I can believe that. But they wouldn't all have thought that, and the national minorities, in the main, would many of them have thought very differently. As would the millions who were shot, starved, worked to death, imprisoned, exiled and the like. So some of the ones who survived were grateful. Stockholm syndrome?
Well that's something, then.
If you have to ask, you'll never know.
I told a (Former Soviet) Central Asian colleague that I'd lived in St. Petersburg. "You mean Leningrad", she snapped (yes, snapped) at me.
You seem to prefer a smear, an allusion rather than stating facts or actually quoting someone or indeed ever answering a question.
Criticism of Gorbachev equates to being a supporter of Stalin In your tiny mind.
Stalinism needed the momentum provided by Stalin's methods, it seems.
He was Andropov's protege. He and Gorbachev could see the same problems, and if he'd lived it's likely that some attempt would have been made at the same reforms Gorbachev started.
Andropov being the head of the KGB as well. The thing that makes me laugh about comments like 'he freed millions from the totalitarian communist yoke' is that it was exactly the same totalitarian communist yoke that elected him.
Similarly with the claim, uttered by so many of our arsehole politicians only today in one form or another, that he helped 'bring peace to Europe.' There was already peace in Europe, if peace means not being at war. Rather, he helped end the Cold War, and this because the USSR couldn't afford to keep up any longer.
This is a drastically over-simplified narrative, pushed to fuel western objectives in Ukraine. Putin does not want to 'reverse' anything. He doesn't want the Soviet poitical and economic system back, and has spoken against it on many occasions. What he does seem to want is a Greater Russia, which might involve re-establishing Russian domination of parts of the ex-USSR. He almost certainly knows that he couldn't have the whole of it even if he wanted it (which is doubtful). Least of all is he stupid enough to believe that the return of the Warsaw Pact is possible.
Wasnt it under Gorbachev that the USA and other countries promised no expansion of NATO to the East?
I think on reading up on this, no such promise was made beyond an offhand comment by Kissinger over drinks or something. It's a narrative but I'm not sure the evidence is there. It's murky at best, is probably a fair assessment.
Hmmm. G was foolish not to get it in writing, but given that there were very strong forces producing a NATO drive to the east, it was likely that they would have had to stall him in the early days after the wall fell. So it would have to have been harder than an off-hand comment over drinks.
ah so we can blame Gorbachev for the Ukraine invasion
It was. Despite this fact, to mention it is to invite some absurd putin propaganda taunt from NATO/EU supporting liberals.
So it was the politburos plan all along?
Gorbachev pulled together a whole host of Soviet reformers, to whom Andropov had come to be sympathetic. Their ideas had been around, and at times listened to, and to some extent implemented, at the highest level for years. Never before, though, had they so directly had the ear of Soviet President, so they were able to go a lot further. The process took on its own momentum, resulting in the fracturing of the CPSU.
I'm sure the quote I saw wasn't made by Kissinger but I might be mistaken . I'm sure it was around the time of the fall of the GDR.
As if he needed more vindication, Comrade.
He was right on that. The CPSU eventually spawned liberal pro-capitalist, far-right nationalist and hardline Stalinist-nationalist, as well as social-democratic and radical socialist, groupings, who went on to form independent parties.
Always been the case in the CCP - everything from full on Chicago types nurtured on Ford Foundation scholarships in the 80s to full tankies.
