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Mikhail Gorbachev’s death caused a surge of debates on his political heritage. As expected, opinions were split. Negative comments focused on the Soviet Union’s dissolution, the consequences of which still affect us, for example, in the conflict with ...
http://www.rferl.org/content/brezhnevs-children/24765431.html Russia is not the Soviet union. The regime in Russia has little in common with the Soviet regime. To imply that the process of reforming Russia represents a continuation of attempts to reform the Soviet regime, as Whitmore does, distorts reality beyond recognition. Failures of reform under the Soviet regime were mostly due to features of that regime which have disappeared: (1) the commando-administrative economic system, (2) the ideological...
Rereading my 1984 article “Misperception, Ambivalence, and Indecision in Soviet Policy-making,” for the first time in many years, most of the analysis strikes me as just as valid today as it was in 1984 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1903573. There is, however, an important blind spot in the article. I did not fully appreciate the panic of hardliners among the leaders of the Soviet Bloc concerning the Prague Spring. It was clear that the Czechoslovak reform movement...
... voted in favour of “the preservation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as a renewed federation of equal sovereign republics in which the rights and freedoms of an individual of any nationality will be fully guaranteed.” This was Mikhail Gorbachev’s final attempt to stop the disintegration of a major country. Nine months later, following a referendum on Ukraine’s independence on December 1st, the Soviet Union officially ceased to exist. The Ukrainians, of whom more ...
... But I wonder how seriously they have thought about this assumption. When I ask Russians if they see an alternative, they usually can say what they don't like about Putin. But I have I have yet to hear anyone present a credible alternative. Mikhail Gorbachev, reflecting the view of a large part of the Russian public, once said that Putin literally saved Russia. Yet the difficulty of imaging a country after the departure of an extraordinary leader is not unique to Russia under Putin. Think ...
Mikhail Gorbachev was naive. Boris Yeltsin was obsessed by his power struggle with Gorbachev. As a result, Soviet citizens who overnight, without their consent found themselves living in foreign countries, were left without protection of vital rights ...
| U.S. wants to establish partnership relations with Russia on condition that it meets the U.S. requirements |
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| U.S. wants to deter Russia’s military and political activity |
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| U.S. wants to dissolve Russia |
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| U.S. wants to establish alliance relations with Russia under the US conditions to rival China |
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