not losing a half a years labor and food because a tornado hit your field", "not having to do manual labor 12 hours a day" and yes "access to material wealth" like indoor plumbing, labor saving devices like washing machines, and the ability to send your children to be educated instead of needing them a…