Mikhail Gorbachev has died

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.

> 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.

The transition to a market economy went very well for most of the former Soviet Republics except Russia.

https://economistwritingeveryday.com/2022/03/16/the-transiti...

A lot of Russia's issues stem from the way the government sold off their state owned corporations, which created artificial monopoly/oligopoly owners overnight — often insiders/cronies to begin with. This can be contrasted with traditional market economies where large corporations start off as small companies and become dominant through innovation, growth, and generally meeting consumer demands.

I was in Poland in the late 90s and there were fairly large economic issues with a lack of job projects for many people. This in turn resulted in fairly high rates of crime as it was one of the more guaranteed ways to make a living if you were young. Many other people left the country to make money which in the long turn led to some of the Brexit issues. I literally didn't meet a single person, including myself, who wasn't burglarized or mugged at least once. Four point locks and steel doors were the norm for apartments and houses (and that didn't always help).

It's probably worth adding that this is no longer the case.

Live in Poland, muggings aren't really a thing, and according to the "what worries the world" monthly polls of ipsos[0], poles are the nation that least worries about violence and crime (it was surprising for me to see the effect is that strong), with only 5% worrying about it.

[0]: https://www.ipsos.com/en/what-worries-world-july-2022