[billakay]

Context, my friend. Communism notwithstanding (and indeed it is not relevant to the quote, as Putin is not a Communist), the sudden collapse of the USSR (as opposed to the orderly de-Communization that happened across the rest of the Warsaw Pact) was indeed a catastrophe for the people who lived inside of it. People suffered. A LOT. These are people like you and me who were just living their lives.

It is easy to be smug when you and your family weren't forced to suffer through a decade of abject poverty and sometimes near-starvation.

The point is Communism, bad. The sudden collapse of the second most powerful nation on earth, also bad in a different way, especially from the perspective of those who had to live through it.

[ETL]

“20 million for the Soviets alone”

“’The Black Book of Communism,’; a scholarly accounting of communism’s crimes, counts about 94 million murdered by the supposed champions of the common man (20 million for the Soviets alone), and some say that number is too low.”

Forgetting the Evils of Communism: The amnesia bites a little deeper
By Jonah Goldberg, August 2008:

http://web.archive.org/web/20100711090651/http://article.nationalreview.com/365528/forgetting-the-evils-of-communism/jonah-goldberg

[ETL]

Context, my friend. Communism notwithstanding (and indeed it is not relevant to the quote, as Putin is not a Communist), the sudden collapse of the USSR (as opposed to the orderly de-Communization that happened across the rest of the Warsaw Pact)

Russian president, Vladimir "KGB/FSB" Putin

[ETL]

[rbmillerjr]

“The sudden collapse of the second most powerful nation on earth, also bad in a different way, especially from the perspective of those who had to live through it.”

Containment and Reagan’s Assertive Containment worked. The USSR was pure evil.

It was not just a good damn day for America, it was a good damn day for the world and for those enslaved within that prison state.