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Zonie63 -> RE: Republican Position on the Ukraine (3/6/2014 9:16:36 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: DaddySatyr
quote:
ORIGINAL: subfever
I'm not sure. If Putin's interview has any merit, both of these women may have jumped the gun. I'm curious to know specifically what information they based their positions on.
In any event, here's the latest on Abby Martin.
I don't trust Putin as far as I could throw him.
When the wall fell, I warned people: "Soviet Russia will be back. We're not done with them, yet. This move toward (seeming) freedom is well covered in the Communist Manifesto."
The passage to which I refer is the part where Marx says that socialism/communism cannot succeed until capitalism has run its course. I believed then, as I believe now, that the Russian leaders were just giving people a little "reminder" of what capitalism is all about.
When people aren't eating, the atmosphere is rife for revolution (or, in this case; regression).
I don't know if "Soviet Russia" will be back or not, although I try to look at Russian history as a continuous progression rather than through an ideological lens. While Lenin may have been a Marxist, he implemented his own version of it, while Stalin implemented an even different version in which he reshaped the Soviet Union in his own image. But after Stalin's death in 1953, there was a slow but continuous thaw in which the Stalinist residue slowly melted away.
To be sure, we were getting mixed signals and not really clear as to what they were doing or what their agenda truly was. Khrushchev may have denounced Stalin and reduced some of the excesses of the old regime, he still invaded Hungary in 1956 and sent missiles to Cuba in 1962. On the other hand, he was ultimately removed from power and replaced by Brezhnev, who may have seemed more "sane" and stable compared to his predecessors. It was still Soviet, but there were indications that things were starting to loosen up (but not by much, considering the invasions of Czechoslovakia, Afghanistan and the treatment of Solzhenitsyn and other dissidents). Still, it was no longer in a "revolutionary" state as back in 1917-1920s, and Stalin was gone, too.
One thing that I remember from my travels through that country (when it was still the Soviet Union) was that the overall perspective of the people I spoke to was very heavily influenced by their memories of World War II. And when one looks over the whole of Russian history, most of the time, they're the ones getting invaded and occupied. They don't really see themselves as an aggressor nation or an "evil empire" and could never understand why we hated them so much. To some degree, they feel offended when Americans presume to pass judgment on them, since they see that we haven't gone through the same history and level of destruction and tragedy that they faced. It wasn't just World War II, but in the first half of the 20th century, they started out with a failed and costly war against Japan and a revolution at home, then World War I, a revolution, then another revolution, then a civil war, then collectivization/industrialization (along with a famine that killed millions), then the purges and show trials, then World War II.
During the same period, the U.S. certainly had its share of problems, difficulties, and even wars, but we didn't really go through nearly as much as they did. And we've never had a foreign army occupy huge chunks of our territory, utterly devastate our cities, and wantonly murder our people by the millions. If that happened to America and we managed to drive the invaders out, we'd probably feel justified in doing whatever it takes to ensure that such a thing doesn't happen again. But once that was established and all the chaos and killing were over, my sense was that they wanted to "normalize" relations with the U.S. They didn't want war, especially they knew first-hand just how devastating it can be. They certainly didn't want to go through that again.
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