Ray, why you dragged my point from context? Mirhond was talking about Soviet golden age. What was golden there, when Eastern Europe was under Soviet military occupation? During that age was started also Afganistan war, that should be closer example about golden age for you. During that age Indian politics was manipulated by KGB as they liked, if I belive what Mitrokin wrote. Do you want this age back?
I think you need better explanation. Soviet era is considered golden age because life was predictable, social protection was available and just, everyone had jobs and decent income, the wery existence had a noble goal. Eastern Europe occupied? Fu(k it, until we have Polish rags, Romanian furniture and Czech appliances. Eight years of war in Somewherestan? Fu(k it too, besides our guys are kicking lots af asses there.Originally Posted by kaur
During Perestroika and first post-Soviet years we had illusions about capitalistic Elven kingdoms and Empire of Good and Light, but they didn't survived rough reality. That's why collective unconscious full of frustration, unmeet needs and low expectations was so easily hijacked by "bigtime, magor league bull#### story" of Putin's Russia, which is going to reclaim the past. Now almost everything is measured by Soviet scale.
So, your lamentations about occupation would fall into the deaf ears, the fact is irrelevant to the narrative of newfound paradise.
Outlaw-stile posting without any links and arguments? Come on, provide at least what you've read.During that age Indian politics was manipulated by KGB as they liked, if I belive what Mitrokin wrote. Do you want this age back?
Last edited by mirhond; 06-18-2014 at 06:01 PM.
Haeresis est maxima opera maleficarum non credere.
I want that age where we are not manipulated by external powers.
It is not that India is not flush with western covert funds being funnelled through for dubious purpose.
As the saying goes in India - Hamam men sab nanga hai (in the hamam (turkish bath) all are nude) i.e. not much to chose from.
To be frank, Eastern Europe or any other issue does not impact us, except the worry of the Cold War being revisited.
The Chinese proverb goes - When big fish fight, little fish eaten!
mere
Look at the chaos in Iraq and Syria. It has its roots in the Mandates of the League of Nations where arbritary boundaries were drawn to suit colonial interest with total disregard of ground realities. And now were are wondering what to do and what would be the effect.
I wonder if there was any 'golden age' in any country. It is all a figment of imagination and poetic imagery to indicate an era better than another. The travails remain merely comparative.
Last edited by Ray; 06-18-2014 at 06:31 PM.
mirhond, I'm always glad to help you
http://mitrokhinarchiveii.blogspot.be
I've read it - it's a good political journalism, I'll put it into bookmarks, thanks.
KGB rulezz!!!
Last edited by mirhond; 06-21-2014 at 10:24 AM.
Haeresis est maxima opera maleficarum non credere.
inspired by link davidbfpo has posted in Ukraine thread
link #1 http://20committee.com/2014/07/03/me...onal-brigades/
link #2 http://20committee.com/2014/05/05/ru...patriotic-war/
quote from 2:Average Russians are emotionally invested in the potent lies of the Official Narrative and it’s hard to blame them, since most of them have never heard any other version of events. But it’s important to note that lies about 1939-1945 continue to serve as a justification for Russian crimes in Ukraine right now
Statement in bold is actual Bravo Sierra, because here in Russia we have entire school of folkhistorians preaching the dogma. It started in 90-s with Edward Topol famous exposure of "preparations of Soviet agression" and continues nowadays with Mark Solonin same crackpot theories. Anyone who eager to learn a thing about it could buy the books, or download it or resieve the sacraments from the worshippers at the corresponding sites. They aren't popular though, because most of the Russians just don't by this bull####.USSR was just as complicit as Germany
So, the anonimous author of this article knows wery little or nothing about Russian popular beliefs.
Last edited by davidbfpo; 07-04-2014 at 06:35 PM.
Haeresis est maxima opera maleficarum non credere.
A Soviet Leader Who Saw Russia Clearly is an interesting piece by Leonid Bershidsky about the late Eduard Shevardnadze.
Personally I think it is rather obvious why that Soviet age glowed so golden for so many. While the seeds of the mighty implosion were sown already early most seem to have been unable to understand that the SU collapsed by it's own making. The sinew was streched till it had to break, and the economic and political result weren't pretty. Other nations were able to clean up the Soviet mess early while Russia and Putin needed the gift of a ressource boom to gain some of the ground lost.In 1992, the field commanders who had deposed independent Georgia's first president, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, invited Shevardnadze to return to his homeland and lead it. As he freely admitted, he was never fully in control. Contrary to his orders, one of the military commanders who had brought Shevardnadze to power led troops to the separatist region of Abkhazia. Shevardnadze tried to stop the advance and even negotiated a peace with the Abkhaz leadership, sealed with a handshake in Moscow in the presence of Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Then Abkhazians, backed by Russian warships and planes as well as well-trained "volunteers" from neighboring Russian regions, such as Chechnya, struck back, and the weak Georgian army was crushed.
In other words, Shevardnadze was the first post-Soviet leader to see a Russian-backed unofficial military operation on his land. Like Ukrainian politicians today, he called it a war with Russia. Today's military operation in eastern Ukraine is as deniably but transparently Russian-backed as the 1992 war in Abhkazia was. Shevardnadze recalled in his memoirs that Yeltsin proposed splitting Georgia in two to stop the conflict. He called Leonid Kravchuk, then the Ukrainian president, to complain: "Can you imagine someone giving you a friendly recommendation to split Ukraine in two?"
"The centuries-long process of expansion and 'collection' of other nations' lands by Russia continues in the 21st century," Shevardnadze wrote more than a year before Russian troops openly entered Georgia in 2008 and Moscow recognized the separatists states of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Collapse of an Empire: Lessons for Modern Russia is indeed a worthy read about that economic tragedy.
Last edited by Firn; 07-08-2014 at 03:11 PM.
... "We need officers capable of following systematically the path of logical argument to its conclusion, with disciplined intellect, strong in character and nerve to execute what the intellect dictates"
General Ludwig Beck (1880-1944);
Speech at the Kriegsakademie, 1935
Interesting conversation. My thoughts:
(1) Perceptions are reference dependent on context in time and place. The traumas of the 'shock therapy' during the 1990s colored the public's perception of the time before it - same way conservative politics today in the United States mythologize the 1950s despite the Red Scare, segregation, and so on. The reference point also does the same for experiences gained afterwards; if the first experience with democratic capitalism is chaotic, perceived to be unjust, and difficult, then alternatives will be welcomed.
(2) The liberals/Westernizers in the early 1990s of the Yeltsin administration made great efforts in integrating Russia into the West's model of a Westphalian nation-state committed to democratic capitalism. It held elections. It sold off state property. It abandoned Russia's historical empire, creating numerous states of the dominant nations. This trend only tampered off recently, even the Putin administration pushed for Russia's membership in the World Trade Organization.
(3) Yes, the West did dismantle the Russian empire (there are 15 states where there used to be one, in addition to the former Warsaw Pact states). The problem is that the West never fully embraced Moscow, and Yeltsin's poor performance never met the challenges posed by the realists and nationalists. Russia's experiences with Yugoslavia, Kosovo, shock therapy, NATO expansion, and missile defense only empowered the realists and nationalists, and the second economic crisis in the late 1990s finally pushed Russian politics in their favor.
(4) Yeltsin virtually abdicated to Putin, paving the way for a relatively peaceful transition from the Westernizers to the Realists. During Putin's early years, he still had some of the same ambitions as his predecessor, but the abandonment of the democratic-capitalism project was necessary to save what the realists and nationalists believed to be at risk at the time: the very existence of Russia. The dissolution of the USSR and Yugoslavia, and the wars in Chechnya and Dageston were traumatic events from this perspective. All of Russia's wars from 1991 to 2014 involve former Soviet republics and all of them involve questions of territorial integrity and political sovereignty. These conflicts are a direct result of the dismantling of the Soviet empire - the very policy advocated here (and initially opposed by the Bush I administration).
(5) So, collapse of the USSR was a decentering of political power away from Moscow - and this triggered political and economic crisis throughout the entire post-Soviet region (it also untethered the international security regime from the bipolarity of the Cold War, making life more complicated for everyone). The West and some of those post-Soviet states took full advantage of this opportunity to make a clean break from Moscow. Good for them. The Putin administration has been working diligently to restore centralized political power - it started with the Second Chechen War and is continuining today through Ukraine. Despite it all, Russia has managed to build relatively constructive relations with continental Europe even as the U.S. has been generally confrontational and suspicious of Russia's efforts.
(6) Russia is still a second-rate power compared to the U.S.; the problem is that the Russian elite knows this and despises being in that position. That they are buoyed by the political attitudes of the general population is not surprising, but it should also be a signal that there are legitimate problems that need to resolved (preferably not through force of arms).
Last edited by AmericanPride; 07-09-2014 at 05:07 PM.
When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles. - Louis Veuillot
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