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Mikhail Gorbachev has died

(www.reuters.com)
970 points homarp | 3 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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lapcat ◴[] 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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hn_throwaway_99 ◴[] 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.
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1. sereja ◴[] 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...

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2. GekkePrutser ◴[] 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.

3. dundarious ◴[] 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.