I don't see why not, being as stalin was quite into Russian reassertion and regaining formerly Russian lands. Sure, putin puts a different spin on it. But stalin never came out and said 'I want all the lands formerly in the tsarist empire', he just went and took most of them when the opportunity arose
It's an easy conflation and there is of course an element of truth within it. But it's daft to take any simplification people use on social media as the whole truth. As for your not playing this game any further don't delude yourself, you're playing it as long as you post here, just as we all are
I remember it well from that time. It’s a Western Capitalist narrative that it wasn’t a serious deal. Something that was superseded by events. But that is bollocks.
Do you have a source other than the declassified documents posted above? News reports, anything like that?
Sorry but no. I do recollect the reportage clearly. I followed the news avidly.
It might be an easy conflation, but comparing Stalin and Putin is the laziest fucking comparison. If they weren't both Russian (or Georgian in Stalin's case) I doubt it would be the first connection anyone would make. It's just having a cursory glance at the situation and not seeing the trees for the wood.
I don't, though I do remember a lot of earnest discussions by serious people in suits about what it all meant for old power relations.
NATO Expansion: What Yeltsin Heard | National Security Archive
Washington, D.C., March 16, 2018 – Declassified documents from U.S. and Russian archives show that U.S. officials led Russian President Boris Yeltsin to believe in 1993 that the Partnership for Peace was the alternative to NATO expansion, rather than a precursor to it, while simultaneously...nsarchive.gwu.edu
Russian social and economic collapse under Yeltsin wasn't simply due to his drunken mismanagement. I doubt if he personally had much to do with economic policy, which was guided by free-market zealots acting on the advice of western economists. Nor did Yeltsin have much of a problem with Russia's reduced status and role in the world until those around him, including some of the free-market zealots, began thinking, with the bombing of Serbia and continuing eastwards expansion of NATO, that the west was rubbing their noses in it.
Yegor Gaidar had a 500 day plan to turn Russia into a western-style free market economy. In just 500 days! Kool-aid was on the menu in that case, you may be sure of it.
Iirc. Gaidar was one of those free-market zealots who warned NATO not to expand to Russia's borders, not least because it could provoke a reaction that would derail his plans.
I thought you had to kill more people than that to win the peace prize
Thats what people do all the time on social media but you don't do reading posts do you because if you did you wouldn't be basically telling me what I said. Here's a thought, why not read the whole post in future and not just the first sentence.
It's impossible to gauge how many people died or were harmed due to the Chernobyl cover-up.
You set the bar low
You have to put these things in perspective, though. Gorbachev wasn't in sole control of events, and faced much opposition in the Politbureau and in the wider bureaucracy. As early as 1986, he'd hardly got started on reform, so things were carrying on largely as usual. By 1990-91 he was facing opposition from those who could see the breakup of the USSR looming. While he also opposed it, it is far from clear that he was making all the decisions. I was in the SU during the Vilnius events, and in the month before, and remember quite clearly the appointment of the 'hardliner' Yannaev, and the dramatic resignation of Shevardnadze, who warned of the coming 'reaction', which did indeed come the following August. Whatever his faults, Gorbachev faced an increasingly difficult situation in that period, trying to navigate his way between opposing factions as the prospect of economic and social collapse loomed, and may have felt he had to take actions he would have preferred not to.
Yeah, that's fair enough.
I'm not saying that all the people are or were dumb and unenlightened. Some would have been, exposed as they were to constant propaganda. Others would have been too cowed by abusive hierarchical power. I would argue that the non-Russian half of the population were generally unconvinced by the USSR and Stalin, to put it mildly. So there was some genuine support for Stalin, some enthusiasm, a lot of acquiescence. Outside of the Great Russian heartlands the enthusiasm was vanishingly small.
Funnily enough, I read an interview with Yavlinsky (who was one of the authors of the 500 day plan) today "I believe in a new Russia but Putin is going nowhere" - Index on Censorship
How do you know that support for Stalin was vanishingly small outside the Great Russian heartlands? I'm not saying it wasn't, but what proof do you have?
Of course not but his drunken mismanagement and corruption made the chaos immeasurably worse, and also gave him an urgent need to point the finger of blame. It's the stock-in trade of the incompetent since time immemorial, blame someone else. And Yeltsin was, utterly incompetent (unless you were after a cheap mine or factory I guess)
