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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums"The West" caused Putin's rise to power...and now, we're reaping what we've sown.
Last edited Wed Mar 19, 2014, 03:04 AM - Edit history (1)
In 1991, the Cold War was over(it had actually BEEN over since 1985, when Mikhail Gorbachev took over as head of the Soviet government and the CPSU, but let's leave that aside for a moment.
Gorbachev, as head of his country, did EVERYTHING the West demanded...and mainly did it voluntarily, would have done it even if the West hadn't demanded it. He reduced Soviet nuclear stockpiles...he avoided sending in the Red Army to save the dinosaur states in Eastern Europe(states that, despite the word "socialist" in their names, were actually right-wing nationalist dictatorships for all practical purposes), he ended most if not all human rights abuses IN the Soviet Union, allowed opposition groups to organize, did photo ops with Reagan where he allowed the Great Cowboyicator to gloat and claim credit for everything.
But, rather than doing what our "side" SHOULD have done, simply stating that the Cold War was done and that from now on Russia and the U.S. would now be equal partners in creating a peaceful, prosperous world, our leaders(including Bill Clinton) insisted on claiming "victory". They insisted on making Russia play the role of a vanquished nation. They reduced Russia's standard of living, which wasn't that high to start with, to levels of mass impoverishment by imposing IMF austerity policies(policies under which the Russian government had to ask the IMF permission to make virtually ANY economic decision). And our leaders, over and over again, knowing full well the damage this would do, made the situation even worse by continually referring to the U.S. as "the world's ONLY remaining superpower".
And in 1991, when Mikhail Gorbachev prevented the return of Stalinist/Brezhnevite rule by refusing to sign over power to those who had attempted to overthrow him and were holding the man and his family hostage, and were threatening to kill his whole family if he didn't do so, "the West" then humilliated Gorbachev even further by falsely declaring Boris Yeltsin, a right-wing drunk who staged meaningless and risk-free photo opportunities for the Western press by posing on a tank, to be the "hero" of the day.
This led to Gorbachev's resignation and Yeltsin's elevation to the head of the Russian government, a position he held no qualifications for and in which he had no achievements whatsoever. But it was Yeltsin, in a rare moment of sobriety, who named Vladimir Putin, a man who would otherwise never have gone into politics, as his successor. And the conditions that the West had imposed in Russia gave Putin, a fascist, antigay, most likely antisemitic and horribly misogynistic thug(his attitudes towards women can largely be seen in his persecution of Pussy Riot over a harmless, peaceful protest)the chance to create what has now become one of the ugliest dictatorships the world has ever seen.
This didn't have to happen. It could all have been avoided. But the West had to gloat...had to humiliate Russia...had to impoverish the Russian people...had to make democracy synonymous in their minds with disgrace and misery.
It's all the fault of OUR leaders. They caused this, and, in electing them, all Americans bear part of the blame.
Will the real lesson...don't end wars by insisting on vanquishing and subjugating the other side...EVER be learned?
Or will we keep doing this over and over again...as we did with Germany after World War I...as we did to Russia after 1991.
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geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)as much as strife and division within former Soviet Republics after the USSR dissolved. Russia went from commanding a global empire to having its troops shooed out as pests from places like Estonia. The US is going through the same thing on a much lesser scale. There's no pleasant way to go down the mountain.
former9thward
(31,997 posts)Trajan
(19,089 posts)How do you know this?
That statement is the lynchpin of your thesis, and it is quite speculative ... You have evidence that Putin would have never entered politics were it not for Yeltsin?
I don't buy it ...
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Someone like Putin can't build a large base of popular support in a country that hasn't been humiliated and in which most people have at least a somewhat decent standard of living. Hitlers and Putins(no,Putin isn't Hitler, yet, but he's on the continuum that leads to a Hitler-type leader) depend on a climate of shame, fear, and uncertainty.
If the West had even treated post-1991 Russia like it treated post-1945 Germany, bringing nothing but positive change, social benefits,and a perceptibly improving life for the great majority, Putin might have entered politics, but wouldn't have gone anywhere in that arena.
Healthy nations, nations treated with dignity by the world, don't produce tyrants.
Why couldn't we just have completely ended ALL hostilities towards Russia in the 1990's? Why wasn't it enough just to have the Cold War done with? Why did our leaders have to rub it in? There wasn't any actual reason after 1991 not to treat Russia as simply another legitimate country with a legitimate government. We ended up with Putin because the West REFUSED to do that.
It's our leaders' fault that Putin is in power. When you humiliate a country, you make it impossible for that country to have a positive future. Is that so hard to understand?
And the truth is, there was no moral difference between our actions internationally in the Cold War and the Soviet Union's actions-BOTH superpowers were pretty much totally wrong in what they did in the world, and neither had any moral authority at all.
Skidmore
(37,364 posts)Bullshit.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)What I wrote is that if you humiliate a vanquished nation, you can pretty much forget about that nation ever doing anything positive.
Under Gorbachev, the Soviet leadership did EVERYTHING our side asked...and for our leaders, it still wasn't enough.
Why wasn't it enough for "the West" to just regard the Cold War, 1991, as forty years of wasted, pointless effort that was simply finished. Why did our leaders have to gloat? Why did they have to keep using inflammatory, arrogant(and quite-frankly, imperialist)phrases like "the world's only remaining superpower"?
Some of us were warning in the Nineties that only bad things could come if "the West" insisted on coat-trailing and triumphalism. We were proven right. Humility and gentleness were what was needed...not international boorishness.
If Russia had been treated with respect by the U.S. after 1991, if we hadn't insisted on mass privatization and mass layoffs of Russian workers, there couldn't have been a President Putin. People like Putin(as was the case with Hitler)can only take power in nations in crisis.
Gravitycollapse
(8,155 posts)Historical blindness is one thing but this is just on another level.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)So do all the other features of IMF/World Bank policies.
The only way to have a stable, peaceful world is ban the imposition of austerity...everywhere.
Gravitycollapse
(8,155 posts)
JVS
(61,935 posts)with the rise of the oligarchs during "shock therapy", which encouraged private ownership over an orderly distribution of state property to the people.
Gravitycollapse
(8,155 posts)JVS
(61,935 posts)On the other hand, the oligarchs had their real run on things during the Yeltsin administration. Putin is often credited with reigning in the oligarchs to some degree, for example he re-asserted state control over Gazprom and other leading industries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_champions
DireStrike
(6,452 posts)
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)This thread has nothing to do with Stalin.
bluestate10
(10,942 posts)positions in government ripping off citizens. When the Soviet Union dissolved and industries in Russia were privatized, all citizens were supposed to or got shares in all state businesses. The problem is that a largely ignorant population didn't understand the value of those assets. The assets were either stolen by people with government connections or if they were bought, citizen sellers were paid nothing for valuable assets.
Gravitycollapse
(8,155 posts)JVS
(61,935 posts)mythology
(9,527 posts)Oh yes, awful. The horrid economy in the U.S.S.R. and the satellite states is a large part of why the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989. But the economy had been stagnant since the 1970s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_Soviet_Union
Just because austerity is a problem today, doesn't actually mean it was a problem everywhere and at every time.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)There haven't been any situations in any countries in which life for the vast majority of the people were ever, even in the long term, improved by austerity.
None. Bang all.
And yes, the Soviet economy wasn't doing all that well, but at least they had full employment. You didn't have to have huge numbers of people being put out of their jobs in order to make the economy better.
Simply actually giving the workers the decision-making power in the workplace(as opposed to simply switching it from clueless bureaucrats to heartless bankers)would have done a LOT to make Russia's economy do better.
The creation of crony capitalism(unfortunately, the ONLY kind Russia ever could have had, as no non-corrupt Russian capitalists have ever existed)gave a few people a lot more money but didn't make life better for most Russians.
killbotfactory
(13,566 posts)That would be actual socialism. That's just crazy.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)
PeteSelman
(1,508 posts)But I think you make very valid points overall.
Cha
(297,184 posts)he wants because he has some apologists on the internet that say nothing is his fault. Sick.
Poor putin
NobodyHere
(2,810 posts)Things would have turned out differently.
Cha
(297,184 posts)now! lol.. evidently this guy wasn't enough..
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)we wouldn't have HAD Putin coming to power.
Nothing I've said here is a defense of Putin...he's a fascist scumbag and I hope that the Russian people dump him at some point.
What I've been talking about here is the process that brought Putin to power.
Sometimes, it almost seems as if the West WANTED Russia to end up being run by someone like Putin because the West couldn't get its head around Russia NOT being the enemy. If the West had really wanted permanent peace with Russia, it would have made sure that, in making the changes Russia/the USSR made (and made voluntarily, if we want to be honest with ourselves)in the late 1980's did NOT lead Moscow losing international prestige. We should have worked to make a peaceful, democratic Russia(and that's what Gorbachev was creating)an equal partner in creating a stable, prosperous, and just world.
Instead, our leaders chose capitalist triumphalism, humiliated post-1991 Russia...and, as the "winners" of the useless 1914-1918 war did when they strangled democratic Germany in the cradle in the 1920's, the west strangled what could have become democratic Russia in the cradle just because they had to be able to gloat.
The lesson should be...when the conflict is over, never humiliate, never impose hardship, and never gloat. We did none of those things to post-World War II Germany(at least West Germany)...why couldn't our leaders remember that when it came to post 1991 Russia?
If they had, there had been no more Putin.
treestar
(82,383 posts)We create all the problems in the rest of the world! And yet we should stay out of them!
Cha
(297,184 posts)Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)She used it as part of her big speech at the 1984 GOP convention.
Criticizing the actions of our leaders isn't "blaming America"...it's simply discussing the historical consequences of our leaders' bad choices.
And, again, I never said it was the United States' fault that Putin hates gays...but it is, to a large degree, the responsibility of our leaders and their allies in Europe that Putin ended up with the power to persecute them. If we'd allowed post-Soviet Russia to have, at least, at the very least, a humane, social-democratic "soft landing", rather than insisting on throwing them to the wolves of Western finance, no one like Putin would have had a chance to get anywhere near power.
The Russian people wanted democracy...but, by insisting on austerity and privatization(which couldn't have led, as our leaders knew, to anything OTHER than crony capitalism, given that crony capitalism is the only kind that's flourished anywhere since 1980)we drove them away from that by imposing things that essentially punished them for getting rid of Stalinism at all.
The lesson is...if you want a nation to make better choices, you HAVE to reward the people of that nation for those choices...and you have no right to demand sacrifice and impoverishment as part of the changes you impose.
How hard is it to understand that?
It's the lesson the death of Weimar Germany and its replacement by the Third Reich should have taught our leaders...but didn't.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)It's our leaders' fault that Putin is in a position to persecute them.
Countries chained to austerity economics and mass privatization don't ever have governments that implement social liberal policies.
If Weimar Germany had been allowed to create a full-employment economy in the Twenties, Hitler would never have had any support.
It really is this simple:
If you want countries to be tolerant and democratic, you have to let them have economic policies that put people to work and create a socially stable life.
Austerity capitalism always crushes social liberalism and always weakens democracy.
And I freaking HATE what Putin does...but you can't reduce all of this to Russia just putting an evil dude in power for the sake of putting an evil dude in power. Tyrants can ONLY take over in times of crisis, humiliation, and poverty.
Cha
(297,184 posts)Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)I'm as anti-Putin as you are, and I hate his bigotry as much as you do...you have no reason to act like I support the bastard.
It's just that I reject the idea that he represents individual villainy for individual villainy's sake. No tyrant ever actually does, and the way to have a world free of tyrants is to make sure you don't ever create the conditions that put them in power.
Denouncing them after they get into power, while virtuous, is useless by comparison.
Fact is, we can't do anything from outside to get Putin out of power.
And it would be immoral to go to actual war with Russia over Ukraine, because pretty much just innocent people would be killed and killed in numbers beyond human decency-that, and both Russia and the Pentagon still have insanely massive nuclear weapons stockpiles, so we couldn't go to Defcon 1 against Putin without vaporizing the planet. Limited nuclear war is impossible, and even the consequences of limited nuclear war would make any victory meaningless.
phleshdef
(11,936 posts)Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Hadn't insisted on punishing the democratic successors of the tyrants for actions that were solely the responsibility of those they replaced(as we did to the Weimar Republic in the unjustly harsh way the Treaty of Versailles was implemented)Putin never would have gone anywhere politically.
Putin couldn't have gained any support in a post-Soviet Russia in which democracy was coupled with prosperity and voluntary international respect INSTEAD of austerity and payback.
But our leaders spent most of the next twenty years basically flipping Russia off, diplomatically and economically.
That behavior, on the West's part, made a democratic future for Russia, at least for the forseeable future, impossible-because it tied democracy, in the minds of the majority of the Russian people, to poverty and shame.
That's why we have to make sure that, if we get in any future wars, we don't treat any of the nations we might defeat(assuming "victory" is still even possible in miitary terms)the way Weimar Germany and post-1991 Russia were treated, Once the war is over, ALL hostility, all sanctions, all punishment of the general population in anyway, MUST STOP. It should be enough that the war IS over.
Agreed?
phleshdef
(11,936 posts)Regardless of anything the West was doing to or with Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union, it was very chaotic and tumultuous. I don't believe you can make any assumptions about who would have eventually rose to power one way or the other. Its way too subjective and theres nothing scientific about it. Its all just speculation.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)never put people like Putin in power.
Nations humiliated after defeat in a conflict and unjustly given collective economic punishment after said defeat more often than not do.
It's the reason Hitler came to power in post-World War One Germany.
It's the reason no one remotely like Hitler ever came close to power in post-1945 Germany.
Our leaders knew enough from that example(which they did learn from after World War II)that they should have done a Marshall Plan for Eastern Europe and post-Soviet Russia...NOT austerity.
And they should have avoided all gloating, all triumphalism, and all use of phrases like "we're the only remaining superpower".
Our leaders knew what would be most likely to prevent the rise of somebody like Putin...and, resolutely, repeatedly, relentlessly, they always did the exact opposite.
They created Putin.
They didn't make him the person he is, or create the bigotry he feels, but they did create the conditions that gave him the chance to do the horrid things he's done.
And frankly, I often wonder if our leaders did that because they wanted to make SURE that Russia didn't become a peaceable, inclusive democracy.
Response to phleshdef (Reply #40)
Ken Burch This message was self-deleted by its author.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)and countries that are treated with respect by other countries, don't end up with leaders like Putin.
The"winners" of World War One(assuming that war was actually "won"at all, rather than simply negotiated to a halt, as it truly was)
impoverished postwar Germany, a country that was doing all it could to create a peaceable, progressive democracy. They choked that newborn German democracy to death through the imposition of massive economic reparations, and though unjustified punishments such as French seizure of large parts of historic German territory. It's likely that Britain and France did that, in significant measure, because they didn't want to reward the German people for overthrowing their monarch and getting out of a war voluntarily(you can understand why Britain wouldn't want THAT precedent to be set)and because of the fact that, at times in the 1920's, the Social Democratic Party(SPD)held power(though they weren't allowed to do much of anything that was actually social democratic by the economic royalists of the day).
Thus, the conditions were created that Hitler was able to take advantage of and eventually use to claw his way into power.
After World War II, our leaders imposed no equivalent humiliations on postwar Germany, instead taking immediate steps to make the postwar West German state a land of prosperity with a strong and growing social welfare system. This is why no one even remotely like Hitler has ever come close to gaining popularity in Germany.
But in the late 1980's and early 1990's, the West, for some reason, forgot this lesson when it came time for our leaders to decide how to treat the new, democratic Russia that Gorbachev was doing all he could do to create..
The West did much the same thing to Gorbachev(punishing him for the actions of past Soviet leaders, actions Gorbachev bore no personal responsibility for, and, to a degree, extending that treatment to Yeltsin)as it had to the leaders of Weimar Germany.
And, while Putin is not yet Hitler, he has a greater potential of becoming the next Hitler than any leader that might have come to power in post-1991 Russia had the West not insisted on imposing austerity and humiliation on those in Russia who did not deserve it.
Putin is a monster...agreed...but this is why he was able to become a powerful monster.
hfojvt
(37,573 posts)I know a little bit about that, having taken two college courses in German (and Austrian) history.
"The"winners" of World War One(assuming that war was actually "won"at all, rather than simply negotiated to a halt, as it truly was)
impoverished postwar Germany, a country that was doing all it could to create a peaceable, progressive democracy."
No, actually it was the WAR itself and the blockade which impoverished Germany.
" They choked that newborn German democracy to death through the imposition of massive economic reparations, and though unjustified punishments such as French seizure of large parts of historic German territory."
Large parts? Alsace and Lorraine. And I say this as a descendant of Germans from Alsace. Those territories were not "historically German". They were basically fought over for hundreds of years between France, "Germany" and Austria, with Austria being the big dog in "Germany" until the rise of Prussia, sorta beginning with the seven years war 1756-1763.
As for "massive reparations" that was, in some part, historical payback. In the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, the Prussian/German army marched into Paris. As part of the terms, Bismarck imposed a massive reparation on France. So large, he believed that France would NEVER be able to repay it.
He underestimated the power of industrialism and French determination to be free of that debt. Plus, unlike WWI, the war in 1870 ended without destroying the French economy. Germany in 1919 was not so fortunate.
"It's likely that Britain and France did that, in significant measure, because they didn't want to reward the German people for overthrowing their monarch and getting out of a war voluntarily(you can understand why Britain wouldn't want THAT precedent to be set)"
See above about 1870, and do not forget the influence of Clemenceau, "The Tiger", who wanted to punish Germany because he hated Germans.
As for the German monarch. For years, Germany was ruled by the Hapsburgs of Austria. The Kaiser, the Hohenzollern line from Prussia, was hardly a traditional German king. And German had a long, long history of "electing" "emperors" (with a sort of electoral college where twelve traditional ruling families got to vote.)
"and because of the fact that, at times in the 1920's, the Social Democratic Party(SPD)held power(though they weren't allowed to do much of anything that was actually social democratic by the economic royalists of the day)."
Well, the terms of the peace were settled in 1918, well before it was known what party would be in power in Germany.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)They occupied the Ruhr(the major industrial area of Germany)and expropriated all the profits from that area while they did.
And there was no justification for "historical payback" on Weimar Germany over what had happened in the Franco-Prussian War, because the Weimar government was in power FIFTY YEARS AFTER THAT WAR. It was wrong to punish the Germans of 1920 for what the Prussian military of 1870 had done.
When I referenced the SPD, we're both partially right...the SPD came into power at the end of the war, having been in opposition during the war and not having had any capacity to have stopped the war the German military classes were fighting(yes, they should have opposed it vocally, as Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebeknect did at great personal risk, but it still remains that the SPD themselves were blameless for the war, just as the British Labour Party was blameless for Britain's entry into the conflict and the same could be said of the French Socialists). But SPD governments were undermined, in part, by the interpretations of the Treaty during the 1920's.
hfojvt
(37,573 posts)and 4.2 million wounded
So they probably thought they were owed something.
And it was the Germans (Prussians) who had set the precedent for reparations.
Well, when you said "seized" I was thinking "took and kept" and not "temporarily occupied".
But I kinda wish the Rhenish Republic has survived, (and also included Alsace, Lorraine, Baden and Wuerttemberg).
I read somewhere that the people living in the Rhine area share a common culture, and find it interesting that I have a number of German ancestors, if not all of my German ancestors from that region extending from Siegen in the north to Chur in the south.
Germany was really far more devastated by the thirty years war 1618-1648 than it was by that war 300 years later. Did WWII also arise from the "Prussian system"?
"In addressing delegates, Adenauer identified the wreckage of Prussian hegemonistic power as the inevitable consequence ("notwendige Folge"
of the Prussian system. Prussia was viewed by opponents as "Europe's evil spirit" and was "ruled over by an unscrupulous caste of war-fixated militaristic aristocrats" ("von einer kriegslüsternen, gewissenlosen militärischen Kaste und dem Junkertum beherrscht" ."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhenish_Republic
DCBob
(24,689 posts)JVS
(61,935 posts)in the late 1980s and 1990s Russia tried to emulate the West. Now we've become a negative barometer for them and whatever we think is good and think they should do is what they're pretty sure isn't good and isn't what they should do.
joshcryer
(62,270 posts)Response to joshcryer (Reply #21)
Ken Burch This message was self-deleted by its author.
Bad Thoughts
(2,522 posts)Britain and France were not necessary.
kwassa
(23,340 posts)Russia is responsible for it's own problems.
Benton D Struckcheon
(2,347 posts)I posted that last night.
Executive summary: Russia was invited to the G-7 in 2007, well into the Putin era. ONE YEAR LATER, for no reason that I can figure out, Russia was on the phone with China looking to detonate the equivalent of an economic H-bomb on the US.
Let that sink in for a minute. They were invited into the G-7 and accepted and were consulted as equal partners after that, starting in 2007. But very shortly after that started, they were looking to blow our economy up.
Not only in that grouping: all kinds of countries had all kinds of cooperation agreements with them, including military cooperation agreements. News story after news story is now hitting about how these military and other forms of cooperation are now being cancelled.
Russia was part of the normal community of nations. As always happens, there were some relationship problems along the way. But no one, despite some truly extraordinary direct, not proxy, direct, provocations by them, was looking to exclude them and make pariahs out of them.
That still hasn't changed, but we're now a lot closer to that than we were just a month ago. Only one person bears responsibility for that. It's not Obama. Or Merkel, or anyone else outside of Russia.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Russia should IMMEDIATELY have been given full acceptance as a normal part of the community of nations in 1991, when Gorbachev was still in power(or at least shortly afterwards, under Yeltsin).
It's simplistic and absurd to act as if there were no reasons for Putin to have ended up in power and as if all the guy's choices were made simply because he is some sort of real-life Bond villain.
Why is there so much Reaganite/Scoop Jacksonite foreign policy thinking in this thread?
Benton D Struckcheon
(2,347 posts)The fact they were let in in 2007 means no one was harboring any desire to isolate or humiliate them. They were there as equals. This is in 2007, by which time, if you are to be believed, and Putin as well, the situation was hopeless.
Bear in mind everyone had already seen him jail Khodorkovsky and loot his company. They also suspected him in other criminal actions in western Europe. But they invited him in anyway.
How does he repay this?
As Mark Twain said, the difference between a man and a dog is that if you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he won't bite you.
JVS
(61,935 posts)
Being invited into the G-7 might have been a nice gesture, but it isn't proof by any means that the West wasn't working to isolate them.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)There was no need for it after 1991...maybe not even after 1989.
Russia wasn't ever going to try to recreate the Warsaw Pact...they just wanted to make sure that no army from the West could ever invade them again...as had happened three times(not counting the silliness known as Crimean War)since 1812.
But, no...our side HAD to rub it in. We HAD to show who's boss(I'm trying hard here not to start quoting the chorus of "Big Shot" by Billy Joel here,but it's tough).
And it's things like that that Putin used to get into power.
So...don't give would-be tyrants material like that to work with.
Benton D Struckcheon
(2,347 posts)The number of countries that have left NATO and then been invaded: zip. (Ask France, they left and then came back.)
Russia is a massive country, and NATO is incapable of surrounding it, firstly, and no one in his right mind attacks it. Napoleon and Hitler were the last two to try that one.
Russia, just to take one example, recently completed a new pipeline to China through which to deliver their hydrocarbons, lessening their reliance on Europe as a customer. This crap about them being surrounded can be very easily repudiated by simply looking at a map.
BTW, an international treaty is in force that disallows the closing off of the Bosphurus Strait in times of peace. Turkey has been a NATO member since 1955, and of all the countries on that map it's really the only one that could cut off Russia from the West. Hasn't happened in nearly sixty years. It won't happen for another sixty years, UNLESS there's a war. I wouldn't have bet on that before, but now I'm not so sure. Once again, the only person to blame for that is Putin.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)You forgot the essentially Western-invented and supplied "White Russian" invasion of 1919-1921...an invasion that had massive civilian casualty counts(wiping out much of the industrial working class and setting back the Soviet economy for years...and, in doing so, creating the conditions that would allow Stalin to sneak into power and destroy the revolution, replacing it with a right-wing extremist Great Russian Nationalist empire).
The West has NEVER apologized for creating the White Army and underwriting its completely unjustified savegery against the Soviet peoples-savagery inflicted at a time in which the Revolution's original democratic and humane program could have been carried out, if on ly the West had left Russia alone.
Benton D Struckcheon
(2,347 posts)I have no love for Woodrow Wilson. He invaded Mexico after their revolution for the same reason, multiple times. After Mckinley and the Spanish-American War, the template was set, but Wilson's sending troops to fight in WWI and then on to Russia, and sending troops to Mexico, set the precedent that made it downright required, almost, for a President to send troops all over the world on the flimsiest of pretenses.
But that's ancient history, and no excuse for Putin. Russia's got nukes, we were never going to invade them. He knows that. There is no excuse for Putin.
Cha
(297,184 posts)Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)It's not being an apologist to point out that this wasn't just one guy randomly deciding to be evil.
Why do you insist on reducing this just to Putin being personally monstrous....you can't honestly believe it's THAT simple.
Do you honestly think seeing this as "Putin is a bad guy and that's ALL that matters" actually achieves anything?
And here's a hint...Eighties Cold Warriors never supported LGBTQ rights anywhere, so it's silly for LGBTQ people to sound like Eighties Cold Warriors-nothing any of them did ever helped LGBTQ people.
Cha
(297,184 posts)changed the Caption of your OP without giving an Edit: Reason.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)So I altered the title to be less inflammatory. That's all.
What are you so enraged about anyway? All that's happened is that some people have pointed out that the situation in Ukraine is murky-that, in part, it's one aggressive right-wing force(Putin)fighting another aggressive right-wing force(the EU and NATO and their arrogant eastward expansion. That's not being pro-Putin, it's pointing out that no particular side is virtuous or progressive.
That is the simple reality here...it's one bad force battling another bad force. There really isn't a "heroic" or positive side in the Ukraine/Russia/EU fight...just different reactionary factions...and in a battle where all sides are right-wingI(there's no difference between being pro-privatization and just plain being right-wing on everything else)there is a limit to how much it matters who wins.\
Democracyinkind
(4,015 posts)... interest.
This may sound a bit black-and white, but this is the argument on which Unity rose to power. Unfortunately, they had a point.
Dreamer Tatum
(10,926 posts)I do congratulate your memory. You recited an entire 7th grade flight of ignorant fantasy without breaking character once.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)I don't care what you think about me, personally, but address the actual issues here.
We ALL agree that Putin is a horrible person...but his personal horridness is really besides the point. This situation isn't just about Putin as an individual, and it achieves nothing to reduce the discussion to the man and his individual policies.
The important question is...how do we make sure that people like Hitler or Putin don't end up in power...and I've pointed out that a major part of that is that we need to make sure that no country is ever humiliated or impoverished as the result of a dispute with another country. Countries that are humiliated and impoverished by outside forces can't be expected to make high-minded liberal choices, and those who have humiliated and impoverished those countries from outside have no right to make moral demands on the countries they've done that to.
If you want all countries to act decently, then treat them all decently. How hard is that?
And why does my pointing that out bother you?
Dreamer Tatum
(10,926 posts)I tend to go off.
You have exactly zero data to support the WILD claims you made.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)reformist2
(9,841 posts)We could have done something about that.
But no - all the Bushies and the Neocons saw a power vacuum, and an opportunity to take over the Middle East.
Lydia Leftcoast
(48,217 posts)This is what I consistently heard from people who knew Russia both before and after--experts in Russian studies, emigres, etc.
In the Soviet period, living standards were low, but there was a floor below which a person couldn't sink. Everyone was guaranteed a job and basic necessities, even if that meant living on potatoes, apples, black bread, and yogurt in one room with a communal bathroom down the hall.
The West demanded that the Russians privatize everything immediately and sell off the state-owned industries to private investors.
There was a catch. No one in Russia had run a business in the past 70 years, which meant that there was hardly anyone left who knew how to survive in a capitalist economy. So who had enough money to buy a factory? The Party members and people who had connections abroad. They'd buy factories, sell the machinery for scrap, and throw the workers out of work. But there was no unemployment insurance. Who knew how to make a profit? The criminal class. They bought up and invested in the smaller businesses.
You always had malnutrition in Russia due to the starchy diet and the lack of fresh food in the winter, but now you had runaway inflation and pensioners finding that their state pensions were nearly worthless. People were literally selling their furniture and clothes to survive.
(As an aside, Scandinavia is so prosperous that there isn't much scope for churches there to do charitable work, so they set up soup kitchens in Russia and other Eastern European countries that went through shock therapy.)
Anyway, health care went into the crapper, too, just as Russia was developing an AIDS crisis. However, AIDS came to Russia in the first place, it spread rapidly because so many people turned to drugs and/or prostitution to survive. Friends of mine in the health care professions went over there to act as advisors, and they were appalled. In the Soviet period, medical care was not luxurious, but the distribution of supplies was fair. Now the Russian Mafia held the supplies hostage and you had to bribe them to get basic equipment and medicines.
Another thing: they noticed that almost none of the women in health care were married but almost all of them had exactly one child. It was explained that after years of there being NOTHING for the unemployed, there was now a law saying that single mothers could receive unemployment compensation if they lost their jobs. The children were therefore a form of unemployment insurance. On the whole, however, the birth rate is below replacement level, and life expectancy has fallen, especially for men. These women said that it was nearly impossible to find a man who had a job and wasn't an alcoholic or drug addict or a member of the Russian Mafia. At least, such men were scarce, so they saw no reason to get married.
Someone upthread referred to the increase in per capita income. As you know, per capita income is figured by averaging everyone's net income. According to an NPR report, Russia now has the worst income inequality in the world. 93.7% of the people have less than $10,000 a year, while a mere 110 individuals hold 35% of the nation's wealth.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=233472082
cr8tvlde
(1,185 posts)validity to this post. We are culturally, socially and politically ignorant of the common, everyday Russian people.
Democracyinkind
(4,015 posts)Junkdrawer
(27,993 posts)
MADem
(135,425 posts)Democracyinkind
(4,015 posts)there is seldom any monocausality in politics. But surely, the way in which the West put its weight behind Yeltsin and then betrayed every promise it made to him was an essential part of the rise of Putin. It also explains the fall of the communist majority in the Duma to the neo-nationalists that Putin managed to whip up. The reactionaries had ample evidence to demonstrate that communist power in the Duma combined with Yeltsins' weakness was enabling all of the worst-case scenarios that the Putschists of the early 1990's had predicted. Nowadays, though, Yeltsin's complicity in this is ignored for political expediency, so as not to taint Putin's origin story. Well, that's my two cents.
chrisa
(4,524 posts)Russia impoverished the Russian people: That is unless if you had power and were allowed to have a piece of the pie. Of course nothing happens in a vacuum, but to claim that Russia's leadership is entirely the US's fault is like blaming the US for Nazi Germany's emergence - it's a simplistic, black-and-white explanation for a complex problem. It's not like Russia was some Utopia before the fall of the Soviet Union - quite the opposite, actually.
Rather than blaming the US, saying that we're "reaping what we're sowing," and admitting defeat, why not hope for a Russian political revolution towards a more Democratic government? It can be done.
Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)What I said was that, after 1991, our push for mass privatization managed to do something there that shouldn't have been possible...make things WORSE for the vast majority of the Russian people.
Control of the economy should have been transferred from the state to the workers...not from the state to the klepto-bazillionaires.
