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Mikhail Gorbachev has died

(www.reuters.com)
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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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paganel ◴[] No.32655805[source]
> There was no "Marshall Plan" after the Cold War l

There was such a plan, at least in the twisted minds of the people behind the Washington Consensus. They were calling it privatization or price liberalization or some other non-sense like that, thing is the common people got the very, very short stick (like my parents, who lost their jobs, their city apartment and who had to resort to literally subsistence agriculture in a matter of 4-5 years maximum; I'm not from Russia, but still from the former communist space) while some lucky ones from amongst us became entrepreneurs and business leaders. Also, most of the really juicy assets (like almost of all our banking sector, our oil resources etc) got sold to Western companies, but that was a given if we wanted to become part of the European Union and of the West more generally speaking.

Yes, I've started to become more and more bitter as the years have gone by, I'm now almost the same age as my dad was in the mid-'90s, when all hell started to economically unravel. Nobody had asked my parents, or us, who were mere kids and teenagers back then, if we were agreeing to the sacrifices that they were going to impose on us.

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spamizbad ◴[] No.32656098[source]
What’s crazy is the minds behind the Washington Consensus favored a form of extreme capitalism that no western democracy would ever tolerate such a system on their own soil.

Some ultra-capitalist die-hards have even retreated away from Liberalism in general as they found it too restrictive for their extreme ideology (they know their economic regime could never gain sustained popular support; it would need to be imposed)

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bolton_strid ◴[] No.32656553[source]
What’s crazy is the minds behind the Washington Consensus favored a form of extreme capitalism that no western democracy would ever tolerate such a system on their own soil.

It had been tried in many places already: Chile, Indonesia, the Philippines, and (before 1979) Iran. The data were clear: it had worked very well for capitalists, but very poorly for people in the countries affected. And it mostly has come to the US. There are remnants of the welfare state, but your employer can basically do whatever he wants because he calls himself "a job creator"... and education is debt-financed... and getting sick will wipe out everything you have... and we've transitioned away from productive investment to asset bubbles... and you better not end up in a lawsuit because the rich have the best lawyers and lobbyists and therefore effectively own the court system (you only have a shot if you can find a rich person who hates your adversary enough to back you). The EU has held out to an extent, for now, but it won't if the Davos people get their way. The "Great Reset" is their plan to implement extreme capitalism under a guise of ecological caution and "woke" multiculturalism [1].

The Marshall Plan was written by people who believed market systems were superior to central planning given the technological level and geographical complexities (e.g., general low trust between nations) of the time--they were capitalists, but not capitalist ideologues. Alas, the successes (for "business interests", meaning rich people in the US) in Santiago, Jakarta, and Manila led them to become more brazen, to the point of using the former USSR for some of their most aggressive experiments to that point.

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[1] This is not to say ecological caution isn't important (it is). Nor is it to disparage the broader set of social movements classified by their detractors as "woke", most of which have nothing but the best intentions. The issue with "woke capitalism" is that it retrenches in identity politics in order to divide working people against each other for Capital's benefit, and that it is designed not to provide significant help to people in marginalized groups (most of whom are working class, and who will therefore not be helped) but to neuter a powerful, morally righteous leftist movement toward genuine and universal social justice.

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1. jwond ◴[] No.32656957[source]
> Nor is it to disparage the broader set of social movements classified by their detractors as "woke", most of which have nothing but the best intentions.

To me it seems like they have the best intentions in the same way that religious extremists have the best intentions. But otherwise I agree with you.