Russia history bump for later....
I was hoping for a Constitutional Representative Republic, myself.
That can be created in a geographical area of diverse competitive neighboring groups with a common oppressor.
I remember one in particular.
We're the ones with rigged elections as proven by the last two election cycles. The J6 prisoners are political prisoners. The DOJ and FBI are resorting to banana republic tactics against Donald Trump.
And, it's certainly more democratic than Ukraine, the land of neo-Nazis, where Zelensky has banned all opposition parties and media outlets, imprisoned opposition leaders and is destroying churches.
It’s accurate, especially the points about the effect of the end of Communism on the common people.
Communism was bad, but at least they had make work “jobs” - we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us.
The shock therapy prescribed by the ninnies of the doctrinaire Fwee Traders of Harvard et al plunged early ‘90s Russia into a dog eat dog world they had no idea how to navigate. If it was tried in the US it would cause mass rebellion of an armed populace.
So when Pooty Poot brought a bit of statist control back to the economy they felt more secure.
It was a colossal mistake to try to turn Russia into some kind of Milton Friedman economic libertarian experiment, and it led directly to Putin and what is happening today. They think the US and Europe were just trying to starve them. Considering the efforts of pinheads like Nuland, McCain and Graham, they[re likely not wrong.
A Marshall plan for Russia post 1991 would have been more productive, and the best scenario would have been to bring them to European style Social Democracy before trying to teach risk Capitalism to people who have never understood how to manage such risk.
What is a democracy? By definition it is a rulling by people a common folk.
Now will you honestly tell me that in the western “democracies” common folk rules? Not at all.
Everywhere including Russia the ELITE rules. But today Russian élite so as Chinese one got in odds with a western elite. That is it. That is a nature of a problem. Just a matter of a power to rule this world.
Who cares about democracy.
In the last few years, I have met more conservative Russians than conservative Americans.
Why? One answer: Russians. “I will drag this country kicking and screaming into the modern world if I must!’’ said Peter The Great.
Peter tried, with some success but Ivan is stuck in his ways.