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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: 0.209s | 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. lucideer ◴[30 Aug 22 21:54 UTC] No.32655659[source]▶
> The United States didn't do enough

I think if you dig into the history a bit more closely, you'll quickly find that the United States did in fact do plenty[0][1].

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/27/world/10.2-billion-loan-t...

[1] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-07-09-mn-22423-...

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2. lapcat ◴[30 Aug 22 22:00 UTC] No.32655733[source]▶
"The International Monetary Fund said today that it had approved a $10.2 billion loan for Russia. The move is expected to be helpful to President Boris N. Yeltsin in the presidential election in June. The three-year loan is the fund's second biggest, after a $17.8 billion credit granted to Mexico last year."

"The United States transferred over $13 billion (equivalent of about $115 billion[A] in 2021[B]) in economic recovery programs to Western European economies after the end of World War II." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan