Posted on 12/27/2014 1:47:27 PM PST by Bubba Ho-Tep
For twenty years now, the Western politicians, journalists, businessmen, and academics who observe and describe the post-Soviet evolution of Russia have almost all followed the same narrative. We begin with the assumption that the Soviet Union ended in 1991, when Mikhail Gorbachev handed over power to Boris Yeltsin and Russia, Ukraine, and the rest of the Soviet republics became independent states. We continue with an account of the early 1990s, an era of “reform,” when some Russian leaders tried to create a democratic political system and a liberal capitalist economy. We follow the trials and tribulations of the reformers, analyze the attempts at privatization, discuss the ebb and flow of political parties and the growth and decline of an independent media.
Mostly we agree that those reforms failed, and sometimes we blame ourselves for those failures: we gave the wrong advice, we sent naive Harvard economists who should have known better, we didn’t have a Marshall Plan. Sometimes we blame the Russians: the economists didn’t follow our advice, the public was apathetic, President Yeltsin was indecisive, then drunk, then ill. Sometimes we hope that reforms will return, as many believed they might during the short reign of President Dmitry Medvedev.
Whatever their conclusion, almost all of these analysts seek an explanation in the reform process itself, asking whether it was effective, or whether it was flawed, or whether it could have been designed differently. But what if it never mattered at all? What if it made no difference which mistakes were made, which privatization plans were sidetracked, which piece of advice was not followed? What if “reform” was never the most important story of the past twenty years in Russia at all?
(Excerpt) Read more at nybooks.com ...
....and are these journalists going to do the same analysis on Obamugabe and the crony capitalists in Wall Street who enable him?
Imagine the Nazi regime collapsing from within, not because of invasion; Hitler dies, Dernitz takes over and tries to “reform” Germany, but over the next 20 years Reinhard Heydrich, Himmler’s former second in command, obtains power, then shares it back and forth with Karl Koller, Goering’s former chief of staff. The two together work to return land areas contiguous with Germany, such as the Rhineland and east Prussia. That’s essentially what Putin and Medvadev have done.
Just type “waah,” next time. Seriously.
This certainly makes more sense, jives with the MO of communism and supports the idea that the "experts" in the academy and media are usually wrong.
Interesting take, thanks.
Bumpski for later.
Excellent. Thanks for posting.
The article references contradictory laws in the 90’s that hog-tied Russian businesses as a means of control. The kleptocrats wanted businesses to be in violation of the laws because it made the owners subject to arrest at the whims of the state.
The liberal kleptocrats in America are doing the same to American businesses. Sadly, only conservatives understand the potential for abuse.
On the contrary, they existed for a purpose: the Russian elite wanted everybody to operate in violation of one law or another, because that meant that everybody was liable at any time to arrest.
The contradictory regulations were not a mistake, they were a form of control.
WOW! Does that not sound familiar?
Atlas Shrugged
The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.
Finally some well researched truth telling, helping to explain that the west did not lose Russia, after the fall of the Soviet Union. It was never in the west’s power to determine much of what would become Russia in the post-Soviet era.
The beginning, with the KGB “In league with Russian organized crime, starting at the end of the 1980s”, to the end with “Once in power, the new elite sought to maintain control using the same methods that the KGB always used to maintain control: through the manipulation of public emotion, and by undermining the institutions of the West, and the ideals of the West, in any way that it can”; the west never had a chance.
Only two institutions in Russia had both lots of power and intact institutional organizations - the KGB and the Mob (the mob always existed in the underbelly of the Soviet Union - the “fixed” things and got things, and got things done for the communists in public office; doing their dirty work and keeping party officials hands clean).
What has permitted the near seamless transition of authoritarianism from the imperial Czars, to the Soviet Czars to Putin’s mobocracy in Russia? There is only one answer and that is Russian culture. It is no different than the role of culture in China where imperial emperors were merely replaced by Mao and now by a collective ruling just as an emperor, and with designs on the world near then just like ancient Chinese emperors.
You didn’t want this coming out about Putin?
Surprisingly, I think they are going to rip him to shreds. They're already doing so at very liberal site, Nation of Change. Like us, they hate how he's caving to big businesses who want to take more jobs off shore. Not just caving, aiding and abetting.
Obama is as corrupt as they come. I'm 100% sure this Cuba move is at the behest of big corporations who want to open plants in Cuba to exploit slave laborers.
Obama, then, is the puppet of Putin. That is a fit.
Agree, Obama and his puppet masters make the thugs in Russia.....look like.....well just common thugs. Goldman Sachs, Soros, Rothschilds, et al.
Are the worst of the bunch of criminality. Their shear size and unending ambition to control the world and in so doing enslave humanity is the challenge of a millenium. With their monkey slave in the whitehouse they have control of the world’s foremost military technology and weapons.
If humanity looses this battle.....the earth will become planet nightmare for us, not just the US.
The story is more then the one dimensional “Putin did it all” posited here.
Anne Williamson wrote about it extensively in The Rape of Russia, and Putins rise can be also seen as just the exploits of an opportunist who also understood the game and moved when he saw an opening.
If not him, some other member of the Nomenklatura seeking to be at the top of the gangster heap.
Its the Russian way...they have history. To many Russians, Bad Vlad is just the latest Varangian looting and lording.
But even Bad Czar gets knocked over if he screws up, and Putin is vulnerable. The Russian populace knows what they’re missing these days because the window to the West has been open for a long time.
He can either provide that or get knocked over by another opportunist who sees an opening, like he did.
Nothing is forever, especially not in Russia.
So thugs are part of the 1% who were protested, right? Isn’t there a way to make sure the thugs are operating within the law or do we have to wait for the Messiah of the world (the True Messiah, not the anti-Messiah) to rule in righteousness and justice?
All of this was predicted in Fritz Lang's 1927 film, Metropolis, about what we refer to today as the New World Order. "This influential German science-fiction film presents a highly stylized futuristic city where a beautiful and cultured utopia exists above a bleak underworld populated by mistreated workers." The lower 90% of people are simply fodder for the machines. A powerful horror film.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Za2ALUI97EA&spfreload=10
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