Why Gorbachev?

[kowalskil]

Why Gorbachev?

 

Gorbachev is of the same age as I am. Several days ago I read a post (on a Russian forum) in which he was accused of being responsible for the disintegration of the Soviet Union. In my opinion the country disintegrated spontaneously, after the truth about dark sides of Stalinism became known. Yes, Gorbachev, the leader of the Soviet Communist Party, did contribute to the fall, by promoting the policy of "glasnost," that is by allowing truth to be known. But reforms introduced by the President of the Soviet Union, Yeltsyn, were equally important. The same can be said about Gorbachev's predecessor Khrushchev, about Solzhenitsyn, Shalamow and Pasternak, whose books were allowed to be published, and about authors of many other documents. 

 

Karl Marx would say that focusing on characters of exceptional individuals, such as Lenin, Stalin and Gorbachev, is not sufficient. He would most probably try to identify mistkes made by those who managed the country's economy, focusing on nationalization of means of production, collectivisation of agriculture, and on dealing with some national aspirations.

 

Ludwik Kowalski, Ludwik Kowalski

 

http://csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/life/intro.html

 

P.S.

A Russian author wrote: 

"Gorbachev must be put on trial! This diversionary enemy worked for western intelligence services."

"Судить Горбачёва необходимо! Это враг, диверсант который работал на западную разведку!"

[Buffy]

It has been fascinating to watch Russia transmogrify from Communism under Gorbachev to Social Democracy under Yeltsin to what appears to be a developing fascist dictatorship under Putin. Dictatorships thrive by citing their predecessors as having "failed" or "destroyed the country."

 

What is interesting under Putin is that while he promises to bring things back to the way they were before Gorbachev "destroyed" the USSR, the country has converted almost completely to a capitalist economy with the means of production owned mostly by oligarchs aligned with him (or put in jail if they get out of line).

 

That's pretty much what Germany looked like in the 30's.

 

 

I'm not a dictator. It's just that I have a grumpy face, :phones:

Buffy

[kowalskil]

It has been fascinating to watch Russia transmogrify from Communism under Gorbachev to Social Democracy under Yeltsin to what appears to be a developing fascist dictatorship under Putin. Dictatorships thrive by citing their predecessors as having "failed" or "destroyed the country."

 

What is interesting under Putin is that while he promises to bring things back to the way they were before Gorbachev "destroyed" the USSR, the country has converted almost completely to a capitalist economy with the means of production owned mostly by oligarchs aligned with him (or put in jail if they get out of line).

 

That's pretty much what Germany looked like in the 30's.

 

 

I'm not a dictator. It's just that I have a grumpy face, :phones:

Buffy

 

Unfortunately for common people.

[InfinityLoopz]

Putin is legit. I'm all for what Russia is currently doing, and have been for decades now. CCCP will rise again...you all shall see.

[sanctus]

InfinityLoopz, in my opinion you show some lack of understanding of current things in Russia and additionally you contradict yourself.

 

1) Remember the last votations in Rusiia? They were stupid enough to show some statistics on national russian TV of who got what percentage of votes, the only problem was that the sum of percentages was higher then 100%. Some hints to this can be found here: http://www.economist.com/node/21541455
And a picture of what was shown on TV: http://gawker.com/5864945/putin-clings-to-victory-as-russias-voter-turnout-exceeds-146
Or from different regions: http://scissor-sisters-scissor-sisters.blogspot.no/2011/12/parliamentary-elections-in-russia-wtf.html

So much to his legitimacy

 

2) The CCCP or now called Comunist party is one of those parties who might have made it if Putin did not cheat. That's one of your contradictions, you can't be for Putin and CCCP.

 

3) You know, if you say you support al what Russia is doing now, it means that you want to revive the cold war, since this is what Putin is doing (ok indirectly, but he is increasing a lot the East-West thing)

 

4) What about the freedom of expression you enjoy by posting opinions here, good luck with that in Russia (although a small risk for you since being pro-Putin), how many people get jailed when they get too much influence in Russia?Compared to say the US? Or remember Pussy-riot: prison sentence for vulgar acts in the church criticising Putin? I do not know many countries where stuff like that can happen a part very religious countries like Iran or Saudi Arabia; normal would be to pay a fine. Curious why you support that, since you say you support all...

 

5) And land-grabbing is also just fine? Wonder what you would say if they would just crab Alaska, it was also Russian once just like Crimea...(I know Putin says that Crimea was also to protect Russian speakers)

 

Curious to hear your defences...

[AnssiH]

Not to defend Russia, or to argue that things are great in there, but I think it is extremely important to recognize that things are not so great on our side either. No one has responded to the "Weapons of mass ignorance" thread I posted, but it touches largely the same subject. I think especially in the last 10 years our politics have taken very large steps towards a dangerously paranoid "if you are not with us you are against us" philosophy. By "our politics" I mean the whole US/EU/NATO circle.

 

I really think free internet is one of the best defences against government paranoia, and there really are many things that ought to be much better.

 

About 1) the voting frauds, US is not a democratic country by any fair definition either. It is quite simpy plutocratic. And in terms of its foreign policies, let's not forget it has got a long history of ousting democratically elected leaders and replacing them with whomever serves their needs.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/08/19/map_7_confirmed_cia_backed_coups

 

Now, there are plenty of people out there ready to defend these kinds of moves - including the coup in Ukraine. But at the same time if Russia does exactly same moves, the same people are not so ready to defend it no matter what the reasons behind them were. That in itself represents dangerous lack of perspective and self-criticism. And lack of understanding how much semantics can twist the apparent truth in any matter, when people are simply poorly informed.

 

About 3) Putin wanting to revive cold war, now this is completely unfair assessment. "Indirectly" is more fair, but let's remember, no one in this game has got any reason to revive a cold war, just for cold war's sake. To have the perspective that one party alone is responsible for stirring it up is just a result of one-sided reporting on the issues, and leads into people supporting policies that really bring us cold war. There are important questions that I would like to get an answer to, but no one is even asking them.

 

And again, if Russia was building missile bases to, say Cuba, that would not sit well with any of us would it? But when NATO is building missile shield into Ukraine, that's perfectly fine? Really? Is Russia being unfair in its NATO paranoia? Why are they not given any partnership in the missile system even when they are asking for it? Who would lose if NATO and Russia were actually involved in the same projects?

 

Btw, isn't it interesting, that whenever the Cuban missile crisis is mentioned, somehow the explanation of that crisis always starts from the moment Russia started deploying missiles to Cuba. Somehow it's not relevant at all to mention that they did it in response to US setting up their missiles to Italy and Turkey first? Not relevant at all? Come on.

 

I really just hate how easy it is to keep people ignorant. If only there was some way of finding information for yourself. Some kind of world wide information system. Like a network of machines where anyone can place information freely, for anyone else to find. Then we would just need some way to type in some keywords and get all the related information back instantly. We really need to invent something like that.

 

Okay, 4) freedom of expression thing. I have not seen any credible evidence that common Russian people could not express their opinions on the internet just like we can, but certainly there are cases where someone is seen as being too large of an anti-government influence, and government paranoia kicks in with devastating results.

 

But let's not kid ourselves, that situation is particularly poor on our side as well. The hypocrisy in the hunt of Edward Snowden for instance, is just mind boggling. He said he doesn't know if it is right or wrong for the government to spy its own citizens, but that there should be a public debate about such activity first, it should not just be conducted in secrecy.

 

Basically he is saying, if the people think it's necessary for their security, fine. But they should make that decision themselves.

 

Anyone actually disagree with that? Anyone?

 

So Edward Snowden can be charged with espionage, because he wants there to be public debate about government espionage. And a lot of people just eat this argument. We live in truly amazing world.

 

And again, think about the same event but happening for Russia. Every single government instance in US would hail Edward Snowden as the superhero of freedom and democracy. It's so ironic that Russia gave Snowden a sanctuary in this case.

 

Matthew Lee from Associated Press is spot on here;

 

And the freedom of press? I would suggest watching the documentary "Dirty Wars" for some additional perspective;

 

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2532528/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

 

We are already in the state where US government is paranoid enough to kill its own citizens, and their children, with drone attacks, when they have strayed far enough from the government views. I really think the paranoia has gone too far, and it is by far the biggest influence in creating anti-US terrorism. And the reason that it is allowed to go on is that most regular people in the US simply have zero perspective on the fact that when your neighbours house gets bombed with the entire family in it, you tend to not hail the bombers as your liberators.

 

The fact that there is very little debate about the US anti-terrorism itself fueling more terrorism is very telling, is it not?

 

So, things might be bad in Russia in this regard, but we really should be concerned of our turf too.

 

And about the 5), the land-grabbing. Alaska and Crimea have nothing in common. Crimea really does have majority of its people pro-Russian. They really did and would vote for joining Russia. That is the meaning of democracy, why does it not mean anything in this case? Because "illegal"? What?

 

I'm not saying that joining Crimea to Russia is the right thing to do. I have no idea what is the right thing to do. But I would call out the hypocrisy of western powers here too. The people in Crimea felt that the ousting of pro-Russian government was illegal and act of aggression. And isn't that exactly what it was? Unless you just so happen to think that Ukraine should be trading with Europe instead of Russia and thus it is only right to perform a coup?

 

And they felt threathened especially under the new government. People tend to feel that way when they start getting shot in the face in broad daylight. Or in any kind of light really.

 

I mean, come on. It's just a plain fact that the situation was and is really bad in Ukraine, and there are many reasons why it got that way. Yeah there was amazing levels of corruption. There are plenty of guilty people on both sides of the isle. It's really really weird to allude that Ukrainian crisis is about Putin just taking land randomly from sovereign countries. Yeah they had humanitarian reasons to go in. Yeah, they had plenty of other reasons to go in too, purely having to do with global politics. That's what governments do. I can only refer to my post in the other thread.

 

Simplifying these things into some cartoon reality will never ever solve anything in the world, as nice as it would be to believe things are that simple. No one looking at the money politics, for instance? Really?

 

And lastly, I'm not pro-Putin or pro-Western or pro anything. Except pro-people-not-getting-shot-in-the-face-due-to-government-paranoia.

[sanctus]

I will try to answer more exhaustively later.

 

Just the short version:

1) Don't worry I criticise US (very much) and the EU/European countries (to a smaller extent since they are not a world power, are not eg. funding israelic terrorism etc.), but this was about Russia.

2) Your argument on Crimea doesn't hold (I agree on the part that it is very different from Alaska a part that both were once Russian, just wanted to use the usual rethoric thing by "shocking" a little). Your contradiction lies where you say that:

A) The people of Crimea voted for it that is democracry

B ) Then they said they felt "pro-Russian government was illegal and act of aggression. And isn't that exactly what it was?".

 

The fact of being allowed to demonstrate is also democracy, to define this as coup is just wrong, the only clashes were between police and some more some less violent protesters (although they were quite hardcore clashes). A coup needs a kind of rebel army to take over power, just protesting in the street is not.

 

So back to Crimea, assuming that it is democaratic to do so. So what if Alaska votes to become independent? And what if Florida votes to be independent? Countries do not work like that, as you well know. So there is nothing democratic in Crimeas vote. The only democratic way would be if the whole of Ukraine voted about it.

 

Ok, we in West might be a bit brainwashed, but you have that on both sides, why were all Russian speakers (Russians and the Russian speakers in other countries) saying in unison that the new government in Kiev is fascist? Yes, there were some right wing extremists in the protests, yes they made a difference in the protest, do they make up the majority of the government now? NO, but that part is ignored by Russian media

[AnssiH]

Not meaning to barrage you guys with volumes and volumes of text, but I really have to try and be accurate, and point out some references in something this important.

 

2) Your argument on Crimea doesn't hold (I agree on the part that it is very different from Alaska a part that both were once Russian, just wanted to use the usual rethoric thing by "shocking" a little). Your contradiction lies where you say that:

A) The people of Crimea voted for it that is democracry

B ) Then they said they felt "pro-Russian government was illegal and act of aggression. And isn't that exactly what it was?".

I said "they felt the ousting of pro-Russian government was an act of aggression". Meaning the ousting of Yanukovych at february of this year.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Ukrainian_revolution#Overview

 

And it should be obvious to everyone how they would feel that way, if it wasn't for our news painting the kind of picture you have in your head about i, i.e. a pieceful protest;

 

The fact of being allowed to demonstrate is also democracy, to define this as coup is just wrong, the only clashes were between police and some more some less violent protesters (although they were quite hardcore clashes). A coup needs a kind of rebel army to take over power, just protesting in the street is not.

Not all the protests were peaceful (for some obvious reasons I'll get to), for example here's some footage that's been uploaded to Youtube already at december of 2013;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtqQeJ315nw

 

Some more collection uploaded at January of this year with silly music;

 

Not that there's anything wrong with NIN but the video is rather serious.

 

A particularly interesting event is shown here;

 

The snipers who were shooting at the pro-EU protesters were obviously assumed to be Yanukovich's plot without investigation. Which may or may not be true, but without investigation we will never have any idea. Few points;

 

The government after the coup stopped investigating who the snipers were. Why?

Certainly Yanukovich would know very well who benefits from the use of snipers in that kind of situation, and he was constantly making comments publicly that this appears to be a straightforward attempt at a coup. Maybe a false-false-flag operation? Like a double-bluff, which failed because no one is interested of even thinking one step ahead? I don't think so.

 

Either way, it is a mistake to assume we know the story behind the snipers, without investigation at all.

 

After these violent events, the fact is the government buildings were taken over with force, and Yanukovych (the president) did flee the country because he feared for his life.

 

Now it is probably true that Yanukovuch himself was really corrupted, but it doesn't make this any less of a violent coup.

 

Here's some counter-balance to the typical narrative;

 

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/03/01/352743/ukraine-saw-westernbacked-coup/

 

As of the amount of violence, there are plenty of reasons for the western side to excite the radical elements of the country. Obviously the elements that are as anti-Russian as possible are the loudest and the most aggressive ones in the protests. In this case it is the right-wing nationalists, who really have been thrusted into big seats because of this.

 

I don't want to repeat things too much so I just recommend reading this post, and thinking deeply about the implications of what I'm saying;

http://www.scienceforums.com/topic/27935-weapons-of-mass-ignorance-case-ukraine-conflict/

And if you doubt any of it is not true, I recommend doing enough research to really convince yourself of any falsehoods (and post the references of anything interesting you may find)

 

So back to Crimea, assuming that it is democaratic to do so. So what if Alaska votes to become independent? And what if Florida votes to be independent? Countries do not work like that, as you well know. So there is nothing democratic in Crimeas vote. The only democratic way would be if the whole of Ukraine voted about it.

Yes I agree, that is why I said I have no idea what would be the right thing to do there. I would point out that many countries have become independent "illegally" by the standards of the country they belonged to, but "democratically" by the standards of people who actually became independent. One man's illegal is another man's justice, and we should be careful of the semantical word-play here.

 

On that note, my complaint is that western view is always to say the Crimean voting was "illegal", while only few months earlier a violent coup was apparently fine. That really rubs me the wrong way.

 

In my opinion it is far more important in the case of Crimea to ask "what is right", than "what is illegal". If people of Crimea really are suffering so much that they really are voting to join Russia, then why should anyone cares if it's illegal to stop their oppression? That is not what democracy should be.

 

But I must stress, a blatantly pro-Russian or pro-western view is oversimplifying, and losing Crimea is a strategic loss for Ukraine. I would not want to be the person deciding what is the right thing to do in that situation...

 

Ok, we in West might be a bit brainwashed, but you have that on both sides, why were all Russian speakers (Russians and the Russian speakers in other countries) saying in unison that the new government in Kiev is fascist? Yes, there were some right wing extremists in the protests, yes they made a difference in the protest, do they make up the majority of the government now? NO, but that part is ignored by Russian media

Russian media is certainly not unbiased either, which would just make it all the more important for our media to paint a realistic picture, and not just always claim there are only negligible neo-nazi elements in the government. Because even a cursory research paints a rather different picture.

 

The new Deputy Prime Minister is a mamber of Svoboda (far-right nationalists whose thugs were behind the violence in protesters, they openly wear Nazi emblems, and they openly think Russian and Jewish people are the source of their problems and should be thrown out from the country)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oleksandr_Sych

 

The Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andriy_Mokhnyk

 

Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ihor_Shvaika

 

Lund University professor Pers Anders Rudling is commenting here;

http://www.channel4.com/news/svoboda-ministers-ukraine-new-government-far-right

that he counted no less than seven minister seats with close links to Svoboda.

 

The reason why they have so much power now should be obvious; they were instrumental in the bush-fire tactics that were employed to perform the coup. Of course they would get a lot of power.

 

And if you read that other post of mine, you can find the US top diplomats discussing this very issue in leaked phonecall. Let's not be silly here, it is starting to get pretty impossible to deny what is happening (once again).

 

So, as biased as Russian media is, I'm afraid the reality is more convenient for them in this case than it is for our media.

 

I think the reason why it has been so difficult to open the eyes of westerners on this issue is that for most people it just makes no sense to think that our governments would support openly violent national socialistic parties. It just sounds so obviously like Russian propaganda. But there are incredibly obvious reasons for it, and it has happened so many times before in well documented and completely non-controversial history for the exact same reasons. I talked about those reasons in the other thread at length.

 

Oh one more thing. About the OP, I started to read the online book, very interesting stuff! Nice work.