Reply #12: Kazakhstan? No. Eastern Europe? Yes. [View All]

[One Honest Guy]

I've been all over eastern Europe in fact. The poverty you are seeing in former Soviet republics, and/or satellite states is in fact largely the result of post-Soviet practices. The so called "economic shock therapy" instituted by western powers and corporations, American ones especially, with direct aid of US government institutions was what did most of the damage. I can show you photos of neighborhoods in Bucharest, Sofia, or Belgrade, back as they were in 1960-70-80s, and you can compare them with photos of those same neighborhoods today. Today, some look like slums of Rio, or worse. The so called "economic shock therapy" was nothing more than privatization gone wild. Appropriation of national resources by foreign governments through corporate means.

It sure beats sending forty tank divisions to do the job, but the results were the same. Those nations were shattered.