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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: 0s | source
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idlewords ◴[30 Aug 22 21:20 UTC] No.32655237[source]▶
Gorbachev secured his place in history by what he didn't do. While never endorsing the end of the eastern bloc, he made it clear beginning in the late 1980's that unlike his predecessors, he would not oppose democratic reforms in Eastern Europe by force. To general astonishment, he kept this promise, and with the regrettable exception of Lithuania this commitment to not repeating the crimes of his predecessors is Gorbachev's greatest legacy. In 1988 you would have been hard pressed to find anyone who could imagine the mostly peaceful collapse of the Eastern Bloc, but Gorbachev had the moral courage to accept this once unimaginable consequence of his policy and to see it through.
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euroderf ◴[31 Aug 22 06:31 UTC] No.32659086[source]▶
Not to pick a fight, but I feel it's important then to note that it was not Reagan who "won" the Cold War. It was Gorbachev, who had the political courage (and idealism) to take the leap.
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KingOfCoders ◴[31 Aug 22 06:56 UTC] No.32659211[source]▶
The people who "won" the cold war are those Eastern countries that had been occupied by Russia for 45 years and fought for their freedom in Prague, Budapest and especially in Gdańsk.
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dontlaugh ◴[31 Aug 22 11:53 UTC] No.32660998[source]▶
Such freedom, to get pillaged by western companies. We are now in massive debt, most public services are privatised and collapsing, the young can't afford rents, wages are constantly dropping relative to expenses.

It was the profit extractors that won the cold war.

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vandreas2 ◴[31 Aug 22 12:14 UTC] No.32661141[source]▶
I guess you could always go the Romania way, starve the population until debt is zero. The profit extractors were the government but at least it was "our" thieves not some foreign companies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_debt_of_the_Socialist_...

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1. dontlaugh ◴[31 Aug 22 13:26 UTC] No.32661793{3}[source]▶
It's also important to remember why that debt was paid.

Our government had taken IMF loans with the goal of expanding industry to sell products to the West. We did, then we were prevented from selling finished products to many countries. Some of the production was redirected internally and towards trade with other socialist countries, but the loan denominated in dollars remained.

Then the IMF demanded we pay back the loan early, while mostly only allowing us to export food. Today this would be called sanctions. This was a tactic to intentionally create scarcity of food in the country, which coupled with constant propaganda (especially from Radio Free Europe) and arming and funding local fascists (including the famous snipers shooting into crowds), culminated in a bloody coup in '89. Similar tactics have been used by NATO powers against other countries.

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2. dh2022 ◴[31 Aug 22 22:37 UTC] No.32669240[source]▶
Well I lived in Romania in the 1980s so I feel compelled to respond to this.

Romanian leadership took a lot of loans from the West and spend the money on large industrial projects with Western technology which was either obsolete or becoming obsolete (Dacia-Renault, Olcit-Cytroen, CANDU for the nuclear energy, Rombac-British Aircracft, etc...)

This was a huge bet that did not work - but it was all done by Romanian Leadership. The West did not ask Romania to borrow, Romania asked to borrow. When the bills came due at the end of 1970s Romania asked to roll over their debt. Unfortunately for Romania at the same time US FED (Volcker) was raising the interest rates sharply to combat inflation. So rolling over the debt was very expensive. This was not economic sanctions aimed at Romania - this happened to every borrower that had USD debts (including regular people in the US).

Romania choose to pay the debts and the only way to get USD was to sell resources - because the industrial products were obsolete and nobody in the West wanted to buy. So Romania sold food and whatever oil they still had and whatever steel they still had. For the Romanian people that meant food shortages, heat shortages, electricity shortages...

This was done by Romanian leadership. It was not economic sanctions from the West.