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Russians Seem Interested in My Book About How Dictatorships End

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Re: Russians Seem Interested in My Book About How Dictatorships End

#61

Post by toss1 »

_8j50 wrote: post #51
yazzku wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course there are many Russians that want an end to the regime. At least, every Russian I know. Why wouldn't they?

Democracy is not a one size fits all solution. Even the US endured a civil war while trying to do democracy, it isn't that simple and democraric nations shouldn't be pushing it down everyone's throats. Every country needs to figure out what works for them. Some even debate id countries with two party options like america are even an actual valid democracy and others debate if China is really communist because of it's…

Spoken like someone who has never lived under nor seriously studied the consequences and conditions of living in an autocracy (or who has, and wa part of the ruling class). Disgusting

(&ya, the fact that democracies are imperfect, billionaires and would-be oligarchs often corrupt politicians is NOT the same. Self-determination and democracy are not binary, but on a scale. One scale is how well power is spread across the institutions of government and society, the legislative, judicial and executive branches, the institutions of press, academy, industry, religion, society... are they independent, or all bent to serve the executive, and now many and how much?)

Re: Russians Seem Interested in My Book About How Dictatorships End

#62

Post by cutler »

credit_guy wrote: post #60
yazzku wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course there are many Russians that want an end to the regime. At least, every Russian I know. Why wouldn't they?

> Why wouldn't they? Assuming your question is not rhetorical, some Russians may not want an end of Putin's regime because they perceive that something worse than Putin is possible, and even likely. A lot of Russians experienced the lawlessness of the 90's, and Putin was perceived as the one who brought a semblance of order and stability. If he is eliminated, or simply dies of natural causes (he's rumored to have can…

Yes, those freaks on Russian TV's daily propaganda round table are much scarier than Putin.

Re: Russians Seem Interested in My Book About How Dictatorships End

#64

Post by _8j50 »

toss1 wrote: post #61
_8j50 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democracy is not a one size fits all solution. Even the US endured a civil war while trying to do democracy, it isn't that simple and democraric nations shouldn't be pushing it down everyone's throats. Every country needs to figure out what works for them. Some even debate id countries with two party options like america are even an actual valid democracy and others debate if China is really communist because of it's…

Spoken like someone who has never lived under nor seriously studied the consequences and conditions of living in an autocracy (or who has, and wa part of the ruling class). Disgusting (&ya, the fact that democracies are imperfect, billionaires and would-be oligarchs often corrupt politicians is NOT the same. Self-determination and democracy are not binary, but on a scale. One scale is how well power is spread across…

You assume too much.

> One scale is how well power is spread across the institutions of government and society, the legislative, judicial and executive branches, the institutions of press, academy, industry, religion, society... are they independent, or all bent to serve the executive, and now many and how much?

That's nice, but let a country figure that out on their own. You don't get to decide that measurement for the billions of humans who are barely surviving. Look at China, so long as the economy is good the people mostly support the CCP, outside of its handling if covid lockdowns one could even argue the CCP had more popular support than either parties ever had in the US in the last 20+ years! That's what upsets me about you people, i don't care about autocracies and dictators or democracies but you freaking claim to give a shit about what the people think but when they disagree with your way of life you pretend the measurement or polling must be incorrect. Ideologies are cheap, people care about results, they want food, shelter and security before ideology and for many they would not trade their identity and sovreignity for imported ideology. Why you all can't focus your energy here at home where many of your fellow citizens are suffering I would never know.

Yea, democracy and sovreignity are not mutually exclusive but they become mutually exclusive if foreign forces manipulate domestic media and fund or sabotage different elemnts in a country. Even saying a country would be better off with democracy is propaganda and an attempt to influence domestic matters of a foreign country. Look at how many people died in the arab spring because if this same propaganda spread by western clueless people or what's happening in Iran, your propaganda worked, your interference coninues to cause chaos, your assumptions and unwillingness to respect a nation's sovreignity causes harm!

Re: Russians Seem Interested in My Book About How Dictatorships End

#66

Post by cutler »

hutzlibu wrote: post #16
thriftwy wrote: post #2

I'm not sure that transition of power is a 'taboo': Yekaterina Shulman have been discussing this topic for a few years for a wide popular audience. It's just that there was never any satisfactory answer to that one. With regards to dictators of Spain, Portugal and Greece. These countries could get rid of autocrats and fall back to Europe's safety net. But in case of Russia it is not an option, as nobody wants Russia…

"and especially the EU, which was mostly built on the basis of confrontation with Russia" Is that a US point of view? As a european, it is the first time I heard this. (Edit: I mean yes, it was founded under the assumption of soviet threat, but it was not constructed especially against russia, which is how I read your comment) The NATO was constructed against communist russia. But the reasons for the founding of the…

If there is to be any post-war justice it will involve serious Russian reparations with their economy already significantly weakened. Add to that the lessons learned by EU member states and I don't see any rapprochement for a very long time.

Re: Russians Seem Interested in My Book About How Dictatorships End

#67

Post by dang »

take-10 wrote: post #11
cs702 wrote: post #3

If this is true, it suggests many Russians actually want their country to become a democracy: > Objectively — though it’s awkward to say — the book has become a bit of a phenomenon. But the book, “The End of the Regime: How Three European Dictatorships Ended”, is not about Russia or Vladimir Putin. It’s about three dictatorships — those of Francisco Franco in Spain, Antonio Salazar in Portugal and the colonels in Gre…

[flagged]

Russians are of course allowed to post on HN. We don't exclude people because of their country.

In fact we don't exclude any population, not only (or even primarily) for ethical reasons but because it would be bad for intellectual curiosity, which is what we're trying to optimize for (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...).

We do ask HN users, from any country or population, to stick to the site rules (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and in particular not to post in the flamewar style.

Re: Russians Seem Interested in My Book About How Dictatorships End

#68

Post by hgsgm »

sereja wrote: post #29
robin_reala wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did Russia ever attempt to apply to join the EU? The real countries in reduce war equation were Germany and France, not Russia.

Actually, during the Medvedev presidency, there were serious efforts to negotiate visa-free travel and reduced tariffs (which is the essence of what everybody wants, not full integration). If these things were granted, the revolution / civil war in Ukraine, primarily motivated by one part of the country mostly trading with Russia and the other with the EU, probably wouldn't have happened.

That doesn't account for how eastern Ukraine has a much larger percent of ethnic Russians than western, nor Russia's invasions andntakeovers of other former Soviet territories.

Re: Russians Seem Interested in My Book About How Dictatorships End

#69

Post by hgsgm »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #18
robin_reala wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did Russia ever attempt to apply to join the EU? The real countries in reduce war equation were Germany and France, not Russia.

Putin made some comments in the early 2000's to the effect that Russia sees itself as part of the European culture and might like to be part of the EU, but it wants its own viewpoint on things to be respected . I suspect the latter is a crucial caveat. Presumably he'd never be okay with implementing a liberal democracy to EU standards or signing up to EU defence policy. On the other side, I suspect that none of the e…

EU voting power for issues that matter is state based in the European Commission, not population based.

Re: Russians Seem Interested in My Book About How Dictatorships End

#70

Post by hgsgm »

carlmr wrote: post #35
thriftwy wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The elephant in the room is that if you invite everybody in your anti-war club, but one country, that remaining country will get really nervous and you might as well get a war (what we are seeing). If the situation is that you can't invite everybody in, then the plan is defective from the start.

The EU is quite liberal in accepting countries to the anti-war club, but they need to adhere to some standards regarding human rights, trade, and democracy. If you crash your own party with some people that don't fit in, you will cause the guests you wanted to have to leave. Any countries not in the EU don't want to be in the EU. And that's fine. And looking at what the EU does you don't have to be scared if you don'…

Would the EU be on good terms with Germany if a Nazi party member became the current dictator?

That's basically the situation in Russia with Putin after the USSR.

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