[HN Gopher] Mikhail Gorbachev has died
___________________________________________________________________
Mikhail Gorbachev has died
Author : homarp
Score : 381 points
Date : 2022-08-30 20:37 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| steve76 wrote:
| bloak wrote:
| I thought the Mandela Effect
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_memory#Mandela_Effect) was a
| myth ... but now I experience it myself. I can so clearly
| remember reading Gorbachev's obituary a few years ago ... Did
| anyone else have a similar reaction?
|
| (Perhaps I read an article about him on his 90th birthday and
| assumed it was an obituary?)
| Nokinside wrote:
| He was able to get into politburo very young because he was a
| good administrator and he had powerful patrons. But he became the
| leader of the USSR just because there was nobody else. Politburo
| was so old that everybody ahead of him, or more power hungry than
| him was in hospice or otherwise not fully functioning.
|
| Then he started finally some of the common sense reforms needed.
|
| His intention was never to drop communism or let the soviet block
| to disintegrate, but things got out of hand. His greatest act was
| let it happen even when it was against everything he had worked
| for.
| epolanski wrote:
| > common sense reforms
|
| Politically and in terms of press freedom, maybe.
|
| Economically it was a disaster that ruined an already
| stagnating growth and turned it into recession.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| "Arsenals of Folly" By Richard Rhodes is one of the best records
| of the Gorbachev era with respect to negotiations over arms
| reductions with Reagan (which resulted in a highly fractured US
| administration, with opponents (Cheney etc.) fighting advocates
| (Shultz etc.) over what policy Reagan should support), the
| immense effect of the Chernobyl disaster on the Soviet Union
| (something many nuclear energy proponents still try to downplay),
| and a few other aspects of Gorbachev's years in power in the
| USSR.
|
| The culmination of Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika was the
| Fall of the Berlin Wall, one of the more memorable historical
| moments of the 20th century and one which gave a lot of hope to
| young people who grew up under the constant threat of nuclear
| annihilation. If you watched "The Day After Tomorrow" on American
| television in the 1980s, you might know the feeling.
|
| However, in retrospect that was a high point in terms of hopes
| for peace and prosperity. The Soviet Union went rapidly from
| communist authoritarian to oligarch kleptocracy during the
| Yeltsin era, and NATO wasn't disbanded like the Warsaw Pact was
| but instead started bombing Europe (Yugoslavia), and the steady
| downhill progression has continued ever since. Putin threw out or
| jailed the oligarchs Washington preferred by 2005 or so, and
| since then it's been a steady return to full on Cold War proxy
| wars and gas and oil pipeline control conflicts (Georgia, Syria,
| Azerbaijan, Ukraine) stretching from the Middle East to Northern
| Europe.
|
| It's ridiculous that after all those peace efforts in the late
| 1980s, we're back to early 1980s levels of nuclear tension. As
| far as who to blame, there's plenty to go around - oil
| corporations wanting more profits, arms dealers wanting more
| wars, authoritarians wanting more power, empires wanting more
| control of resources, etc.
| nradov wrote:
| I won't attempt to defend NATO interventions in other
| countries, but disbanding it like the Warsaw Pact was never a
| real option so long as Russia continued to maintain a
| significant military capability including nuclear weapons. The
| Warsaw Pact was never a real thing to begin with. It was a
| total fiction, not a voluntary alliance of (somewhat) equal
| sovereign states like NATO. All of the other Warsaw Pact
| members were under military occupation by the USSR and had zero
| real decision making authority. Any attempt to go their own way
| was immediately, violently crushed. So dissolving the Warsaw
| Pact when the USSR disintegrated meant nothing.
|
| And before someone tries to draw a false equivalence between
| the USSR's role in the Warsaw Pact and the USA's role in NATO,
| those were hardly the same. NATO members were free to leave at
| any time without fear of a US invasion. France actually did
| withdraw from the NATO command structure for a while and
| nothing happened to them.
| brnt wrote:
| Note that in Russian doctrine as tought in universities, the Cold
| War never ended.
| vkou wrote:
| Based on my count of how many hair-trigger alert nuclear
| weapons are pointed from east to west, and vice versa, I'd say
| that the Cold War only ended in name.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Russia-US relations have been pretty cold for most of these
| decades so why not.
| 9999px wrote:
| chitowneats wrote:
| I laughed so loud at this my wife yelled at me from across
| the house, "What's so funny?!"
| romwell wrote:
| There's no way that comment wasn't sarcasm, right?
| mminer237 wrote:
| Looking at his comment history, no, he looks to 100%
| believe poor, innocent Russia is fighting a defensive war
| in which it has been easily rolling over Ukraine.
| theonething wrote:
| Seems accurate to me. It never completely ended.
| DoneWithAllThat wrote:
| This seems like needless pedantry at least for a conversation
| outside of school. The USSR (with whom the Cold War was being
| fought) was dissolved and Germany was reunified. For all
| intents and purposes it did end, just a new conflict (now with
| Russia) began.
| brnt wrote:
| Seeing as the Cold War was a framework for conflicts, not a
| conflict in itself, I find it extremely illuminating to
| consider the view of the opposing party. Not a technicality
| in the slightest.
| avmich wrote:
| Andrei Piontkovskiy, in addition to two known World Wars,
| considers the Cold War as the World War III and the current
| war in Eastern Europe as the World War IV. His parallels are
| that WWII was fought by Germany dissatisfied by the results
| of WWI, and WWIV is fought by Russia dissatisfied by the
| results of WWIII.
| bishnu wrote:
| This analogy doesn't hold for "WWIII" though, right? By
| this analogy, I would call the current crisis "Cold War
| II".
| avmich wrote:
| World wars involve many countries, and Cold War
| definitely qualify. Today's war is a pretty active, quite
| large "hot" war, which also involves many countries -
| even though most fight by proxy.
| xg15 wrote:
| I also think "Cold War II" for the current situation is
| more fitting.
|
| I think if there is any useful distinction between "hot"
| and "cold" world wars then it's most likely whether super
| powers are in _direct military conflict with each other_
| or whether military confrontation is "only" through
| proxy wars.
|
| Note that the original cold war wasn't very "cold" for
| much of the world either - the only thing that didn't
| happen was _direct_ millitary confrontation between the
| US and USSR. Nevertheless there were lots of local
| conflicts and proxy wars where each bloc was backing a
| faction.
| avmich wrote:
| In the today's war in Ukraine one country - Russia -
| fights directly, not from proxies, and the other side -
| mostly USA, but also other Western countries - supply
| weapons, volunteers, intelligence services, training. It
| is comparable with Vietnam war, right, but not already
| with Afghan war of 1980-s, or small conflicts around the
| world. The scale of war is also quite large, the level of
| directly fighting forces is much more comparable.
| pastacacioepepe wrote:
| If the cold war did end, why didn't NATO dissolve as well? It
| was born exactly to contain the USSR! Instead NATO kept
| expanding east...
| LtWorf wrote:
| So USA can force europeans to buy their fighter jets.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| From another perspective _all of it_ is a continuation of the
| Great Game, the Anglosphere /Russia conflict dating back to
| the 1800s that never really stopped, and was merely put on
| pause for a few years a couple times (mostly when the Anglos
| felt that other continental Europeans were consolidating
| enough power to be an even greater threat than Russia.)
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| keepquestioning wrote:
| laserbrain wrote:
| >>A Soviet man is waiting in line to purchase vodka from a liquor
| store, but due to restrictions imposed by Gorbachev, the line is
| very long. The man loses his composure and screams, >I can't take
| this waiting in line anymore, I HATE Gorbachev, I am going to the
| Kremlin right now, and I am going to kill him!< After 40 minutes
| the man returns and elbows his way back to his place in line. The
| crowd begin to ask if he has succeeded in killing Gorbachev. >No,
| I got to the Kremlin all right, but the line to kill Gorbachev
| was even longer than here!<<<
| [deleted]
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| 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.
| negus wrote:
| Have you heard about a single moment in time when people
| liked the leader of their country?
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| I'm having a real hard time thinking of a leader who wasn't
| liked by at least _some_ of the people, and it 's surely
| impossible to find any leader liked by _literally all_
| people in their country. So clearly it 's all shades of
| gray.
|
| The worst leaders in history, the Hitlers and Stalins, have
| enjoyed substantial if not majority popular support in
| their time. Biden and Trump both have millions of Americans
| who like them. Even Caligula was popular with the general
| Roman population, if only because he lowered taxes and
| threw money around. Maybe Ceausescu was close to
| universally hated, but everybody was afraid to say anything
| until the preference cascade occurred? But probably even he
| had genuine supporters.
| pastacacioepepe wrote:
| FDR after he gave up to the requests of the communists and
| created the largest welfare program in US history?
| LeftHandPath wrote:
| Usually the most beloved are also the most hated.
| seanw444 wrote:
| Man, what people will do for alcohol.
| berkut wrote:
| That joke was told about many of the soviet leaders...
| avgcorrection wrote:
| You're writing in English. No need for those godawful Danish-
| style backwards guillemets.
| dang wrote:
| I understand the activation but please let's keep internecine
| punctuation conflict off HN.
| postit wrote:
| Am I the only one surprised he was still alive?
| [deleted]
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| I hate that my first thought was 'On the start of Ukraine's
| counteroffensive which is by some reports going well for
| Ukraine?'. Seems highly convenient as a distraction. I have no
| evidence for my thought and am dismissing it. The world has made
| me reflexively conspiracy prone, I don't believe in most
| conspiracies but it sucks to think about them.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Maybe not a popular opinion, I think that had Gorby been able to
| succeed in his reforms rather than be squeezed from both sides,
| Russia would have been better off in the long run both
| economically and politically. Instead, it swung from autocratic
| communism one day to near total collapse ("free market" anarchy)
| the next during which those with connections and saw the
| opportunity gobbled up all the resources eventually leading to a
| oligarchical authoritarianism.
| the_third_wave wrote:
| Is seems clear that Russia did not fare well in its move from
| corrupt authoritarian Communism (a tautology if ever there was
| one) to the kleptocracy which replaced it - often by the hands
| of the same people. It is just as clear that eastern Europe
| _did_ fare well by the fall of the Soviet empire. If Gorbachev
| had succeeded in dissolving the Soviet Union without having
| Russia descend into the chaos which followed things might have
| been better but I find it hard to see how something like that
| could have been orchestrated. It more or less worked in Eastern
| Germany due to the efforts (financially and socially) of
| Western Germany. The way this was handled in Russia was
| scandalous and led the country from one failed economic system
| into another failing one with the oligarchs and their cronies
| taking the place of the Party. Which country could have been
| the 'Germany' for Russia? Who could have dissolved the
| inefficient state conglomerates like Treuhandanstalt [1] did in
| Eastern Germany, who would have covered the financial losses?
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treuhandanstalt
| [deleted]
| kenned3 wrote:
| coalbin wrote:
| I meet your skepticism with a video of him telling the joke:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQh6q9gNCIQ
| kenned3 wrote:
| Thanks for a link to a site labeled "free propaganda". It
| really rang true here, it is propaganda, and it is free?
|
| Do read the comments on youtube.
| dang wrote:
| " _Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic
| tangents._ "
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| p.s. I don't think the joke was mean-spirited.
|
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32654981.
| [deleted]
| ipnon wrote:
| 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.
| mhh__ wrote:
| Perhaps, but equally that's a route to a monoculture - can we
| not question Reagan?
|
| Americans love to glibly propitiate to Reagan's spirit (in
| heaven I'm assured), there's no way they could be doing so
| out of ignorance of the more controversial aspects of his
| presidency?
| dang wrote:
| Of course we can question Reagan but when it comes to
| political/ideological flamebait, it's best to (a) avoid it
| and (b) stay on topic.
|
| Whimsical off-topic stuff can be ok, but flamewar off-topic
| stuff isn't, and a sort of generic greatest-hits of bad
| Reagan is definitely that.
|
| This is in the site guidelines
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and
| there's lots of past explanation at https://hn.algolia.com/
| ?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... and https://hn.alg
| olia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que..., though
| you might have to scroll through boilerplate to get to the
| more substantial explanations.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Propagandistic anecdotes deserve a little bit of ridicule.
| But just a little bit.
| kenned3 wrote:
| 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?
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _" jokes" at Russia's expense_
|
| I'm not seeing it. That joke could just as easily be told
| for any other national leader and it would still work.
| hk__2 wrote:
| The author of the joke doesn't really matter here; the
| point is that it's funny, period. I'm not sure how you can
| see a mockery of any country in a joke that would work with
| literally any important person in any country.
| mhh__ wrote:
| In that case there'd be no need to mention reagan at all?
| most of the "Soviet" jokes people tell seem to be made up
| anyhow.
| kenned3 wrote:
| Comedy is subjective.
|
| Try telling a sexually charged joke at your place of
| employment and see what happens.
|
| World leaders freely slandering other countries like this
| is shameful, and not what you expect from a "world
| leader".
| arwhatever wrote:
| Werner Herzog's interview/documentary with him just a couple of
| years ago was very interesting, and I recommend watching.
| bediger4000 wrote:
| I was taught that Ronald Reagan ended the cold war and gave us
| the longest lasting economic boom.
| mturmon wrote:
| /s, I assume? (you never know!)
|
| Having read a couple of Cold War histories, most recently Tony
| Judt's excellent _Postwar_ , I learned that what's often
| missing from American pop-level summaries is the work put in by
| the people behind the Iron Curtain to bring it down -- for
| examples, the Polish Catholics and union members, and the Czech
| dissidents such as Vaclav Havel.
|
| Generally American pop-level accounts like to emphasize
| American agency in what happened.
| INTPenis wrote:
| I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle, in the sense
| that it never ended. It only took a back seat in the media
| while Russia was disorganized.
| flavius29663 wrote:
| it ended for 150 or so million people in Eastern Europe, that
| were freed from Russia.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| Aren't their countries still filled with Soviet era (or
| even more recent?) environmental hazards, like ubiquitous
| asbestos and who knows what else?
|
| When i took Russian, we watched a Soviet propaganda film :
| it bragged about asbestos exports as a sign of Soviet
| strength, and i think the teachers (one native Russian
| speaker) perhaps showed it to emphasize what a disaster had
| already been created (this was shortly pre 2000).
| kenned3 wrote:
| Many countries are still stranded with "cold war"
| environmental problems.
|
| The US has many "superfunds" dedicated to cleaning up
| "cold war radioactivity" issues.
|
| A bit more info on the Quebec asbestos issues. Canada
| didnt stop exporting it until 2012.
|
| " Canada led world production of asbestos before the
| country's two largest mines (both in Quebec) halted
| operations in 2012. The closure marked the suspension of
| the country's asbestos production for the first time in
| 130 years. "
|
| Exporting this wasn't unique to the Soviets.
| jeromegv wrote:
| Quebec was also bragging about their asbestos export not
| too long ago either. This isn't really something unique
| to Soviet Union.
| jen20 wrote:
| Eastern _and_ Western Europe.
| ProAm wrote:
| Ended or postponed?
| avmich wrote:
| The Cold War has definitely ended for Eastern Europe.
| ProAm wrote:
| I dont think it really ended. Shifted. But there is a
| reason the US is funding fission and new Moon rockets,
| there is a reason the US is concerned about Taiwan. I
| think we're still deep in it.
| aaaaaaaaata wrote:
| He ended, Trump sorta suspended?
| [deleted]
| thriftwy wrote:
| In 1955, eastern europeans were so thankful to be free from
| Germany.
|
| In 1995, eastern europeans were so thankful to be free from
| Russia.
|
| In 2035, you can expect eastern europeans to be thankful
| again. Not sure who'd it be this time.
| flavius29663 wrote:
| > In 1955, eastern europeans were so thankful to be free
| from Germany.
|
| Not sure which Eastern Europeans you mean, but I can
| assure you most of those 150 mil people were not happy
| they got conquered by nazis or commies, it was the same
| amount of genocide and societal damage from both sides.
| flavius29663 wrote:
| He did. It's just that leftists in the US won't accept that and
| pretend that the Cold War just "ended" one day, because of the
| goodwill of the Russians, not because the US policy forced them
| into bankruptcy.
| woodruffw wrote:
| There's a disconnect here: the US policy in question took
| place over decades, not the 8 years that Reagan was
| president.
| flavius29663 wrote:
| of course it was a decades long policy, but Reagan takes
| the laurels because his predecessor was appeasing USSR and
| Reagan did the exact opposite, bringing about the downfall
| of the USSR. If a new Carter would have been in power, I am
| not sure 1989 would have happen when it did.
| avmich wrote:
| It's easy to argue that it's USSR people, not Western, who
| benefited most from the end of the Cold War.
| woodruffw wrote:
| Are you responding to the right comment? That's sort of
| unrelated to the GP's remark (that Ronald Reagan can be
| credited with ending the Cold War).
|
| (It's also hard to assert that generally: Russia is by
| many metrics worse off than it was under the USSR, while
| most of the rest of Central and Eastern Europe is better
| off.)
| avmich wrote:
| > Are you responding to the right comment?
|
| I was adding to your comment, perhaps too tangentially -
| the GP remark may suggest that USA benefited more than
| USSR.
|
| > It's also hard to assert that generally: Russia is by
| many metrics worse off than it was under the USSR
|
| Economical, cultural, political environment were greatly
| improved as the direct consequences of the end of the
| Cold War, up until ~2010, so I'm not sure why do you
| think the Russia is worse off. What metrics do you
| choose?
| woodruffw wrote:
| My bad! I understand now.
|
| > What metrics do you choose?
|
| I was thinking of life expectancy and the generally high
| overall mortality rate in Russia, some of which is
| attributable to rising alcoholism. But it looks like
| their life expectancy has also improved somewhat over the
| last decade, so I can't claim that unequivocally.
| romwell wrote:
| 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.
| nradov wrote:
| 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.
| avmich wrote:
| > 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.
|
| We may almost always wish things were better than they
| actually were. For example, USA went through a minor
| recession at the end of the Cold War - was it necessary?
| In case of USSR things could be much worse - some argue
| we pass now through the violent ending of that Cold War,
| in a form of actual "hot" war, partially because some
| Soviet people didn't reflect enough on the events of XX
| century.
| mantas wrote:
| Yeah, USSR should have kept all the occupied countries!
|
| /sarcasm
| romwell wrote:
| Yeah right, because the USSR had never before gone through
| hardship, and it's the "bankruptcy" that led to ousting of
| Gorbachev in a coup after his reforms (including a de-facto
| Prohibition, in Russia of all places!).
|
| Let's also ignore that little thing that Russia is now doing
| in Ukraine, and put up a "mission accomplished" banner on the
| clusterfuck that happened in 1991.
|
| The USSR didn't fall apart because of any goodwill, but it
| did fall apart because Gorbachev fucked up.
|
| Reagan deserves as much credit for this as Obama does for the
| eruption of Eyjafjallajokull in Iceleand in 2010.
|
| If you disagree, note that the burden of proof is on you
| here; and you're welcome to point out which specific effects
| of actions of Reagan's administration caused the collapse of
| the USSR, along with an explanation why much more severe
| hardships experienced by people of the USSR in the earlier
| decades did not.
| avmich wrote:
| > Yeah right, because the USSR had never before gone
| through hardship, and it's the "bankruptcy" that led to
| ousting of Gorbachev in a coup after his reforms (including
| a de-facto Prohibition, in Russia of all places!).
|
| Hardship is something USSR went through many times - until
| it didn't. And there were many reasons, on many levels, why
| the situation in late 1980-s was bleak. What was with the
| oil prices at the time?
|
| > The USSR didn't fall apart because of any goodwill, but
| it did fall apart because Gorbachev fucked up.
|
| One of his phrases was "socialism with a human face".
| Before Gorbachev, Andropov tried to "rule as it should be
| done", but, as a popular joke states, "has proven that if
| you rule seriously, you can't live longer than a year".
| Stalinist times have ended, and more soft, Brezhnev-like
| ruling turned out to be too incapable. Gorbachev managed to
| do few mistakes, while trying to rule mostly well - and
| ended up with opening the country, in the form of many
| states, to the beneficial external world.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| > not because the US policy forced them into bankruptcy
|
| what?!
|
| It was pretty much the USSR policies that forced them into
| bankrupcy.... as it did in every other socialist state.
|
| source: am from another former socialist country, that also
| doesn't exist anymore.
| flavius29663 wrote:
| Maybe you're not aware how much the USSR was spending on
| defense, espionage, space programs...By the end of the
| decade they ended up spending 14% of the GDP on military,
| trying to keep up with the US
| avmich wrote:
| US definitely were helping to bankrupt... but then just
| before the putsch in August 1991 USA got really worried
| that USSR will split in parts, and the nightmare of
| managing relations with multiple nuclear states led them to
| support Gorbachev and USSR, until it actually broke. Then
| the work of gathering all nuclear armaments into one state
| - Russia - was going on, along with support of Russian
| scientists (lest them go to places like Iran and help them
| with their projects). That's one of the big reasons we have
| ISS now...
| the-smug-one wrote:
| Dang, good move to force a whole country into bankruptcy.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| Seems to be working for China, as well.
| bediger4000 wrote:
| Should I have been taught Ronald Reagan did that as well?
| kenned3 wrote:
| I suggest you look at the external debt of China vs other
| nations, you may be surprised with what you find.
| jltsiren wrote:
| Reagan didn't end the cold war. He applied economic pressure,
| which created the conditions that allowed the cold war to end.
|
| Gorbachev played the critical part. He let the East European
| satellite states go rather than sending troops to restore
| status quo. Within the USSR, his reforms gave the democratic
| opposition some room to breathe. Once Gorbachev's power started
| to fail, that allowed the opposition to win, rather than the
| hardliners who attempted a coup.
|
| With another kind of leader on the opposite side, Reagan's
| policies could have won but not ended the cold war. The USSR
| could have become something like North Korea, but much bigger.
| It would have been stable but no longer a global superpower.
| (That may also be where Russia is headed today, as there are no
| viable alternatives to Putin's regime.)
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| long live trickle-down economics! /s
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| don't get the downvotes; do people here actually believe in
| trickle-down economics or just fail to recognize the sarcasm?
| LetThereBeLight wrote:
| Anyone interesting in learning more about Gorbachev's life, I
| recommend watching Werner Herzog's Meeting Gorbachev.
| helge9210 wrote:
| There is a saying in Russian that can be translated as "That one
| died. This one will follow".
| RichardCNormos wrote:
| Paraphrasing President Reagan:
|
| The Moscow police are notoriously strict when it comes to
| speeding. One day, Gorbachev and his driver are going to a
| meeting, and they are running late. Gorbachev admonishes the
| driver to go faster, but his driver refuses.
|
| Finally, Gorbachev says, "Fine! Pull over! I will drive."
|
| Gorbachev starts speeding through the streets of Moscow with his
| driver in the back seat. They are pulled over by the police.
|
| The first officer gets out of the car and walks to Gorbachev's
| car. They talk for a moment, then the officer returns, as white
| as a sheet.
|
| "Well? Was it someone important?" says the second officer.
|
| The first officer replies, "Important?! You have no idea!
| Gorbachev is his driver!"
| 0003 wrote:
| The first driver was a KGB agent named Putin
| [deleted]
| alexott wrote:
| There was an earlier anecdote about Brezhnev on this topic...
| misiti3780 wrote:
| that is pretty funny.
| idlewords wrote:
| Gorbachev secured his place in history by what he _didn 't_ do.
| While never endorsing the end of the eastern bloc, he made it
| clear beginning in the late 1980's that unlike his predecessors,
| he would not oppose democratic reforms in Eastern Europe by
| force. To general astonishment, he kept this promise, and with
| the regrettable exception of Lithuania this commitment to not
| repeating the crimes of his predecessors is Gorbachev's greatest
| legacy. In 1988 you would have been hard pressed to find anyone
| who could imagine the mostly peaceful collapse of the Eastern
| Bloc, but Gorbachev had the moral courage to accept this once
| unimaginable consequence of his policy and to see it through.
| nradov wrote:
| For those unfamiliar with what happened in Lithuania, in 1991
| Gorbachev used military force to kill 14 Lithuanian civilians
| who were demonstrating for democratic reforms.
|
| https://www.rferl.org/a/lithuania-soviet-crackdown-1991-krem...
| pastacacioepepe wrote:
| > who were demonstrating for democratic reforms.
|
| You seem to comment to better inform readers, yet your
| comment distorts the truth.
|
| Even the article you linked talks about Lithuania declaring
| independence from the URSS, not asking for democratic
| reforms.
|
| Despite what your article says, if you read the story on
| Wikipedia, Lithuania did in fact unilaterally declare
| independence from the URSS in March 1990.
|
| Just as an example, check what Spain did in 2017 when
| Catalonia tried to declare independence after a popular vote.
| If Catalonians decided to resist, there is no doubt that the
| Spanish state would have used violence to suppress them. Try
| to imagine what the USA would do if any of its states tried
| to declare independence.
| saalweachter wrote:
| Interestingly, South Carolina declared its independence
| December 20, 1860, and the US Civil War didn't begin until
| April 12, 1861, when the Confederate Army attacked Fort
| Sumter.
|
| It's an intriguing historical question what would have
| happened if Fort Sumter hadn't been attacked. Would the
| Union have eventually made the first move? Would peaceful
| negotiations have eventually resulted in some stronger
| guarantee in the continuance of slavery and an end to
| secession? Would the Union have eventually dissolved
| amicably?
| twright wrote:
| I'm not sure your specific speculation is on the list: ht
| tps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War_alternate_
| h...
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| > It's an intriguing historical question what would have
| happened if Fort Sumter hadn't been attacked. Would the
| Union have eventually made the first move?
|
| Going by what happened during the Nullification Crisis,
| the answer is likely a "Yes".
| type0 wrote:
| Spain isn't a union state
| idlewords wrote:
| The parent comment is correct, Lithuanians were
| demonstrating for the right to self-determination. The
| Baltic States were forcibly annexed to the Soviet Union in
| 1940; the comparison to Catalonia or US states is specious.
| Over two million people participated in peaceful protests
| in 1989 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Way), the
| Soviet decision to suppress this movement by force is a
| black mark on Gorbachev's legacy.
| pastacacioepepe wrote:
| > 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.
| alrs wrote:
| Gorba, the Chief.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNoBstt8uYM
| swyx wrote:
| RIP. I did my college essay on Gorbachev. Still think the Cold
| War was the greatest urgent threat to humanity and welcome any
| moves to end it, failures and all
| thriftwy wrote:
| I guess it feels so good when you get all the benefits and
| somebody else foots the failures.
|
| Well, 2022 is a year of boomerang.
| drumhead wrote:
| He really changed the world. Ended the cold war, an incredibly
| important figure in 20th Century history. One of the few decent
| people in Russian politics.
| SlavikCA wrote:
| As the Russian, I'm of the opinion that Gorbachev is traitor.
|
| I hate communism, so it's good that he helped us to get rid of
| that.
|
| But why getting rid of communism had to include letting Americans
| to take reign in many government agencies of Russia?
|
| What would be your opinion of US president, if he goes to to
| retire in Russia?
|
| I'm reading some Russian news site, and almost universally
| Gorbachev is hated by Russians.
| DFHippie wrote:
| > What would be your opinion of US president, if he goes to to
| retire in Russia?
|
| Did Gorbachev retire outside Russia? I wasn't aware of this. He
| died in Moscow. The last time I heard about him before this was
| when he attended an RT event in Moscow (which was also attended
| by Jill Stein and Michael Flynn). Where outside Russia did he
| retire? Why did he leave this place to die in a Russian
| hospital? Your comment leads one to infer he retired to the US.
|
| > I'm reading some Russian news site, and almost universally
| Gorbachev is hated by Russians.
|
| Russian news sites are notable lately for not allowing the free
| expression of Russian opinions, so what they show you may not
| be representative. I'm not saying you're wrong but that Russian
| news sites aren't great evidence that you're right.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _letting Americans to take reign in many government agencies
| of Russia?_
|
| I haven't heard of Americans taking on leadership roles in
| Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. Do you have any
| examples, or sources about this?
| alliao wrote:
| what are his chances living to this ripe old age if he had
| stayed? i don't think he had a spectacular life in the US
| either, just became a normal bloke
| xg15 wrote:
| I still think the gp's question is relevant:
|
| > _What would be your opinion of US president, if he goes to
| to retire in Russia?_
| giantrobot wrote:
| > But why getting rid of communism had to include letting
| Americans to take reign in many government agencies of Russia?
|
| Wow. Such a claim. I'm sure you have mountains of examples of
| this happening just one time.
| rossmohax wrote:
| Harvard Boys:
| https://www.thenation.com/article/world/harvard-boys-do-
| russ...
| [deleted]
| jaza wrote:
| Are you suggesting that Gorbachev went to retire in the US? He
| travelled extensively to the US and elsewhere, but as far as I
| know he only ever lived in Russia.
| paulpauper wrote:
| Like Bill clinton, he helped define 90s geopolitics. It's
| remarkable how he faded away like he did. Nelson Mandela, Yassir
| Arafat , Ariel Sharon..that whole era.
| legerdemain wrote:
| The Reuters article describes Gorbachev as "the last Soviet
| president." This is technically correct, but misleading.
| Gorbachev was also the first and the only person to hold that
| office. Heads of the Soviet Union held the office of the general
| secretary of the party.
| hunglee2 wrote:
| Hard to know the man behind the image, but Gorbachev seemed like
| a fundamentally decent man, who was perhaps over his head at a
| moment no one could be reasonably be expected to prepare for.
| Still, with him at the helm of the sinking ship, chaos and
| conflict was at least avoided, or at least deferred, and for that
| we should be thankful. RIP
| elchin wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_January
| Aperocky wrote:
| He 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.
| desindol wrote:
| Sometimes you have to work in the constraints of your time as
| he did. You'll learn that when you get older.
| timmg wrote:
| > 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.)
| twelve40 wrote:
| Yes, this is accurate. But underneath these formalities,
| just as the parent mentioned, was a weak, gullible and
| incompetent man who lost control of the country and caused
| a lot of real pain (90s were hell on earth). He is widely
| despised by his own people now, despite all the official
| bs.
| varjag wrote:
| People are complicated beings. He was a part decent man, part
| criminal and part coward.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Aren't we all?
| varjag wrote:
| Sure, who among us did not massacre an uprising or two.
| timmg wrote:
| > but Gorbachev seemed like a fundamentally decent man
|
| I caught this movie at the Tribeca Film festival:
| https://tribecafilm.com/festival/archive/meeting-gorbachev-2...
|
| It was very sympathetic toward him. And I don't think it is a
| "great" film in any sense. But I did feel like I got a taste
| for who he was. And I also felt he was a fundamentally decent
| person.
| trymas wrote:
| Nasreddin_Hodja wrote:
| Plus there was also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_January
| loeg wrote:
| Probably the most relevant sentence from that article:
|
| > The role of Mikhail Gorbachev in the January events remains
| disputed.
| mantas wrote:
| The last missing puzzle piece is pretty clear when looking at
| the full picture. Maybe now that he is gone, nobody will
| prevent from stating it officially.
|
| It's pretty clear that he was aware and gave orders. There're
| testimonies that next time Alfa unit asked for written
| orders. Guess when Alfa unit was given unwritten orders and
| who could give them such orders? If they acted without
| orders, why no heads roll back then?
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| I wonder how all of this played into Alfa's decision not to
| kill protestors in service of the August 1991 Soviet coup
| d'etat attempt.
| stefan_ wrote:
| What is "disputed"? It says right there, under Commanders and
| leaders: Mikhail Gorbachev. Such is the nature of the deal;
| power for responsibility.
| mantas wrote:
| There's no paper with Gorbachev's signature. Which is
| pretty usual to Soviets - leave no paper trace was modus
| operandi since the establishment of USSR.
| avmich wrote:
| Rest in peace, Mikhail Sergeevich. You were an old school enough
| to perhaps not understand fully what you did to the people of
| former USSR, but even misunderstood it certainly was once-in-an-
| era kind of great.
| spapas82 wrote:
| 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.
| AlexAndScripts wrote:
| Was he Lithuanian by any chance? Gorbachev killed protestors
| there, arguably the biggest stain on his otherwise surprisingly
| decent record.
|
| Or did he sympathise with communism? Gorbachev arguably
| accelerated it's decline.
| spapas82 wrote:
| He was Greek and yes, he was with the communist party in his
| youth. So probably that's why...
| eloy wrote:
| 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 OBB, the Austrian railways:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLscz8kEg6c
|
| - In 2007 for Louis Vuitton:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/05/business/media/05vuitton....
| jtjbdhsjjdnd wrote:
| For the West he was a hero, for the Russians he was a disaster
| https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/Russia/Death_rate/ . I don't
| blame Gorbachev for this. Just as in the case of Nikolai II
| Russian totalitarian state and lack of checks and balances
| washed out an inept person to rule the country.
| koheripbal wrote:
| The communist system is responsible for that, not Gorbachev.
| Centralized gov't controlled economies create corruption
| which results in ultimate economic collapse.
| mortenjorck wrote:
| Personally, I try to avoid characterizing anyone in politics as
| a "genuinely good person" or otherwise. I don't think it's a
| useful framing.
|
| As humans, we gravitate toward personalities, identities, and
| stories, and these all matter for the people we keep close to
| us. In the public sphere, however, actions and legacy are what
| matter, for better or worse. For a major historical figure like
| Gorbachev, there is bound to be both better and worse, and to
| me the most valuable analysis is of those actions and legacy
| rather than personal character.
| lapcat wrote:
| 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 Union to glasnost
| and perestroika.
|
| Of course Yeltsin was a big part of the problem too.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| A "Marshall Plan" for Russia would have worked as well as the
| "Marshall Plan" for Afghanistan has worked over the last 20
| years. You can't impose your system on people who don't want
| it. Do you think Russia would have handed control over to
| Westerners? And without control it's just an endless money
| sink. The oligarchs would just have become a little richer.
| avmich wrote:
| Just to be certain, I'm sure the last 20 years put a long-
| lasting effect on Afghan people, won't be erased soon. We
| even see some effects in modern Iraq, where the period was
| shorter.
| tomasaugustus wrote:
| Don't forget Putin was a darling of the US and the West for a
| long time. Read the praises The Economist sung of him.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| The huge metal show in Moscow shows just how much optimism
| there was in that moment.
|
| If you've never seen this footage, definitely look:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_W7wqQwa-TU
|
| 1.6 million people in an airfield at a free concert that lasted
| all day. There's a documentary about it but I've not watched
| it.
|
| It's so disappointing the world couldn't bring that optimism to
| fruition, and instead kleptocrats took over.
| cronix wrote:
| Not to take away from that awesome concert, but Lars has
| stated several times it was closer to 500k, but somehow the
| number keeps growing...
|
| > However, Lars explained in the conversation that he doesn't
| know the exact number how many people were in the concert,
| but he heard at the time that there were half a million
| people attended the show.
|
| > "Listen, it may go up by 100,000 people each year! I heard
| at the time it was around half a million. Whatever it was, it
| was a f*ck-load of people.
|
| https://metalheadzone.com/lars-ulrich-clarifies-the-myth-
| tha...
| avmich wrote:
| Was the absence of Marshall plan happened because of the West
| or because of Russia's decision?
|
| > Sadly, it seems that Gorbachev's efforts were mostly for
| naught.
|
| Russia today is a faint ghost of the former USSR. The events in
| Eastern Europe show that to an extent.
| nxm wrote:
| Who would pay for Marshall Plan?
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Somebody pays eventually. We are all paying for it right
| now, plus interest.
| avmich wrote:
| Absolutely. And we will likely pay for similar situations
| with Hungary, Turkey, China...
| avmich wrote:
| How much? E.g. in early 1992 monthly stipend of a student -
| something which he could somehow survive for a month (not
| quite, too low, but somewhat close) was about 60 roubles.
| And the USD-RUR course was 100 roubles for a dollar. So a
| person was barely - very barely - surviving on 7 dollars 20
| cents a year.
|
| Do you know how much Russian economy costed at the time?
| anon_123g987 wrote:
| > Russia today is a faint ghost of the former USSR.
|
| Russia was only a _part_ of the USSR. Their main problem is
| that they, too, believe that they _are_ the former USSR, and
| try to restore the former glory. Well, the state of the war
| in Ukraine (another part of the former USSR) clearly shows
| how wrong they are.
| avmich wrote:
| > Well, the state of the war in Ukraine (another part of
| the former USSR) clearly shows how wrong they are.
|
| I assume you mean "Russia believe that they are the former
| USSR".
|
| It's interesting to note that Russia in 1990-s focused on
| economic modernization - and while it went through highly
| criminal years, they built a good market economy by 1999 -
| while Ukraine was mostly (more) doing political reform -
| and they had established presidential changes. Now more
| economically robust Russia with autocratic ruling fights
| with still quite corrupt, but politically much more
| democratic Ukraine - and shows that, yes, it's better to be
| a poor democracy, than a rich autocracy, because autocracy
| will get you in the end... or maybe it's a too hasty
| conclusion.
| hahaitsfunny wrote:
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| That has little to do with the USSR as those lands were
| conquered by the Russian Empire in 18th century from the
| Ottomans.
| thriftwy wrote:
| It's smaller all right. But it is also much more robust.
|
| Late USSR was the kind of society where most everything was
| in short supply and which has even failed to feed itself.
| Yes, it had a lot of hardware and people. All of that was for
| no good, given the awful system in place.
| avmich wrote:
| I'd point out that USSR was much more self-reliant than
| Russia - you couldn't really put sanctions on Eastern block
| of countries, they produced everything, with certain things
| so good they are still competitive. Yes, market economy
| does greatly improve Russia's agility, but special services
| can't stop ruin most of what they can touch, so even market
| economy has limited net benefits now - while at the time of
| USSR they had a good counterbalance in the form of the
| Communist Party.
| thriftwy wrote:
| You can't be self-reliant when you are bankrupt and all
| basic neccesities are in short supply.
|
| USSR was defunct. Its communist party was also defunct.
|
| Russia is lucky to have China which produces enormous
| assortment of items as well as trade surplus.
| avmich wrote:
| USSR wasn't bankrupt for many decades - until the end, of
| course, but it's silly to compare unstable USSR in 1991
| going through destructive transformations with Russia,
| which still "just" losing the was against the West - so
| far. You should compare USSR of 1980 with Russia today
| (or rather before February 24 this year) - and USSR will
| win in capabilities, despite the lack of market economy.
|
| > USSR was defunct. Its communist party was also defunct.
|
| USSR was relatively stable for decades, with all its
| great shortcomings.
|
| I don't think China plays significant enough role in
| today's events.
| wcarron wrote:
| You can lead a horse to water; but you can't make it drink. It
| wasn't the US' responsibility, it was the Russian peoples'.
| [deleted]
| pessimizer wrote:
| You can't make it drink, but you can back a corrupt drunk who
| will shell the parliament and make sure that the Russian
| people know that America will never be on their side.
| hourislate wrote:
| lucideer wrote:
| > _The United States didn 't do enough_
|
| I think if you dig into the history a bit more closely, you'll
| quickly find that the United States did in fact do
| plenty[0][1].
|
| [0] https://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/27/world/10.2-billion-
| loan-t...
|
| [1] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-
| xpm-1996-07-09-mn-22423-...
| lapcat wrote:
| "The International Monetary Fund said today that it had
| approved a $10.2 billion loan for Russia. The move is
| expected to be helpful to President Boris N. Yeltsin in the
| presidential election in June. The three-year loan is the
| fund's second biggest, after a $17.8 billion credit granted
| to Mexico last year."
|
| "The United States transferred over $13 billion (equivalent
| of about $115 billion[A] in 2021[B]) in economic recovery
| programs to Western European economies after the end of World
| War II." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan
| hahaitsfunny wrote:
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| On the contrary, the "shock therapy" approach that Russia took
| in the Yeltsin years was, in many ways, prescribed by the West,
| and ended up being a complete disaster for both your average
| Russian person, and for capitalism and democracy as a whole,
| because most people just learned to associate these things with
| the kleptocracy that occurred in the 90s.
| lapcat wrote:
| > On the contrary
|
| I agree with everything you said, so I don't take it as
| contrary to what I said.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| 'On the contrary' can have flexible scope, in this case it
| seems to mean 'contrary to any idea of a Marshall plan...'
| sereja wrote:
| Interestingly, the disdain for democracy in both Russia and
| China is strongly motivated by "we've already tried giving
| people freedom and it didn't work".
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warlord_Era
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_Russian_constitutional_cr.
| ..
| mturmon wrote:
| I think there's a lot of historical support for this view.
| Here's a summary from 1998:
|
| https://www.thenation.com/article/world/harvard-boys-do-
| russ...
| ajross wrote:
| > [Western-driven reconstruction was] complete disaster for
| both your average Russian person
|
| I think that's overstating the case. In fact the "average
| Russian person" was living in destitute poverty through most
| of the cold war, and none of that meaningfully changed with
| the advent of a market economy. Except that Russians of the
| 2000's could get eat better food and watch (much) better TV.
|
| It's absolutely true that most of the western aid ended up
| hurting and not helping. But the bar was very, very low to
| begin with.
| paganel wrote:
| > was living in destitute poverty through most of the cold
| wa
|
| Genuinely asking, did you live East of the Wall back then?
|
| Because I did live East of the Wall (not in the former
| USSR, though), and I can assure you that we were most
| certainly not living in "destitute poverty" (my dad was a
| civil engineer, my mum had graduated from a hydro
| construction faculty). My parents did end up living in
| destitute poverty, as in having to get back to literally
| subsistence agriculture in order to survive, but that only
| came in the second part of the '90s, once democracy had
| already been in place for a few good years (and democracy
| had come with privatizations and price liberalizations).
| avmich wrote:
| You're kidding. Watch a Soviet movie, estimate the level of
| poverty people lived - if the difference with reality was
| too great, people wouldn't watch them.
| LtWorf wrote:
| Check life expectancy of russians... it is not the same...
| it has gone worse.
| avmich wrote:
| Unimpressed. How much worse? USA life expectation went
| worse for last couple of years - is it enough argument
| for the lack of an argument?
| sudosysgen wrote:
| That's ridiculous. The average Russian in the cold war was
| living a pretty okay life materially speaking. Far from
| destitute poverty. The economic crash in 1991 was so
| devastating it led to millions in excess mortality.
| epolanski wrote:
| People in the soviet union definitely did not live in
| poverty during the cold war.
|
| Average Russian ranked in top 30 for standard of livings
| and in the first two decades after the war gdp grew more
| than in US. Richer countries like baltics ranked among the
| top 20 at times during soviet times. It was definitely not
| even in all soviet countries and regions, but that's not
| unlike other countries or regions.
| kilolima wrote:
| We did enough. See
| https://www.thenation.com/article/world/harvard-boys-do-russ...
| baxtr wrote:
| I once heard someone say that any country needs two attempts
| until democracy works out properly. Maybe it's the same here.
| eastbound wrote:
| The upside of claiming nothing is set until the 3rd time, is
| that it takes 40-80 years for each try, and that gives plenty
| of time to be right.
|
| Democracy is fragile, chaotic and dirty. The French started
| democracy with beheading the people that the French would
| have elected (Louis XVI wasn't killed until 1793, because he
| tried to organize a referendum for him, which he was sure to
| win, and the parliament people couldn't let that happen).
| Then the French elected Napoleon, which is the opposite of
| democracy too in its processes. Then Napoleon was demoted and
| a few years went by and he came back in Juans Les Pins, and
| conquered Paris with huge crowds growing at each village.
|
| The whole story of democracy in each country is often a farce
| ending with a happy power balance, while we often turn a
| blind eye to blatant violations of democracy when it's in our
| favour.
|
| So there's no first or second attempt at democracy. There are
| errands that countries do, and sometimes they become
| democratic despite having a kind at the head, sometimes they
| look democratic and aren't, and sometimes the negative forces
| win. Lest we live in the good days.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| What would the US's second attempt be in its history ?
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| The Articles of Confederation were a failure, so we tried a
| second time, at the Constitutional Convention in
| Philadelphia in 1787, the result of which was _the
| Constitution_ under which the American government has been
| operating since.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articles_of_Confederation
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shays%27_Rebellion
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_Convention_(Un
| i...
| avgcorrection wrote:
| The West was and is about capitalism, not democracy. Democracy
| in the Third and Second World often gets in the way for the
| West since it brings with itself problems like nationalization
| of resources (i.e. closing off resources to Western
| corporations). Probably other problems as well.
| practice9 wrote:
| What the US (and Europe) should have done was to take away the
| nukes from Russia, and let Ukraine have their nukes after the
| fall of USSR. Russia definitely has more history of imperialism
| than Ukraine (which has none of that)
| vt85 wrote:
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| > There was no "Marshall Plan" after the Cold War like there
| was after World War II
|
| Well, kinda https://www.thenation.com/article/world/harvard-
| boys-do-russ...
| lapcat wrote:
| And people like Larry Summers are still around giving
| economic "advice", failing upward.
| eternalban wrote:
| > There was no "Marshall Plan" after the Cold War like there
| was after World War II. This was a huge mistake
|
| This notion is based on ignoring historic facts. Germany (and
| Japan) in WWII were fully vanquished foes whose _entire_ socio-
| political system was redrawn by the victors. Marshall plan
| executed in an environment of near total control over Germany.
| US simply was not in a position to do a Marshall Plan for ex-
| Soviet Union.
|
| > The United States didn't do enough to help Russia transition
| to democracy in the 1990s.
|
| This is another nice sounding but entirely wrongheaded thought.
| Do you really think an outside force can come and force a
| nation with its historic trajectory and 'make them democratic'?
| Democracy, or whatever goes by that name in the West today, has
| its roots in Magna Carta! That's 1215 [yes, I watched Better
| Call Saul]. Read up on history of England, and how much
| bloodshed it took to go from there to a parliamentary system,
| with (important to note) its entire elite class on board with
| the political arrangement -- it was after all what _they_
| wanted after having their Glorious Revolution.
|
| The idea that a bunch of Americans can waltz into Moscow and
| St. Petersburg and turn Russia in a "democratic nation" by some
| means of time compression squeezing in centuries of organic
| development into a couple of decades is frankly laughable.
| LtWorf wrote:
| Good point. Except you're forgetting Marshal plan wasn't only
| for Germany and Japan.
| thehappypm wrote:
| I think the big difference is the oligarchs. The USSR had
| already been transitioned to a resource state, and there was no
| actual rebuilding that needed to happen. The Marshall plan was
| almost easy because you could tally up all the broken bridges
| and say "itll cost us $X to fix". What's the equivalent for
| post USSR? What ended up happening was oligarchs swooped in to
| take over from the central planners, and it's not clear how the
| US could have helped steer it differently short of going to war
| with Russia's upper class.
| epolanski wrote:
| The us helped that happen, if anything.
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| The U.S. held a lot of sway in the post USSR. They lent a lot
| of credibility to Yeltsin.
|
| If the U.S. had pushed for a system that actually would've
| held the resources in trust for the people and allowed them
| to be developed by market capital, that very likely could've
| happened.
|
| But the reality is that across every region of the globe, the
| U.S. in the constant purity quest of its foreign policy had
| purposefully alienated anyone with anything other than right
| of center views. It found itself cozied up to the most
| audacious self seeking would be autocrats, cartelists and
| outright gangsters for the very reason that they stood the
| most to gain from the decline of Communism and so they beat
| their chest the hardest against it.
|
| Particularly the Reagan and Bush administrations had little
| interest in looking over the shoulders of those they had been
| ready to support as promelgators of coup. Though instead the
| Communists committed political suicide and these
| entrepreneurs of corruption instead would pick over the
| carcass of the state.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _the big difference is the oligarchs_
|
| The oligarchs were minted in the late 80s and 90s. They
| weren't a preexisting power structure. Putin came to power
| with their and the FSB's help. (He was also popular for not
| being incompetent.)
| blockwriter wrote:
| Wasn't the preexisting power structure the Soviet military?
| I thought that that Soviet generals stationed near large
| and valuable resources simply decided that these large and
| valuable resources had become their private property.
| Organized crimes and powerful politicians filled in the
| gaps.
| thriftwy wrote:
| Soviet military can't do nothing. It's not Latin America
| or Myanmar.
|
| They will just sit there and wait for orders to come.
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| They were minted in late 80s and 90s with the help and
| active involvement of the West.
|
| There were so many stories...
|
| Working at McKinsey in Moscow in 90s made you instantly
| into a multi-millionaire. US was sending planes full of
| dollars to Almaty. Chechen avisos were a CIA plot... and so
| on and so forth.
| scrlk wrote:
| I'm interested in reading these stories, are there any
| particular links you can suggest?
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Democracy does not imply friend of or aligned with the West.
|
| Russia has historically been an imperial power and seeks to
| further its own power and perceived interests, and they
| certainly refuse to be under foreign/Western/American
| domination.
|
| A democratic government could mean less reckless actions but it
| wouldn't necessarily mean friendlier actions.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| Americans seem unaware of the movement of armies by Western
| European Imperial powers through eastern Europe, very
| particularly British Imperialists, in the historical shadow
| of the horse-lords in centuries earlier. The talk is like
| everyone is innocent except the current government, that the
| USA opposes; so far from true.
| ajross wrote:
| > Democracy does not imply friend of or aligned with the
| West.
|
| It seems like it does, though? I mean, no, it's not like
| India or Brazil are subjugated client states of the US or
| Germany or whatever, but they know where their natural allies
| are and which direction the wind blows in international
| relationships. Market democracies are going to stick
| together, if for no other reason than because they'll end up
| poorer if they don't, and they don't like that.
| steve76 wrote:
| duxup wrote:
| 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.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| > As soon as enough don't want it, it is over.
|
| Which worries me about the USA, it's pretty hit or miss at
| the moment.
|
| But there are also things that can affect who wants it, or
| what people think "it" is, or how they think you should get
| there. What people want is not an independent variable
| unaffected by anything else.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| 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.
| Maursault wrote:
| Republicans have long said any government is bad. They want
| Big Business to be unrestrained, unregulated, pure
| democracy, at the expense of individual civil rights. I
| can't tell the difference between Republicans and
| anarchists, other than the sad fact that nearly all
| Republicans vote adversely to their personal economic
| interests to stifle economic opportunity, in order to keep
| the very richest the very richest, for that one future day
| when they are the richest of the richest. It makes no
| sense, because that day will never come because they are
| voting to stifle their own personal economic advancement
| for the sake of issues skew to economics, such as abortion
| and 2nd Amendment issues. Really... if you earn less than
| $325K/year, as nearly all Republicans do, it is insane to
| keep voting that way. If everyone always ignored all other
| issues, and voted solely in their personal economic
| interests, we'd never see another Republican elected until
| nearly everyone was rich.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _Republicans have long said any government is bad._
|
| Most republicans are not anarcho-libertarians. Asserting
| that _any_ government is bad is fringe even among
| libertarians, and most republicans aren 't even
| libertarians.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| > "The nine most terrifying words in the English language
| are 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'"
|
| -Ronald Reagan
|
| Perhaps you know that Reagan didn't really mean it, but
| it seems like many people believed him anyway.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _Perhaps you know that Reagan didn 't really mean it_
|
| I think you surely know it too, Reagan was all too eager
| to use government power and his supporters were happy to
| see him do it.
| seanw444 wrote:
| Republicans? Man, some people just can't get past the "my
| party vs your party" mindset.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| Federalism is one of the core principles of the
| Republican party. I don't believe that's a controversial
| statement of fact, but I also didn't think vaccines or
| the shape of the Earth were controversial subjects, so I
| never know these days.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| federalism is an excuse to reduce regulation and continue
| stealing money from the lower classes
| nxm wrote:
| Pushing vaccines and forcing them onto people is (or they
| lose their jobs). Similarly, Democratic government forced
| many businesses to permanently close as they were deemed
| non-essential.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| As a child I was compelled to take vaccinations in order
| to attend school. My buddy in the military tells me he
| was "voluntold" to give blood for his fellow soldiers,
| nevermind all the vaccines they were required to take.
| Back then, vaccine denial was a loony left fringe thing,
| and now it seems to be a mainstream conservative
| position. Times change I suppose, but I do remember the
| old days.
| avmich wrote:
| Reading about successes fighting polio with vaccines, or
| just remembering a standard practice in American health
| system to routinely vaccinate people - with rather few
| exceptions - shows a big difference with COVID-related
| vaccine controversy. What's that different?..
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| The biggest difference is Polio crippled kids and they
| were vaccinating kids, whereas COVID mostly kills
| grandparents and leaves most kids unscathed.
|
| Also, now we have facebook.
| seanw444 wrote:
| None of the people I know who voted Republican would come
| close to identifying themselves as federalists. In fact,
| it's an occasional discussion between some of us. It's
| almost like two parties aren't enough to describe the
| positions of everyone who is forced to identify with one
| of them.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| > We believe our constitutional system -- limited
| government, separation of powers, federalism, and the
| rights of the people -- must be preserved uncompromised
| for future generations.
|
| That's from the preamble of the 2016 Republican platform
| (the most recent one since they declined to publish one
| in 2020 in lieu of just doing whatever Donald Trump
| said); literally their statement of values. But I've long
| believed that Republicans rely on voters who don't
| actually know what they're voting for, so your anecdote
| does strengthen that impression of mine.
| avmich wrote:
| The question here is - are Republicans actually those who
| they write in their documents they are? Or the
| Republicans are those who the majority of people
| considering themselves Republican and voting for them
| thinks?
|
| Certain degrees of federalism are, I think, common across
| the political spectrum, not only describe Republicans.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| 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.
| codyb wrote:
| Yea, and most young democracies are very vulnerable. You
| can look at the Arab Spring for examples of failed
| democracies, and the early United States (it took us 20
| years to get off the Articles of Confederation and work
| on the Constitution we use today).
|
| Myanmar's another one. India's been restricting its
| people's rights lately.
|
| Democracy takes a while to establish as a stable system
| and often fails.
|
| Alexander the Great was granting (non-representative)
| democracies to cities in Asia Minor 2400 years ago, I
| wonder what he'd think of Erdogan.
| AmpsterMan wrote:
| The Thirteen Colonies had a long history of democratic
| self governance. The revolution was mostly an
| independence movement. The revolutionary part was the
| Republican federation.
|
| This long history of democratic rule was not present in
| many modern attempts to establish democracies.
| AdamJacobMuller wrote:
| I'm not sure the average Russian would have seen the
| situation much differently.
|
| Look at the people today who decry chinese investment in
| the US economy? I'm not even saying those people are
| wrong.
|
| All it takes is for one person or group in the country to
| poke us enough to the point where we feel the need to
| strengthen our security posture there (read: add more
| troops) and then some terrible situation like Abu Ghraib
| completely destroys any credibility we have with the
| local population and it just spirals into disaster.
|
| I simply have no faith left in our government's ability
| to execute even a completely peaceful operation like the
| marshall plan (and similarly what we did in Japan).
| avmich wrote:
| What's your proposition then? How it's best to go forward
| from where we are, if you don't trust the current
| organization abilities?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Republicans have long said that the federal government is
| structurally incompetent and unable to effectively
| administer a large country.
|
| To be fair, things probably work better when you don't put
| people with that ideology in charge of said government.
|
| It's like picking a flat-Earther as an astronaut.
| hnhg wrote:
| You couldn't impose democracy on many parts of the USA if it
| were suddenly removed, let's face it.
| ghostwriter wrote:
| that's good, as the US is a constitutional republic
| ZoomerCretin wrote:
| Democratic republic, which is what everyone means when we
| say democracy.
| ghostwriter wrote:
| Hardly everyone, but left zoomers who are unable to
| understand the key founding papers and who refuse
| descriptive comments of the founders on the matter most
| certainly do. [1]: "While often categorized as a
| democracy, the United States is more accurately defined
| as a constitutional federal republic. What does this
| mean? "Constitutional" refers to the fact that government
| in the United States is based on a Constitution which is
| the supreme law of the United States. The Constitution
| not only provides the framework for how the federal and
| state governments are structured, but also places
| significant limits on their powers. "Federal" means that
| there is both a national government and governments of
| the 50 states. A "republic" is a form of government in
| which the people hold power, but elect representatives to
| exercise that power."
|
| Federalist No_14 also had a lot to say on the matter: "In
| a democracy, the people meet and exercise the government
| in person; in a republic, they assemble and administer it
| by their representatives and agents. A democracy,
| consequently, will be confined to a small spot. A
| republic may be extended over a large region."
|
| [1] https://ar.usembassy.gov/education-culture/irc/u-s-
| governmen...
| 8note wrote:
| The founders aren't very relevant anymore. Their system
| was bad, and the current one is better, though it keeps
| some of the old flaws they introduced as compromises for
| the time
|
| Based on your quote, they didn't understand that
| representative democracy is still democracy? The internet
| lessons the need for representatives, since we don't need
| to travel to talk to each other anymore.
| ghostwriter wrote:
| > The founders aren't very relevant anymore. Their system
| was bad, and the current one is better, though it keeps
| some of the old flaws they introduced as compromises for
| the time
|
| The US embassy thinks otherwise:
| https://ar.usembassy.gov/education-culture/irc/u-s-
| governmen...
| pedrosorio wrote:
| > Hardly everyone, but left zoomers
|
| I am not a zoomer and I agree with the commenter you are
| replying to. Most of the "west" has a form of government
| that is a representative democracy (most of them as
| republics, but quite a few as constitutional monarchies
| as well), including the US.
|
| Most people would not waste their time nitpicking the
| usage of such a widely accepted term.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20200215230538/https://ourwor
| ldi...
| ghostwriter wrote:
| > Most people would not waste their time nitpicking the
| usage of such a widely accepted term.
|
| For some reason the US embassy still finds it important
| enough to broadcast the difference to the rest of the
| world: https://ar.usembassy.gov/education-
| culture/irc/u-s-governmen... Could you explain that?
| andrekandre wrote:
| i think you are being a bit pedantic, it says:
| While often categorized as a democracy, the United States
| is more accurately defined as a constitutional federal
| republic.
|
| notice the wording "more accurately" and not
| "mischaracterized" etc
|
| --
|
| btw... whats the point in arguing the u.s isn't a
| democracy?
|
| are you trying to say that people shouldn't be able to
| decide their leaders?
| lapcat wrote:
| > 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.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _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._
|
| It was also about stabilising a war-torn continent's
| economy. To keep them from going communist.
| munk-a wrote:
| And it would've made a lot of sense to re-apply it here
| since Russia has clearly gone in a strongly authoritarian
| direction and is invading its neighbors. It's a pretty
| clear example of a destabilizing actor in the region.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| They had democracy of a Ryazan sugar flavor. Nothing
| compared to real one.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| 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.
| eurasiantiger wrote:
| Certainly the west could have done more to prevent
| corruption and money laundering in western banks, but the
| opportunities were too lucrative and refusal too dangerous.
| avmich wrote:
| For young democracies - like Russia in 1992 - it's possible
| to get captured by populists, who, instead of solving tough
| problems and laying out the groundwork for the subsequent
| development, promise some doubtful, in retrospect at least,
| things, point fingers towards convenient scapegoats etc. In
| this sense Russia was unlucky. Yes, people didn't know
| much, and were led to believe etc... so the guilt is spread
| of course, and many are involved. Everybody should have
| tried to do the best in their place, then the possibilities
| are larger - but in this case, it turned out to be not
| enough.
|
| I'm not sure we now know a guaranteed way of how to deal
| with situations like that.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| Not "ideas" failed the people, but the implementers - which
| turned out to be straight up robbers, dividing past
| empire's industrial base amongst them, like western idol
| Khodorkovsky or Berezovsky.
|
| Where the politicians were less corrupt, the free market
| worked spectacularly well, like in Poland.
| ZoomerCretin wrote:
| So it wasn't real capitalism?
| Beltalowda wrote:
| There is no such thing as "real capitalism"; it's a broad
| and somewhat vague set of ideas with many possible
| implementations, none of which are more "real capitalism"
| than any other, although I'd argue that some
| implementations definitely _better_ than others (and 90s
| Russia is a good example of that).
| ZoomerCretin wrote:
| Capitalism is just an economic system with predominantly
| private ownership of the means of production. Whether a
| country's set of economically productive organizations
| are owned by shareholders via a stock exchange or by
| whomever was powerful enough to take control of them by
| corrupt means seems irrelevant, no?
| throwaways85989 wrote:
| It was not really a base for capitalism to take hold and
| effect. It needs a basic rule of law and democracy to
| work. All it got was brief window of chaos, before the
| kleptocracy returned.
|
| Best description of the cultural background i found so
| far was this:
|
| https://youtu.be/f8ZqBLcIvw0?t=76
| sammalloy wrote:
| > It was not really a base for capitalism to take hold
| and effect. It needs a basic rule of law and democracy to
| work. All it got was brief window of chaos, before the
| kleptocracy returned.
|
| This is my understanding as well, from everything I've
| read. The more interesting question is why Russia, both
| as a nation state and a culture, has no history or
| tradition of democracy. I've never received an answer to
| this question.
| abraxas wrote:
| > The United States didn't do enough to help Russia transition
| to democracy in the 1990s.
|
| This is subtle Russian propaganda that Kasparov has completely
| demolished in his most recent book, "Winter is coming".
|
| The West has embraced Russia's democracy right after the fall
| of the iron curtain. Not only were all sanctions lifted but a
| ton of aid was offered, debts were forgiven and rescue plans
| were put in place when their economy began to sputter. Over
| time however, the West realized that the place was hopelessly
| corrupt and any economic aid was just going to line the pockets
| of the oligarchy and in the late nineties the gravy train
| finally stopped. But to say that Russia wasn't help or was
| humiliated in the early nineties is a lie spread by the
| sympathizers of the current regime in Moscow.
| VictorPath wrote:
| > The West has embraced Russia's democracy right after the
| fall of the iron curtain.
|
| Right like Clinton and the US congress cheering Yeltsin
| bombing Russia's elected parliament.
| Quekid5 wrote:
| 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.
| gus_massa wrote:
| [Remove the two spaces before the link to make it clicky.]
| Quekid5 wrote:
| [Thank you, edited]
| droptablemain wrote:
| Everyone should read The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein.
| epolanski wrote:
| Actually US did a lot to help Yeltsin reelected, never stopped
| the expansion eastwards, attacked Serbia without UN approval,
| pushed for Kosovo referendum under Nato occupation, never
| stopped the military exercises and flights on russian border
| and tried its best to meddle in Russia's internal affairs and
| us economists were among those that most pushed Yeltsin for the
| shock transition towards a capitalist market which led to ghe
| 1998 default.
|
| I think US did enough divide and conquer and meddling to help
| bringing back an authoritarian government.
|
| Anyway, totalitarian has a specific meaning, not a random one,
| it's a government that holds total control on all powers in a
| country. Stalinist USSR and Nazi germany (modern eritrea and
| north korea) apply to that definition, Italian or spanish
| fascisms do not (in both the head of state was the king), even
| less Russia since it is a de jure democracy.
| avmich wrote:
| > I think US did enough divide and conquer and meddling to
| help bringing back an authoritarian government.
|
| There is a phrase in Russia, :) "But in USA they lynch
| people". The idea is that in Russia it's often that
| discussion is interrupted by listing the ills of America, to
| avoid talking about Russia or for other reasons, so it's easy
| to justify pointing fingers to "the real evil".
|
| I think you're wrong and your arguments are misplaced.
|
| The phrase "never stopped the expansion eastwards" suggests
| that you don't see e.g. Slovenia as an interested party to
| join NATO, for whatever reason they chose, and instead see it
| as an evidence of guilt.
|
| > Stalinist USSR and Nazi germany ... apply to that
| definition... even less Russia since it is a de jure
| democracy.
|
| Current Russian laws mean little to define Russia de facto.
| Just like Hitler laws meant little at the time.
| mercy_dude wrote:
| Or May be that was the US master plan all along. I mean when
| has US ever had a marshal plan? Anyone who has followed US
| foreign policies after war, there are multiple examples come to
| sight where they just straight up help the country go into deep
| chaos so much so that the local people hope they were better
| off with pre war dictatorship. Look at Iraq, Libya, Syria,
| Afghanistan.
|
| I don't know why anyone would call US ally anymore or even
| count on them.
| zdragnar wrote:
| > I mean when has US ever had a marshal plan?
|
| That's kind of a silly question, as the answer is in the
| name.
| VictorPath wrote:
| What do you mean, like when Clinton and the US Congress cheered
| Yeltsin bombing Russia's elected parliament (Duma). Then
| Yeltsin appointed Putin and here we are. The US has positioned
| Russia exactly where it wants it - it has positioned the
| Ukraine exactly where it wants it too.
| oytis wrote:
| Marshall plan was tied to occupation though whereby U.S. could
| direct and correct the first steps of the young post-war German
| democracy. Nothing like that would be allowed by post-Soviet
| elites, no matter how much economic help U.S. would offer.
| eps wrote:
| It's naive to think that a Western-style democracy could've
| been instilled in Russia just through some extra effort.
|
| The fact that it works elsewhere doesn't mean it's a suitable
| model for other countries. Especially when there's a _lot_ of
| prior baggage of being ruled by a single person, be it a tzar
| or a head of Politburo.
| theonething wrote:
| > Especially when there's a lot of prior baggage of being
| ruled by a single person, be it a tzar or a head of
| Politburo.
|
| This describes Hungary, Czech Republic, Romania and Poland,
| all former Soviet bloc countries. They've all had varying
| levels of success transitioning from communism to democracy
| and from a planned economy to market.
|
| So it can happen. Could it have happened for Russia? Who
| knows? Based on the above, I lean towards yes.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| > This describes Hungary, Czech Republic, Romania and
| Poland, all former Soviet bloc countries. They've all had
| varying levels of success transitioning from communism to
| democracy and from a planned economy to market.
|
| Yes, but neither the Baltics nor Warsaw Pact countries want
| anything to do with communism in the first place. It was
| forced onto them. So transitioning back to a democracy and
| market economy was far more straightforward.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| Tarq0n wrote:
| That's a very serious claim, could you please provide some
| citations?
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| A peer comment reminded me of the name 'shock therapy', the
| think tank was called 'Harvard institute for international
| development'.
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2022/03/22/1087654279/ho
| w...
|
| https://www.thenation.com/article/world/harvard-boys-do-
| russ...
|
| My original comment has been flagged. I'd like to know why.
| If I'm wrong I'd like to be corrected.
| pessimizer wrote:
| It was flagged for not sufficiently praising the awful
| behavior of the US during and after the fall of the USSR.
| saalweachter wrote:
| If I had to guess, it's because George Soros is often
| used as synecdoche for "the vast Jewish conspiracy" by
| anti-Semites, so your comment sounds an awful lot like
| "the Jews are responsible for ruining Russia".
|
| Which, uh, sounds a lot like anti-Semitic rhetoric not
| uncommon in, among other places, Russia.
| sereja wrote:
| 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.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| I'm not the one who needs convincing.
| jorblumesea wrote:
| If you study geopolitics and history, you might come to the
| conclusion that Russia was never going to be a democratic ally
| of the West regardless of how much economic aid they were
| given.
|
| Russia at the end of the cold war had geopolitical imperatives
| such as a warm water ports, buffer states and desire for
| Russian hegemony that would have existed regardless of their
| economic state. They also have a long, long history of
| authoritarianism.
| wnevets wrote:
| > The United States didn't do enough to help Russia transition
| to democracy in the 1990s.
|
| Some how people manage to blame everything on the United
| States.
| markdown wrote:
| The US manages to meddle and create problems all over the
| world.
|
| A small part of the US footprint:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r.
| ..
| wnevets wrote:
| > The US manages to meddle and create problems all over the
| world.
|
| Huh? The OP is accusing the US of NOT meddling. Talk about
| damned if you do, damned if you don't.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| The US meddled, and it did a lot. The OP is saying the US
| meddled wrong and could have meddled beneficially. If the
| US had decided not to meddle in the USSRs affairs, the
| world would have gone quite differently.
| wnevets wrote:
| > The OP is saying the US meddled wrong and could have
| meddled beneficially.
|
| How are you getting that from the Original Post? The
| Original Post only mentions what the US didn't do, not
| what it did do.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Ah yes, the world was such a utopia before the US.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Why step into a conversation as if everybody else is
| arguing that there's heaven on earth? Are you going to
| ask people if they love Saddam next?
| daemoens wrote:
| That doesn't invalidate the point that the US has created
| incredible amounts of instability around the world.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| Actually the British are more to blame for that, as they
| are the ones who deliberately drew the borders of modern
| middle east with the explicit goal to cause maximum
| instability.
| daemoens wrote:
| Yes they are, but we overthrew a government from half of
| the Latin American countries in the same time period.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_i
| n_r...
| discodave wrote:
| If you wanna act like a superpower, then you're going to get
| judged like a superpower.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Wry and karmic, but nevertheless an unrealistic
| expectation.
| andrepd wrote:
| > The United States didn't do enough to help Russia transition
| to democracy in the 1990s.
|
| This wording implies an accident, or negligence. In fact, it
| was an _intentional_ and _explicit_ policy of "shock doctrine"
| economic deregulation and ultra-liberalisation that led to the
| absolute misery of the 1990s, and the kleptocracy that
| continues to this day.
| avmich wrote:
| In Poland that same "shock doctrine" led to quite good
| results, quite soon.
|
| Not to mention lack of evidence...
| paganel wrote:
| > 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
| agriculture in a matter of 4-5 years maximum; I'm not from
| Russia, but still from the former communist space) while some
| lucky ones from amongst us became entrepreneurs and business
| leaders. Also, most of the really juicy assets (like almost of
| all our banking sector, our oil resources etc) got sold to
| Western companies, but that was a given if we wanted to become
| part of the European Union and of the West more generally
| speaking.
|
| Yes, I've started to become more and more bitter as the years
| have gone by, I'm now almost the same age as my dad was in the
| mid-'90s, when all hell started to economically unravel. Nobody
| had asked my parents, or us, who were mere kids and teenagers
| back then, if we were agreeing to the sacrifices that they were
| going to impose on us.
| baybal2 wrote:
| decebalus1 wrote:
| Cut the crap, paganel (lasa vrajeala). You're completely off
| topic and just wrong. The transition to the market economy
| for Romania was indeed painful in the 90s but that's
| primarily because the exact same communist apparatus was
| still leading the country and they held the reins on
| Romania's western connections. However, in the long run, I
| don't think I'm the only person to say it was successful and
| you can have a decent life in modern day Romania. Way better
| life than in Russia. And your attempt to blame Washington for
| how Romania's transition to capitalism unfolded in the 90s is
| just wrong.
|
| > got sold to Western companies
|
| I'm shaking my head to when reading such obtuse propaganda on
| hacker news.
| simonh wrote:
| I thought most of the major assets got bought by connected
| oligarchs, sometimes by literally putting goons at the doors
| of the auction room to beat up anyone that tried to get in to
| bid against them. If the oils fields were actually owned by
| European companies, we'd be buying Russian oil from
| ourselves, not from Russia.
| ptero wrote:
| That was one way. Another was not paying salaries for
| months ("company has no money" was a common case) until
| employees sell their "vauchers" to those who wanted to buy.
| bhupy wrote:
| 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 economies where large corporations start
| off as small companies and become dominant through
| innovation, growth, and generally meeting consumer demands.
| spamizbad wrote:
| What's crazy is the minds behind the Washington Consensus
| favored a form of extreme capitalism that no western
| democracy would ever tolerate such a system on their own
| soil.
|
| Some ultra-capitalist die-hards have even retreated away from
| Liberalism in general as they found it too restrictive for
| their extreme ideology (they know their economic regime could
| never gain sustained popular support; it would need to be
| imposed)
| AndyMcConachie wrote:
| The USA put Yeltsin into power with a coup. Then Yeltsin turned
| over the reins to Putin. To say that the USA "didn't do enough
| to help Russia transition to democracy in the 1990s" is
| incredibly ignorant. The USA had no interest in promoting
| democracy in 90's post-USSR.
|
| Gorbachev was a fool who believed that the USA and the west
| would not rape his country. We'll never know how many former
| citizens of the USSR died because of 90's shock therapy.
| eej71 wrote:
| I'm not sure what special powers you think the United States
| would have that could change the course of an entire culture
| that still seeems drawn to the strong-man archtype. These kinds
| of transformations have to come from within.
| anonAndOn wrote:
| Maybe it's because Russia as it currently exists is not a
| viable country? Moscow's delusions of adequacy really become
| apparent when the Russian Army is stealing washing machines en
| masse from its poor neighbor.
| baybal2 wrote:
| ozgune wrote:
| I read "Gorbachev: His Life and Times" almost randomly five
| years ago. I'm going off of memory, but my primary takeaway
| from the book was your comment.
|
| Gorbachev believed in Western ideals, maybe a bit too much. The
| Western leaders were extremely supportive of his reforms and
| promised to be with him. After the Wall fell, and Russian
| economy nose dived, no one was there for him. People were
| starving on the streets, Gorbachev asked for humanitarian aid,
| but nothing came.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/23/world/gorbachev-pleads-fo...
|
| I think he pleaded for $3B from Helmut Kohl in the end, but
| even that was too much. IIRC, the book ended with a bitter note
| on Western promises, what Russia could have become, along with
| a warning on consequences in the future.
| avmich wrote:
| > People were starving on the streets, Gorbachev asked for
| humanitarian aid, but nothing came.
|
| Looks like some hyperbolization. There was a term "legs of
| Bush", referring to chicken legs from USA, sold in many
| places in at least some cities. There were "humanitarian"
| bags of rice, also available to some significant extent. This
| was in around 1994, so, Yeltsin times already, but before
| 1991 Soviet Union was somewhat more stable regarding food.
|
| Maybe the reference is regarding a short period at the end of
| 1991, a few months between GKChP putsch and the dissolution
| of the USSR? This period is mentioned in a contemporary song
| ("Kombinatsiya", "Two pieces of sausage"), but it was short
| enough so that humanitarian help couldn't get to the country.
| ozgune wrote:
| Yes, this could be hyperbole or my memory misleading me.
| I'm not Russian and it's hard to find good resources on
| this topic from the time.
|
| I found the following article from the Associated Press. It
| looks like Gorbachev said that Soviet Union didn't expect
| famine, but would face food shortages. It's still sad that
| the humanitarian aid didn't come, leading to Gorbachev's
| resignation.
|
| https://apnews.com/article/a9a10bdf38d213033157d6d98c29e2c1
|
| > In a letter last month to Jacques Delors, the EC
| commission president, the Soviets asked for millions of
| tons of food that it valued at $7.5 billion. The rest of
| the $14.7 billion in aid was requested from other Western
| nations.
|
| The Kremlin's request included 5.5 million tons of grain,
| 900,000 tons of sugar, 800,000 tons of meat, 350,000 tons
| of butter, 300,000 tons of vegetable fat, 300,000 tons of
| flour, 50,000 tons of tobacco, 50,000 tons of baby food and
| 30,000 tons of malt.
| 62951413 wrote:
| In hindsight, that's directionally correct even though it was
| not that obvious back then. Only freaks mentioned the nukes in
| the 90s for example. Now it's crystal clear that their
| stockpile alone should have justified much higher engagement
| from the first world. Possibly all the way to literally buying
| most of it. All kinds of things were possible in the early 90s.
|
| We can definitely blame the US for forcing Ukraine to
| relinquish its nukes. We can blame the US for insisting for a
| long time on preserving the USSR (during the Gorbachev era). We
| can blame the US for not paying enough attention to the other
| two Slavic former republics early. We can blame America for not
| penalizing Yeltsin's regime when they started to veer off the
| original course.
|
| But we need to remember that it was the West in general, not
| just the US. The EU is equally to blame. And even though the
| last 20 years are a direct result of the 90s not that much was
| done in those 20 years either. Not in 2008, not in 2014, not
| even when President Trump told the Germans to cut the pipelines
| and spend on the military.
|
| It very well could be the case that destroying the Evil Empire
| was an unprecedented affair which was too hard for anybody.
| Where by hard I mean impossible in the Velvet Revolution style.
| Or at all. They had to perform multiple simultaneous
| transitions (Totalitarianism -> Democracy, central planning ->
| market economy, empire -> nation state). With a population
| impoverished by 70 years of Communism and three generations not
| knowing any other life (not the case in the Eastern Europe).
|
| It's poetically fitting that Mr Gorbachev died the same year
| his entire legacy was erased. He was not perfect, he was an
| idealist, but he gave freedom to the people. It was him who
| opened the border and let millions escape.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| In hindsight it seems it would have been a futile wasted effort
| - there are many books that have been written about Russia and
| it's the psyche of it's people and why they would never succeed
| with democracy.
|
| Now we have a proto-facist regime copying some aspects the Nazi
| regime.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Your comment makes it sounds like you believe the U.S. had the
| power to decide whether or not Russia would turn into a
| kleptocracy or not. Maybe I'm misinterpreting you, but if I'm
| not, I'm skeptical. Marshall plan notwithstanding, 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. Likewise, the
| people of Russia and their government are ultimately the ones
| with agency in their case. I don't think the U.S. should take
| on the burden of developing other countries; going down that
| road has been a bad idea more often than not.
| mannykannot wrote:
| The Marshall plan was partly a plan to create allies capable
| of resisting further Soviet expansion, but also a response to
| how the Versailles treaty set the stage for resurgent German
| militarism.
|
| The response to the fall of the USSR was neither, but I
| recall breathless reports in the US press of how Harvard MBAs
| were going to Russia to help it transition to a free market
| economy, and ruefully thinking it would be better if they
| aimed for emulating Western European economies.
|
| And, outside of the former USSR, Western Europe had the most
| to gain if this could have been effected - as is now all too
| clear. Insofar as anything might have helped, this was not
| only the US's bag.
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| > 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 supporting
| Japan's very successful land redistribution scheme.
| jollybean wrote:
| The US military defeated Japan and was an occupying power.
|
| The US had the power to dictate whatever terms.
|
| Japan was on it's back.
|
| Russia in 1992 was it's own entity. Still a nuclear power.
| Making it's own decisions.
|
| Not only would Russia not have tolerated US intervention,
| I'm extremely doubtful there could have been such a thing
| on any terms.
|
| As it stands, much of the money used by Oligarchs to buy up
| Natural Resources firms was from the US private banking
| system.
|
| Russia is Russia, they are 100% responsible for their own
| problems, and those have been roiling through history for
| 100's of years.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _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.
| agumonkey wrote:
| isn't it cultural ? japanese seems to be ok struggling
| under american control and keep reaching higher. People
| say US money made Japan thrive but so many time throwing
| money at a large problem fails.. I think the population
| was just more mentally compatible.
|
| Or maybe the post soviet Russia was dealt a bad hand.
| Hard to know (just like here, you can find infinite
| streams of contradictory arguments)
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Hard to say. I suspect the horrific bombing of Japanese
| cities probably had something to do with their
| willingness to submit. Leaving their Emperor intact as a
| figurehead probably helped a lot. Perhaps American
| willingness to help Japan rebuild immediately after such
| a bitter war also played a role.
|
| There were probably innumerable factors that went into
| it. But there are a lot of differences between that
| situation and the fall of the Soviet Union.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Thanks for the suggestion about learning about the
| occupation. To be clear: my statement wasn't that the U.S.
| did nothing, but that there is no amount they could have
| done which would force Japan to succeed against their will,
| or their own ability. There are many examples of the U.S.
| putting its thumb on the scale, so to speak, in countries
| where there was not a subsequent, successful democratic
| transition. The difference between these cases, I'm
| suggesting, is not the weight of U.S. involvement, but
| factors external to U.S. foreign policy, such as the people
| in the countries affected.
| vkou wrote:
| > Your comment makes it sounds like you believe the U.S. had
| the power to decide whether or not Russia would turn into a
| kleptocracy or not.
|
| Given the utter unmitigated disaster of the Russian economy
| in the 90s, I'd daresay that it certainly had the ability to
| influence it away from the hard swing towards strongman
| authoritarianism that followed.
|
| The Washington Consensus was a disaster, and strongly soured
| the country on working with the West.
| lapcat wrote:
| > Your comment makes it sounds like you believe the U.S. had
| the power to decide whether or not Russia would turn into a
| kleptocracy or not.
|
| There's a lot of evidence that US kleptocrats collaborated to
| help turn Russia into a kleptocracy. Practically encouraged
| rather than discouraged that outcome.
| koheripbal wrote:
| You cite no evidence for this conspiratorial claim.
| avmich wrote:
| I'm sceptical that turning Russia into a kleptocracy was a
| plan. Usually participants just want to quickly enrich
| themselves. So I can agree that "let's make it good" plan
| didn't work well enough, but for planned degradation I'd
| like to see more arguments.
| SirOibaf wrote:
| Mr. Gorbachev, Tear Down This Wall! -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCO9BYCGNeY
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