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Mikhail Gorbachev has died

(www.reuters.com)
970 points homarp | 2 comments | 30 Aug 22 20:37 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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bediger4000 ◴[30 Aug 22 20:56 UTC] No.32654941[source]▶
I was taught that Ronald Reagan ended the cold war and gave us the longest lasting economic boom.
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flavius29663 ◴[30 Aug 22 21:00 UTC] No.32654999[source]▶
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.
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woodruffw ◴[30 Aug 22 21:11 UTC] No.32655121[source]▶
There's a disconnect here: the US policy in question took place over decades, not the 8 years that Reagan was president.
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avmich ◴[30 Aug 22 21:15 UTC] No.32655185[source]▶
It's easy to argue that it's USSR people, not Western, who benefited most from the end of the Cold War.
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woodruffw ◴[30 Aug 22 21:21 UTC] No.32655262[source]▶
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.)

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1. avmich ◴[30 Aug 22 21:28 UTC] No.32655353[source]▶
> 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?

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2. woodruffw ◴[30 Aug 22 21:37 UTC] No.32655459[source]▶
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.