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Mikhail Gorbachev has died

reuters.com

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Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#661

Post by ironcurtain »

interfixus wrote: post #623
pastacacioepepe wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The parent comment is correct I'm sorry but it's not, and I already stated why with reason. They were not asking for "democratic reforms", but for independence. Call it self-determination if it makes you feel better. Debate my comparisons, fair enough, I just tried to put things in perspective.

As someone previously pointed out, the perspective here is that Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia were invaded and forcibly annexed in 1940.

Very much like Hawaii and Florida, weren’t they? Weren’t those countries ruled for decade or so by dictators who ceased power in late 20s? Didn’t Soviet actually organized elections and then their parliaments voted to join the USSR? I’m sure it’s all a sham but history is a bit nuanced.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#662

Post by pram »

ItsTooMuch wrote: post #659
flohofwoe wrote: post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how it was in the rest of Eastern Europe, but for instance the East German government was much more 'conservative' than Gorbatchev and heavily opposed to perestroika/glasnost. If Gorbatchev wouldn't have left Honecker hanging dry, Honecker would have welcomed the Soviet tanks against his own people. You don't need to be able to compete with the US military technology to kill unarmed protesters. T-54s wil…

The thing is, the tanks would have to get there. Getting a tank 1000 km past at least 3 unfriendly borders is an enormous logistics issue, and a major resource drain - resources that simply did not exist, not even talking about the human resources. And you're discounting the strength of millions of super-angry people too much. They would destroy the few tanks with rocks (or molotovs, as illustrated in Ukraine) if the…

The USSR had 300k troops and 5000 tanks sitting in the DDR. Your take is extremely ahistorical.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#663

Post by flohofwoe »

ItsTooMuch wrote: post #659
flohofwoe wrote: post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how it was in the rest of Eastern Europe, but for instance the East German government was much more 'conservative' than Gorbatchev and heavily opposed to perestroika/glasnost. If Gorbatchev wouldn't have left Honecker hanging dry, Honecker would have welcomed the Soviet tanks against his own people. You don't need to be able to compete with the US military technology to kill unarmed protesters. T-54s wil…

The thing is, the tanks would have to get there. Getting a tank 1000 km past at least 3 unfriendly borders is an enormous logistics issue, and a major resource drain - resources that simply did not exist, not even talking about the human resources. And you're discounting the strength of millions of super-angry people too much. They would destroy the few tanks with rocks (or molotovs, as illustrated in Ukraine) if the…

You've probably been born after the Cold War, but just to put things into perspective, the Soviet Union had half a million troops and dozens of tank divisions already stationed in East Germany, they wouldn't have to fight their way through Poland. And it probably wasn't all that different in the other countries along the Iron Curtain.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#664

Post by vintermann »

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…

It's not that they did too little. On the contrary, it's that they did too much. They got everything they wanted, including "shock therapy" neoliberalism, Yeltsin as president (unhobbled by parliamentary constraints after the 1993 shelling of the Duma, which Clinton personally praised), and a continued enemy for budgetary purposes.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#665

Post by ItsTooMuch »

pram wrote: post #662
ItsTooMuch wrote: post #659

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, the tanks would have to get there. Getting a tank 1000 km past at least 3 unfriendly borders is an enormous logistics issue, and a major resource drain - resources that simply did not exist, not even talking about the human resources. And you're discounting the strength of millions of super-angry people too much. They would destroy the few tanks with rocks (or molotovs, as illustrated in Ukraine) if the…

The USSR had 300k troops and 5000 tanks sitting in the DDR. Your take is extremely ahistorical.

Same thing in Czechoslovakia, but ultimately the KGB, StB and the local communist party government decided they would not be able to win, only prolong it a little. IIRC from my history classes their projection was 'less than a year and with enormous human costs on both sides, and productivity going to zero due to the whole-population rebellion' - which leads me to the conclusion that they would need significant resources delivered from USSR. Wasn't it similar in DDR?

(A lot of the StB guys decided to simply take advantage of the coming economical transformation and subsequently stole a lot of corporations and other stuff from the general public)

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#666

Post by qwytw »

sbaiddn wrote: post #541
wahern wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> NATO kept expanding east You make it sound like NATO was unilaterally pushing for this. Eastern European countries were begging to join NATO. All of them had been independent multiple times over the centuries, always ending up under Russian control. NATO offered a plausible mechanism to end the historical cycle--an historical cycle for which Russia, in 2022, is proudly nostalgic and not afraid to go to war to conti…

What US interests are served (thats all of NATO, really) antagonizing Russia over Latvia? And NATO's "peaceful resolution" of European conflict is bunk - ask the Cypriots or the Greeks how NATO tampers Turkish ambitions.

What British and France interests were served when they agreed to sign an alliance with Poland and even went to war with Germany over it (eventually)? It's the same basically, except that this time, I hope, the alliance is more credible and Russia is not willing to test it.

There are plenty of economical and political reasons due to which is it beneficial to keep Latvia and by extension the entirety of Eastern Europe outside of direct or indirect Russian control.

Ukraine is a pretty good example of a country which was mostly ignored both by NATO and the EU so as not to antagonize Russia. It remained a failed state until 2014 and I assume we all know what happened afterwards.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#667

Post by qsort »

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.

> War of Northern Aggression

Rarely if ever I criticize naming conventions, but this definitely does seem the right moment to do so.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#668

Post by T-zex »

hypersoar wrote: post #431
eloy wrote: post #20

RIP Gorbachev, one of the few genuinely good people in politics. After he retired from politics, he was featured in several advertisements: - In 1994 for Apple Computer: https://www.upi.com/Archives/1994/10/07/The-first-advertisem... - In 1998 for Pizza Hut: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorbachev_Pizza_Hut_commercial - In 2000 for the ÖBB, the Austrian railways: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLscz8kEg6c - In 2007…

I saw that Pizza Hut commercial earlier today and I can't stop thinking about it. It has so much going on. It's the victory of capitalism over Soviet communism, the rise of neoliberalism to global hegemony, and the "End of History" in the form of a 30-second ad for pizza.

Gorbachev saw Pizza Hut come and leave his country.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#669

Post by vintermann »

MichaelCollins wrote: post #283
DubiousPusher wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would give credit to the people and government of Japan for their post-war success: it could easily have gone another direction, and the U.S. couldn't have stopped that from happening. I suggest you read more about the post war occupation of Japan. The U.S. put its thumb heavily on the scale forcing Japan to accept democratization throughout. Unusual for the U.S. this included pushing economic democracy by suppor…

> The U.S. put its thumb heavily on the scale More than a thumb. The Constitution of Japan was written by Americans. America stomped on the scale, and that time it seems to have worked.

But it ironically worked a lot because they pushed a constitution which looked nothing like their own.

Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died

#670

Post by [deleted] »

ironcurtain wrote: post #661
interfixus wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone previously pointed out, the perspective here is that Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia were invaded and forcibly annexed in 1940.

Very much like Hawaii and Florida, weren’t they? Weren’t those countries ruled for decade or so by dictators who ceased power in late 20s? Didn’t Soviet actually organized elections and then their parliaments voted to join the USSR? I’m sure it’s all a sham but history is a bit nuanced.

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