My late grandfather was a really good and kind man. He never argued or blamed people.
The only person that I remember that my grandfather had really negative feelings for was Gorbachev.
I never learned why.
Mikhail Gorbachev has died
81–90 of 971 posts
Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died
#82The 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…
I think this talk shows that it's probably a bit more complicated than that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kF9KretXqJw Unless you happen to understand Finnish, subtitles are mandatory (and very accurate AFAICT). There is a link to a dubbed version in the comments if that is preferred.
[Remove the two spaces before the link to make it clicky.]
Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died
#83He might be a decent human, but he's woefully bad at his job. He might be able to salvage the Soviet Union into something else, but instead most of it turned into multiple heaps of dumpster fire, which after burning and destroying, was then commandeered by thugs, mafia and oligarchs.
> He might be able to salvage the Soviet Union into something else, but instead most of it turned into multiple heaps of dumpster fire...
Wasn't he essentially removed from power by Yeltsin -- who did so by breaking up the Soviet Union?
My history isn't that great. But my understanding is that Yeltsin was the president of Russia, while Gorbachev was leader of the Soviet Union. By breaking up the union, Yeltsin put Gorby out of a job and essentially became the leader.
(Please correct me if I'm wrong.)
Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died
#84The 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…
The locals in power have to want to do it too. As soon as enough don’t want it, it is over. I’m skeptical of the idea that you can impose Democracy.
> I’m skeptical of the idea that you can impose Democracy.
We didn't need to impose democracy. Russia had democracy for a time. The Marshall Plan was about economic investment. The transition from communism to capitalism was a very rough one for the Soviet people, and that's a big part of why democracy failed.
Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died
#85Mr. Gorbachev, Tear Down This Wall! - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCO9BYCGNeY
Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died
#86The 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…
The locals in power have to want to do it too. As soon as enough don’t want it, it is over. I’m skeptical of the idea that you can impose Democracy.
You can't impose democracy, but if democracy and associated ideas such as the free market spectacularly fails the people – as it did in the 90s – then that certainly doesn't help. We probably could have done a thing or two to make it fail less. Would that have made a meaningful difference? Hard to say for sure, but it would have been worth to try.
Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a disconnect here: the US policy in question took place over decades, not the 8 years that Reagan was president.
It's easy to argue that it's USSR people, not Western, who benefited most from the end of the Cold War.
Some did, some didn't, the way it happened.
The Cold War wasn't a good thing, but it didn't have to end with the dissolution of the USSR, and the dissolution of the USSR didn't have to end with a coup, followed by chaos, which nevertheless kept all the appartchiks in charge.
30 years later, we can see how the people who were in charge of the USSR are the reason if fell apart: because they are still running Russia, and are running it into the ground (Putin, Shoigu, Lavrov, etc are all USSR apparatchiks).
Thieves and criminals, the whole lot of them.
The USSR ate itself, because it didn't succeed in figuring out a way to refresh the power structures. And so that fish rotted starting from its head.
Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
The locals in power have to want to do it too. As soon as enough don’t want it, it is over. I’m skeptical of the idea that you can impose Democracy.
Republicans have long said that the federal government is structurally incompetent and unable to effectively administer a large country. They made a convincing argument with their performance in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I doubt Russia would have been much different.
That was a very different situation, those were states that were militarily invaded and then occupied by American forces, who were involved in reconstructing countries devastated by war.
Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died
#89Quoted post unavailable.
Let me tell you why I think this is an inappropriate comment: The point of it seems not to be collaboratively extending the line of thought proposed by the original post or the parent comment, but to make the parent commenter feel some kind of personal shame or stupidity. Good commenting is more like a team sport than a martial art.
So like telling "jokes" at Russia's expense by a man of questionable ethics?
what is the point of his joke, if not to mock another country?
The OP posted a quote, and i posted one too?
Re: Mikhail Gorbachev has died
#90The 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…
Quoted post unavailable.
The world had already A/B tested "damage the economy so that it would never be a threat again" and "help transition to democracy" with Germany. The latter worked better.