Russia had their chance in the early 1990s. Had they stuck with Gorbachev, Russia would likely have ended up on a similar path to Japan, Germany, and South Korea. They would have been eagerly accepted into the international community of peaceful democratic nations. They had that choice, but instead they told Gorbachev to take a hike, and that they would prefer to end up like North Korea, Syria, or Iran rather than South Korea, Japan, or Germany.
There might be early preparations underway to confront some unfinished business in Georgia. Released February 9th:
US Defense Department
“Today, I’m pleased to announce that we’ve approved Georgia for the risk-assessed payment schedule so Georgia will be able to request and acquire vital military capabilities more easily,” said Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, who hosted a visit by Georgian Defense Minister Juansher Burchuladze at the Pentagon today.
I can not speak much to Gorbechev, although he seems intelligent and good-hearted, he also was not able to accomplish his goal. He sought to preserve the USSR,
against all odds. The US backed Yeltsin took over, and that was a shit-show for Russians. Putin reined in the oligarchs, in a way, and projected Russian power outwards unilaterly. The nations you listed of Germany, South Korea and Japan were US puppets after WW2, they had been thoroughly beaten down and occupied. All three host large numbers of US troops to this day. My post was about Russian nationalism, and the paranoia it causes. If you are a Russian nationalist, there was no option with Gorbachev, Yeltsin, or liberal democracy in general.
My point was those nationalists could have decided that nationalism was a bad thing, and gone with a true democracy instead. It didn’t happen that way, but it could have if Gorbachev had stuck around. As far as I can tell he was a much better human being than Yeltsin and Putin, which would have been the primary requirement in a leader of post-Soviet Russia making the transition to democracy. Yes, there would have been a few tough years, just like Germany and Japan had tough years after WWII. In the end, however, I suspect it would have worked out for the better, just like the current people of Germany, Japan, and South Korea are better off than they would have been under a modern day 4th Reich, neo- Empire of Japan, or as subjects of the Kim regime as a part of the DPRK.
Nitpick: ‘Seemed’ († 30 August 2022).
I did not know that. The last I heard from him was his 2018 oped in the NY Times.
Do you think Russia would have accepted US troops occupying it and a constitution written under the supervision of the United States? That is what happened with those countries. The Marshall Plan also happened; billions of dollars to restore their economies and connect them to ours. It is not really a good comparison.
They could have managed even without American occupation. I pointed out Japan, Germany, and South Korea because they are the greatest success stories of countries becoming successful democracies from the middle part of the 20th century. But there’s also the former Warsaw pact nations, which are better examples to compare to Russia. Countries like Poland, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, and even the 2014 through 2/23/2022 Ukraine. They aren’t economic powerhouses like Japan, Germany, and South Korea, but they have improved the standard of living of their people to a much greater degree than Russia did (again at least until the Russian invasion in the case of Ukraine). They even did so without having their constitutions written by an occupying American general (which only applies to Japan - not Germany or South Korea) or under American military occupation. Given time (and a lack of being invaded by Russia) those countries will probably continue (would have likely continued in the case of Ukraine) to make progress and end up looking like the UK, France, Germany, Japan, or South Korea currently do in another 20 or 30 years or so (OK, maybe New Zealand, given that we’re talking about smaller countries). Russia could have placed themselves on the same track, but they chose not do so.
I will disagree with regard to (west) Germany and South Korea. These nations were firmly under US control. In some ways they still are. The former Eastern Bloc countries that you mentioned are also recieving massive aid now. Russia applied to join NATO, it was denied. Russia was never meant to get a seat at the table. NATO is still an anti Russian alliance, although it has recently been branching out in areas like Serbia (not that recent) and Afghanistan, and Libya. ETA and I do not blame the small countries bordering Russia for wanting protection.
Having read into it a little more, it does seem that the US does bear some of the responsibility with regards to how Russia ended up going with authoritarianism rather than democracy in the 1990s. We should have offered them a seat at the table, not in the Yeltsin to Putin transition, but in the immediate fall of the Soviet Union when there was still a chance we could have propped up Gorbachev, who I think would have done a better job than Yeltsin did in the 90s.
The US, for better or worse, encouraged the disintegration of the USSR. That is admitted by the US. At the time, some promises were made to Russia with regard to NATO expansion limits. They were made by the US Secretary of State, who does have some authority but certainly can’t dictate future policy. The statements involved German reunification as well, which scared the Russians. The entire diplomatic situation has been a shit show, really.
That’s an entirely safe position for them to take, because it accords perfectly with both the Russian and Ukrainian/Western views of the current conflict. Ukraine and its Western allies view Russia’s actions as seizing its sovereign territory through war, and so they can interpret Kazakhstan’s statement as condemning Russia’s actions. Russia considers the borders in the Donbas to have been changed through legitimate democratic processes, and Russia’s involvement (which, according to them, is very emphatically not a war) is only to defend what it considers the new legally and legitimately established borders. So Russia can interpret Kazakhstan’s statement as referring to Ukrainian aggression. No matter which side ends up winning, Kazakhstan can claim, with a minimum of extra rationalization, that they were on that side all along.
(Note that you, or the sources you relied on, may have overstated Kazakhstan’s opposition to the recognition of Luhansk and Donetsk. President Tokayev’s actual statement made it clear that no final decision on recognition had been made, only that the two polities “apparently” did not meet the criteria for statehood. This was reported in this Interfax article—a Russian news agency, I know, but one that all the English-language media seem to be using as the ultimate source of this claim.)
The break up of the Soviet Union and the story of its attempts to become democratic are told quite well by the Adam Curtis documentary series for the BBC called “TraumaZone”. I was captivated though it’s effectively seven hours of pure archive footage.
I loved this as I’m a sucker for archive footage.
But in the last episode he claimed that Putin was chosen by the oligarchs as a puppet they could control. Was that originally the case and the relationship has since changed? Or are the oligarchs still pulling the strings?
He turned on them almost right away, which they probably should have seen coming. All of the oligarchs that originally supported him are gone now.
Successive governments in Russia, including Putin himself, signed up to a succession of treaties confirming borders and arms control/security guarantees, and he’s broken almost every one, in particular three different treaties confirming Ukraine’s independence and territorial integrity. Is it any wonder Russia’s regarded with suspicion?
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/essays/negotiations-putin-peace-talks-worthless-moscow-kyiv
Thanks for this, and your other comments. I appreciate hearing from you and other Dopers more in the know about the political dynamics.
First, I want to thank you for absolutely ruining half my work day. It’s nice to be the boss, but I really should have done more with my day.
It reminded me of what a Russian immigrant I used to work with told me once.
He said that he was struck at HOW US depictions of life in the USSR got things wrong: The police state really wasn’t that intrusive for the average person, and the day to day miseries of things like shortages and consumer goods were much much worse.
I’m confused by your tone here. Saying this is “admitted” by the US makes it sound almost conspiratorial, like they didn’t really want anyone to know this, but were force by circumstances to admit to it.
But “the break-up of the USSR” was the whole point of the Cold War. This was nothing more than the ultimate success of one of the major planks in the US foreign policy platforms for almost half a century. As much as I would have preferred Gorbachev to have retained power at least in Russia, over that Yeltsin clown, there was never any doubt that the US was going to push for the dissolution of the USSR as a political and military entity.
No, it is not a mystery as to why the nations bordering Russia view it as a threat. I suppose the point of many of my posts on this topic are to describe the Russian motive for acting as they do towards their neighbors. And of course, not all Russians support these nationalistic policies, but the current leadership does. However, Putin is apparently still pretty popular, I do not believe his party has to rig elections to win. So the Russian paranoia is a real thing and holds influence among swaths of the population. Would they be better off joining “the West”? Yes, but they have not exactly been welcomed. The liberal democrat Yeltsin was an object of ridicule. So now we have the rabid nationalists exerting influence; their policy is “make Russia great again”.