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Mikhail Gorbachev has died

(www.reuters.com)
970 points homarp | 4 comments | 30 Aug 22 20:37 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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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. eps ◴[30 Aug 22 21:39 UTC] No.32655495[source]▶
It's naive to think that a Western-style democracy could've been instilled in Russia just through some extra effort.

The fact that it works elsewhere doesn't mean it's a suitable model for other countries. Especially when there's a lot of prior baggage of being ruled by a single person, be it a tzar or a head of Politburo.

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2. theonething ◴[30 Aug 22 21:58 UTC] No.32655704[source]▶
> Especially when there's a lot of prior baggage of being ruled by a single person, be it a tzar or a head of Politburo.

This describes Hungary, Czech Republic, Romania and Poland, all former Soviet bloc countries. They've all had varying levels of success transitioning from communism to democracy and from a planned economy to market.

So it can happen. Could it have happened for Russia? Who knows? Based on the above, I lean towards yes.

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3. sgjohnson ◴[30 Aug 22 22:09 UTC] No.32655802[source]▶
> This describes Hungary, Czech Republic, Romania and Poland, all former Soviet bloc countries. They've all had varying levels of success transitioning from communism to democracy and from a planned economy to market.

Yes, but neither the Baltics nor Warsaw Pact countries want anything to do with communism in the first place. It was forced onto them. So transitioning back to a democracy and market economy was far more straightforward.

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4. theonething ◴[31 Aug 22 03:29 UTC] No.32658040{3}[source]▶
Point taken.

It's interesting to think about nations as individual people with both innate and learned characteristics. The latter can override the former in some cases, but it usually takes a lot of effort and/or extreme circumstances.

A nation's innate characteristics wouldn't be gene based as would an individual though. It would stem from the circumstances of its beginning and its history that forms the ethos of a people and is passed down from generation to generation. In that way, it is gene like.