Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mikhail Gorbachev has died

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

601–610 of 971 posts

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#601

Post by kkfdkerpoe »

hestefisk wrote: post #449
coldtea wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The transition to a market economy went very well for most of the former Soviet Republics except Russia That might be what it writes in the link, it wasn't the case though, except if you mean after things stabilized 15 and 20 years later (and it's still bad in most places). Tons of conflict, forced migration, poverty, crime, sexual slavery, and so on...

Exactly. Countries like Poland and Hungary have huge social issues and struggle with corruption. A lot of political research points to the recent rise in fascist nationalism in these two countries as caused by being thrown from one political ideology to another (e.g. “communism” to ironfisted neoliberalism / Washington Consensus). It’s pretty evident none of them worked. If anything the country that was LEAST worse o…

Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia are doing great really, even if the Polish government is anti-EU sometimes. According to latest statistics Estonia has better education system, economic growth and birth rate than Finland. The rate at which these countries have catch up is amazing.

What I'm most worried of now are old, historically rich countries in decline, like Italy and Spain.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#602

Post by avmich »

romwell wrote: post #520
nradov wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't seriously claim that the USSR should have been held together as a single empire, contrary to the wishes of most people who lived outside of Russia. The dissolution of the USSR was absolutely, unambiguously a positive event for the human race despite the minor problems which resulted.

I'm saying that a catastrophic decomposition through a coup that left most of the Soviet apparatchiks in power (Lukashenko, Yeltsin/Putin, etc) is barely better than nothing at all. The problems it caused to people in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and many other former Soviet republics aren't minor by any account — and they are a direct reason for why Putin managed to hold power for so long. The way in which the USSR dis…

I'd agree that the population of Russia was willing enough to believe the officer of secret service for their own detriment. However - while it lasted in 2000 - the life of many Russians was improving, quite a bit, and not much animosity towards the West was there. It's only when things got tougher - with international crises and oil price plunging - when things had to change, and the way to change them by that time was such that autocrat had to remain in power, so the frustration was targeted elsewhere.

>The way in which the USSR dissolved itself is why we have a war in Ukraine now.

Agree.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#603

Post by [deleted] »

Nanana909 wrote: post #499
hestefisk wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Countries like Poland and Hungary have huge social issues and struggle with corruption. A lot of political research points to the recent rise in fascist nationalism in these two countries as caused by being thrown from one political ideology to another (e.g. “communism” to ironfisted neoliberalism / Washington Consensus). It’s pretty evident none of them worked. If anything the country that was LEAST worse o…

> It’s pretty evident none of them worked. How is that evident, though? It’s actually pretty clear that the quality of life has drastically improved in most of these countries. Of *course* you can always find some group who is suffering. But there is no way I would want to live in 1980s Poland, Estonia, etc vs 2020. For example: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.UEM.TOTL.ZS?location... The continued existence o…

[deleted]

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#604

Post by somenameforme »

bhupy wrote: post #288
paganel wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There was no "Marshall Plan" after the Cold War l There was such a plan, at least in the twisted minds of the people behind the Washington Consensus. They were calling it privatization or price liberalization or some other non-sense like that, thing is the common people got the very, very short stick (like my parents, who lost their jobs, their city apartment and who had to resort to literally subsistence agricultu…

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…

That article determines a "positive transition" based upon the raw percent growth in unadjusted GDP since 1995, which is dubious. The "value" of that metric is illustrated by referencing one of the 6 Soviet Republics that page "forgot" about: Moldova. Moldova is Europe's poorest country and suffers from widespread poverty, rampant corruption, and is a major source of things like human trafficking of which the government is involved. Yet it's seen an increase of said metric in 250%, so the article must conclude it's been one of the most successful transitions. Handy instance to suffer a bout of amnesia on.

---

I've started to become increasingly jaded about economic indicators not only because of articles like this, but because of how they are used in general. We seek data on things like economies not because those numbers matter whatsoever, but because those numbers are supposed to reflect of an objective measurement of the quality of life of people living under that economy. In effect, it's an effort to create objective metrics to try to impartially answer subjective questions.

But it ultimately fails, because subjective determination is going to be based on a practically infinite number of metrics, many of which may be immeasurable. So why not simply ask the people? Should we not be aiming to maximize e.g. contentedness/capita instead of GDP/capita and just hoping it leads to the former, somehow? Of course that's a far harder metric to maximize, but that's the whole point. Just doing everything to maximize one metric's value and then waving a "Mission Accomplished" banner clearly is not getting the job done.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#605

Post by avmich »

mantas wrote: post #587
romwell wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was trying to say that there was a way forward for the Cold War to end without the dissolution of the USSR — not that it'd be great for the occupied countries (or people of USSR in general) for USSR to continue existing. The dissolution could have happened afterwards, in an organized manner, as a process — not a cataclysm. That way we could have ended up with the new countries not having old apparatchiks as little…

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.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#606

Post by blahedo »

bhupy wrote: post #288
paganel wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There was no "Marshall Plan" after the Cold War l There was such a plan, at least in the twisted minds of the people behind the Washington Consensus. They were calling it privatization or price liberalization or some other non-sense like that, thing is the common people got the very, very short stick (like my parents, who lost their jobs, their city apartment and who had to resort to literally subsistence agricultu…

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…

Did you just explain to someone from a communist-bloc country, who had just said how badly the transition went in their country, that the transition had actually gone well?

This is a cousin to both mansplaining and gaslighting, and if we want good, lively discussion on HN we should try to be careful to avoid it. The gp comment gave some very specific and relevant comments about economic upheavals in the late Gorbachev period and deserves better than a well-actually.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#607

Post by russocan »

negus wrote: post #115
insane_dreamer wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not a joke. I was in Russia during the Gorby era (and early Yeltsin) and people indeed hated Gorby for his attempt to crack-down on drunkenness by limiting the purchase of vodka.

Have you heard about a single moment in time when people liked the leader of their country?

Putin 2022, 80% approval ratings

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#609

Post by wiseowise »

wawjgreen wrote: post #497

good riddance. he was an uneducated idiot, who is indirectly responsible for the millions that were killed in Afghanistan, in 1992. In 1989, when he pulled the red army out of Afghanistan--he also cut all aid to the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. the then-president of DRA went to Moscow to persuade Garbageoff to not to do so, predicting that the terrorist zealots would overrun his government leading to chaos in…

Death of your people vs death of other people.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#610

Post by ako »

paganel wrote: post #221
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…

> There was no "Marshall Plan" after the Cold War l There was such a plan, at least in the twisted minds of the people behind the Washington Consensus. They were calling it privatization or price liberalization or some other non-sense like that, thing is the common people got the very, very short stick (like my parents, who lost their jobs, their city apartment and who had to resort to literally subsistence agricultu…

Would it have been better if sovjet union would have ended? In the 80s sovjet union was in a very bad place economically, and it might also have collapsed if it didn't end.
Post reply on HN