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    Mikhail Gorbachev has died

    (www.reuters.com)
    970 points homarp | 20 comments | 30 Aug 22 20:37 UTC | HN request time: 0.639s | source | bottom
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    lapcat ◴[30 Aug 22 21:07 UTC] No.32655071[source]▶
    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.

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    1. hn_throwaway_99 ◴[30 Aug 22 21:13 UTC] No.32655148[source]▶
    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.
    replies(5): >>32655192 #>>32655295 #>>32655476 #>>32655818 #>>32659192 #
    2. lapcat ◴[30 Aug 22 21:16 UTC] No.32655192[source]▶
    > On the contrary

    I agree with everything you said, so I don't take it as contrary to what I said.

    replies(1): >>32655394 #
    3. mturmon ◴[30 Aug 22 21:23 UTC] No.32655295[source]▶
    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...

    4. anigbrowl ◴[30 Aug 22 21:32 UTC] No.32655394[source]▶
    'On the contrary' can have flexible scope, in this case it seems to mean 'contrary to any idea of a Marshall plan...'
    5. sereja ◴[30 Aug 22 21:38 UTC] No.32655476[source]▶
    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...

    replies(2): >>32656507 #>>32658051 #
    6. ajross ◴[30 Aug 22 22:10 UTC] No.32655818[source]▶
    > [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.

    replies(7): >>32655874 #>>32655996 #>>32656011 #>>32656040 #>>32656250 #>>32656367 #>>32656413 #
    7. paganel ◴[30 Aug 22 22:17 UTC] No.32655874[source]▶
    > 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).

    8. LtWorf ◴[30 Aug 22 22:32 UTC] No.32655996[source]▶
    Check life expectancy of russians… it is not the same… it has gone worse.
    replies(2): >>32656265 #>>32657098 #
    9. sudosysgen ◴[30 Aug 22 22:34 UTC] No.32656011[source]▶
    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.
    10. epolanski ◴[30 Aug 22 22:36 UTC] No.32656040[source]▶
    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.

    11. avmich ◴[30 Aug 22 22:58 UTC] No.32656250[source]▶
    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.
    12. avmich ◴[30 Aug 22 22:59 UTC] No.32656265{3}[source]▶
    Unimpressed. How much worse? USA life expectation went worse for last couple of years - is it enough argument for the lack of an argument?
    replies(1): >>32659228 #
    13. hn_throwaway_99 ◴[30 Aug 22 23:10 UTC] No.32656367[source]▶
    This is baloney. I was in Russia for a half year around 95-96. The standard of living was much deteriorated from Soviet times, especially for people on fixed incomes (basically almost everyone over the age of 50), and nobody hesitated telling me that.
    14. splix ◴[30 Aug 22 23:16 UTC] No.32656413[source]▶
    Big part of Putin's politics is to appeal to the older generation who remembers the Soviet Union and want it be back. So at least those people do no consider it as a poverty and they think it was better back then. Not even comparing to the modern Russia but comparing to the modern West.

    (not agreeing with them, just pointing to the fact)

    15. GekkePrutser ◴[30 Aug 22 23:29 UTC] No.32656507[source]▶
    Warlordism has nothing to do with democracy. Each warlord was just their own little dictator fighting for expansion. The people were just cannon fodder.

    In fact the Chinese did manage to create a thriving democracy after the warlord era, which is still here today. But it's based in Taipei and the mainland Chinese leaders want to take it down because it undermines their narrative.

    And the Russians having the easiest beginnings of democracy for a few months claiming they "tried it and it didn't work"? Never heard them say it but if they did it's just dogma.

    16. bee_rider ◴[31 Aug 22 00:57 UTC] No.32657098{3}[source]▶
    I tried googling

    Search Term : Result

    Life expectancy Russia 1990 : 68.89

    Life expectancy Russia 2019 : 73.08

    For reference, in the US:

    Life expectancy US 1990 : 75.21

    Life expectancy US 2019 : 78.79

    I dunno nothing really stands out. It looks like Russians benefited a little bit more, but Americans were starting from a higher baseline so it makes sense that gains would be harder to come by.

    2019 was selected rather than 2021 for obvious reasons.

    replies(1): >>32657453 #
    17. stefan_ ◴[31 Aug 22 01:55 UTC] No.32657453{4}[source]▶
    You need to Google for males specifically, both for cultural and historic reasons.
    18. dundarious ◴[31 Aug 22 03:31 UTC] No.32658051[source]▶
    China also learned a lot from the brutal liberalization in the breakup of USSR. Their own shift to markets was explicitly designed to avoid such a catastrophe. The book "How China Escaped Shock Therapy" on the topic is interesting.
    19. dottedmag ◴[31 Aug 22 06:51 UTC] No.32659192[source]▶
    West did not proscribe "shock therapy". Please read on Gaidar and his group, they were not forced to apply it, they genuinely believed that was the best approach available to them at the time.
    20. qwytw ◴[31 Aug 22 06:59 UTC] No.32659228{4}[source]▶
    It went from 69 years to 65 in 2005 when it started rising again. However life expectancy in the USSR seems to have been mostly stagnant since the 1960's, so I'm not sure the situation was that great in 1990.