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Mikhail Gorbachev has died

(www.reuters.com)
970 points homarp | 1 comments | 30 Aug 22 20:37 UTC | HN request time: 0.312s | source
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bediger4000 ◴[30 Aug 22 20:56 UTC] No.32654941[source]▶
I was taught that Ronald Reagan ended the cold war and gave us the longest lasting economic boom.
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INTPenis ◴[30 Aug 22 21:00 UTC] No.32654994[source]▶
I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle, in the sense that it never ended. It only took a back seat in the media while Russia was disorganized.
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flavius29663 ◴[30 Aug 22 21:01 UTC] No.32655008[source]▶
it ended for 150 or so million people in Eastern Europe, that were freed from Russia.
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INTPenis ◴[31 Aug 22 15:56 UTC] No.32663984[source]▶
I'm not trying to be contrarian here but I'd say their cold war just began when the soviet union disintegrated. Because now their new cold war was Russia exerting influence over them and manipulating their governance.

Which is what Ukraine has suffered these last 30+ years.

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flavius29663 ◴[31 Aug 22 18:27 UTC] No.32666331[source]▶
what do you mean by "their" ? Because Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria managed to properly free themselves from Russia and are now solidly in the EU and NATO
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1. INTPenis ◴[01 Sep 22 07:05 UTC] No.32673001[source]▶
"Properly" glosses over a lot of the intricacies of their politics. Like I said, Russia was disorganized at the time but you should not make the mistake of thinking they gladly released all of their buffers without a fight.

We have glaring evidence of their struggle to maintain power over their old buffer countries like Chechnya and Ukraine, so one can only imagine what they must have done to the others.

Edit: Just one example of how the transition wasn't without opposition is the January 1991 events in Lithuania when Gorbachev tried to re-establish soviet rule and this ended in 14 Lithuanian citizens dead.