Katrina vanden Heuvel hates America
Sorry she looks like the devil wife!:)
Posted on 04/27/2007 6:10:54 PM PDT by A. Pole
Boris Yeltsin, who died on April 23, was a towering figure in Russian political history. But was he, as so many US obituaries and editorials have described him, the "Father of Russian Democracy"?
As though a wave of historical amnesia had swept over the media, few commentators seemed to remember that it was Mikhail Gorbachev, upon becoming Soviet leader in 1985, who launched the democratic reforms of "perestroika" and "glasnost"--ending censorship, permitting, even encouraging, opposition rallies and demonstrations, beginning market reforms and holding the first free, multi-candidate elections. (Indeed, Yeltsin was the chief beneficiary of those reforms.)
[...]
After August 1991, Yeltsin's anti-democratic policies polarized, embittered and impoverished his country laying the ground for what is now unfolding in Russia--though it is being blamed solely on today's Russian President, Vladimir Putin.
[...]
Beginning in early 1992, Yeltsin launched the disastrous "shock therapy" policies which sent the country reeling with pain. Urged upon Russia by a group of US (primarily Harvard) economists, and supported by the Clinton Administration and energetically implemented by Yeltsin's young "reformers," these policies--almost universally touted as "reforms" in the Western media-- involved the swift elimination of most price controls and a privatization program that resulted in hyperinflation wiping out, in installments, the savings of average Russians. Roughly half of Russia's people thus found themselves living below the poverty level.
** In October 1993, Yeltsin used tank cannons to destroy not only the Parliament that had brought him to power and defended him during the attempted coup of 1991 but the entire political, constitutional order of Russia's post-Communist republic. The US government and media, with few exceptions, acted as Yeltsin's cheerleaders as the Russian President's tanks pounded Russia's first ever popularly elected and fully independent legislature. A senior US official told the New York Times that "if Yeltsin suspends an anti-democratic parliament, it is not necessarily an antidemocratic act"; and an unnamed US official was quoted by Newsweek as saying the Clinton Administration "would have supported Yeltsin even if his response had been more violent than it was." (187 people died and almost 500 were wounded in the attack.)
[...]
In 1996, Yeltsin's reelection campaign---financed by a handful of oligarchs including now-exiled Putin opponent Boris Berezovsky and aided by pro-Kremlin media bias and censorship--was marked by spectacular legal violations. No less enduring in its consequences was the most aggressive giveaway on Yeltsin's watch --the notorious "loans-for-shares" agreement--which allowed a small group of men, in exchange for financing Yeltsin's campaign, to take control of and Russia's most valuable economic assets.(It was a colossal piece of criminality glossed over at the time by almost all US media outlets as "market reform".) Thus was birthed the rapacious oligarchy--leading one Russian journalist to remark the other day that Yeltsin was not "the father of democracy" but "the father of the oligarchy."
**In August 1998, following a number of financial dealings that victimized or failed to benefit most Russians, the government after pledging not to do so,suddenly devalued the ruble, defaulted on its debts and froze bank accounts. In effect, people's savings were once again expropriated, this time decimating the post-1991 middle class.
Such events help explains why for millions of Russians, Yeltsin's rule was an age of blight not democracy. This magazine never lost sight of the social and economic disaster he presided over. But almost no one in the US media wanted to tell that story. Preferring Panglossian narratives, few cared to report that since 1991 Russia's reality included the worst peacetime industrial depression of the 20th century. In 1999, when the UN Development program reported that " a human crisis of monumental proportions is emerging in the former Soviet Union," the report was virtually ignored. And while, as Professor Peter Reddaway and Dmitri Glinski wrote, "for the first time in recent world history one of the major industrial nations with a highly educated society has dismantled the results of several decades of economic development," American press coverage preferred to run glowing stories about Yeltsin's crusading "young reformers" --sometimes called "democratic giants" -- showing a cold indifference to the terrible human consequences of the crusade. (A Reuters journalist later made the observation: "The pain is edited out." ) As Stephen Cohen wrote, "sustaining such a Manichaean narrative in the face of so many conflicting realities turned American journalists into boosters for US policy and cheerleaders for Yeltsin's Kremlin."
Neither these cold realities nor the political and economic consequences today have chastened the the booster-journalists. Indeed, while many of the obituaries in newspapers that were Yeltsin's most uncritical supporters at the time now give a more balanced account than they did at the time --there is no acknowledgement that they helped promote the acts they now criticize or regret.
Embedded in those obituaries is another argument, perhaps stated most clearly by Strobe Talbott, a Russia expert and Clinton's primary adviser on Yeltsin's Russia, that while there are valid criticisms of Yeltsin there was no alternative route to what he imposed. Yet the majority of Russian pro-market economists warned against "shock therapy" --abetted by US-sponsored policies--foreseeing its tragic outcome. The alternative road they offered was more evolutionary, a gradualist approach, a "third way" that would have averted catastrophic impoverishment, plundering and lawlessness. Time has proved them right.
[...]
Are the people themselves complaining as they are in Russia? I doubt they'd ever want to go back to communism or that they long for the good old days of one party bosses calling the shots.
People are not complaining as much but we should notice that Russian “shock therapy” was really terrible. However majority of Poles negatively consider whole transformation process, they remember corruption, rigged every single privatization and the fact that communists not only were not punished but also preserved a lot of influence in the country. Nobody else but communists gained the most financially.
But most are glad to have thrown off the old system right? That was really my point in making the comparison between other Eastern European countries and Russia when I read that so many in the Soviet Union wouldn’t mind going back to the way it was.
Sorry she looks like the devil wife!:)
A.Pole is still banned. There are different kinds of banning; some last one to three days, some for 2 or 3 years. I still don’t understand why A.Pole was banned.
Sure, people are glad that we are no longer communist country. I think that in Russia most of them don’t wont SU back either. Russians have different mentality, they have no problem living poorly without democracy if only their country is powerful. That is why they support Putin, he gives them such illusion.
So many Freepers cannot be wrong about him and I think nobody understand why he was banned. Hopefully moderator will reconsider this strange decision.
It isn’t a choice between one or the other, it’s the fact that privatization was done incredibly poorly benefitting only those close to the corridors of power...just like in Russia. Many now associate capitalism with blatant theft thanks to these privatization schemes.
Welcome to the New Way.
Your analysis is flawed because your perspective is
anti Russian not anti Soviet Union.
BIG DIFFERENCE!
You hit the nail square on its head on this one, D.
God bless Putin. I was always opposed to Moscow until he came along.
My sentiment exactly, cousin. Yeltsin was a disaster for Russia. Under him, a narrow interest oligarchy took over and so-called "reformers" practically auctioned off all of Russia, so much so that one US Sentaor gleamed saying that Russia can't even make its own light bulbs!
He placed Russia's wealth into foreign hands, which in any normal country would have been considered treason.
He violated agreements with then Federal Republic of Yuggoslavia and stalled delivery of missiles capable of taking out NATO war planes at 5,000 ft or higher, while publicly, for domestic ocnsumption, railing against bombing of (predominantly) Serbia.
He was finally, and suddely, removed (probably under threat from the military) and retired rather than killed (probably under pressure from the US that no harm be done to him).
At this point I do even believe that his PR stunt on a Russian tank was a staged circus corehgraphed by our three-letter agenices. He was id'd as a western puppet and he received all the support and means to carry out what he was hired to do.
Let's not forget that he was a loyal communist for many years when it was benefitial to his career.
When he was basically fired from his shamless job, his popularity rating in Russia was mere 6%.
One of the first things Vladimir Putin did was to get ready of the Russian oligarchs whose loyalties were never to Russia.
What exactly do you support from Moscow that you were opposed before Putin appeared?
Big difference but current regime is still thuggish. On other hand, your support for Russia originate from common Orthodoxy. To gain your trust, it was enough for Putin to attend few masses. So your analysis is flawed… :)
Putin was not?? I’m not fan of Yeltsin at all, I can even understand that Putin is better. However he is still a thug and his political background, I mean former KGB apparatchiks are even worse.
Roman Abramovich belonged to Yeltsin favorite group of oligarch and today he stand firmly near Putin. The same with many other Russian oligarchs.
Roman Abramovich belonged to Yeltsin favorite group of oligarch and today he stand firmly near Putin. The same with many other Russian oligarchs
You are absolutely right on both accounts. However, the state has a duty to protect itself. Yeltsin's loyalties were to those outside of Russia. Big difference.
No one gets to be a top dog in any country and remain a saint. It requires eliminating competition. I remember Gorbachov's visit to the US and someone's comment what a "nice" man he was. I thought "how can someone become the chairman of the Soviet Presidium and the Communist party by being a 'nice guy'"? Nice guys are eaten for breakfast.
President D. Roosevelt once said "they may be thus, but they are our thugs" or words to that effect. And that's the crucial difference. Thugs that work for foreign masters are traitors. Thugs that serve national interests are often considered patriots and even heroes.
My point was not to paint Putin as a "nice guy" but as someone who works for the interest of Russia, unlike Yeltsin did.
I agree with most of your comments, however at this point I see it from completely opposite perspective. Both Yeltsin and Putin don’t care about Russia or the nation. The difference is that Yeltsin didn’t care even stronger. Finally, what is the difference if one gave power to oligarchs and second to former KGB apparatus? I would say that second solution coerce some order and that is what we witness today. But in the end, we cannot say that such solution can be considered to be for the interest of Russia. This is impossible to build modern and successful country on such ground.
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