The General Russia Thread

It's more that the USA was paranoid and jumped at every shadow, fearing a socialist regime might pop up. The Soviet Union leadership on the other hand was more concerned and content with securing power at home than abroad.

edited 11th Apr '14 8:43:10 AM by Antiteilchen

While the West may sometimes sweep some things under the rug, Russia is whitewashing far more blatant examples. And trying to correct a viewpoint formed by the West does not justify forming a viewpoint that is as misinformed.

And let's admit something - neither the West nor Russia are being truthful over the 2008 conflict. The West has (mostly) opportunely ignored that Georgia fired the first shots and in general Georgia's reaction was huge overkill, while Russia's assertions about the massacres in Tskhinvali bear little truth.

There's also the very murky matter of how exactly Russia was connected to the first Abkhazian war in 1992-3. Or how Shamil Basayev was involved.

Vietnam, for example. And while the means of the Soviets may have been different, the aims were still the same - create as big a sphere of influence as they could.

And for all the talks about American hamhandedness - what about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan? It was done for the same reasons as 'Nam, pretty much. So I'd not moralize that the Soviets were being nicer to everyone else.

edited 11th Apr '14 8:52:12 AM by emuran

Khto tse, mamo-mamo?

I don't get where you're getting the "highly biased" thing from, FF Shinra. <confused> Certainly not about the lessons I had in the UK. We did the rise of the USSR and WWII, as well as the Cold War at several points in my various History classes and covered the pros and cons. And, there were pros to the Soviets. Particularly at first. The Russian Empire was rather badly run and their criticisms of it pretty valid.

Even Stalin wasn't totally bonkers all of the time (pretty damn bonkers, though: the guy was paranoid and saw dissent practically in his toothpaste).

The most biased and painting them black was... done in my South African classes. <_< For obvious, anti-ANC reasons.

edited 11th Apr '14 8:48:42 AM by Euodiachloris

Well, Stalin did drag Russia economically into the twentieth century with the industrialization.

Khto tse, mamo-mamo?

The OP specified that this was supposed to be a news and current events thread, so these historical debates, while fascinating, seem off-topic to me.

Granted, it's pretty tough coming up with any news articles that arent about the situation in the Ukraine.

Here's a tidbit... "Boston Marathon bombing review says Russia withheld information"

Not that it would have mattered. They had informed the FBI that the brothers were dangerous and were ignored according to initial reports after the bombing. Alas...

@emuran - I'm merely making the point that Russia is villainized more often than not. It's come to the point where they fall into the Then Let Me Be Evil trope vis a vis the West. Every country has done bad things without exception, but the point is to not be Accentuating the Negative. Attempting to dispute my point (despite me never denying that there are exceptions) is proof enough of that going on.

edited 11th Apr '14 9:05:49 AM by FFShinra

Final Fantasy, Foreign Policy, and Bollywood. Helluva combo, that...

Now that you've clarified it, my apologies.

I did not want to accentuate the negative, just show that the exceptions existed as well. I just misinterpreted your point.

Khto tse, mamo-mamo?

In reply to post 1, Putin's war against Russia's last independent TV channel:

Back in January, the website of Dozhd (the independent TV channel in Russia) asked this question:

Or maybe it was this question:

The question offended some Russians and caused some TV providers to drop Dozhd. I fail to understand why the question was offensive, and I suppose the Russian government used it as an excuse to push TV providers to cut an independent TV channel.

People can and do ask What If? questions about World War II. Should the Soviet Union not have invaded Poland? Should the Allies have bombed Auschwitz to oppose the Holocaust? And the big one: should the United States not have dropped those atomic bombs on Japan?

Here in the United States, I learned that four aggressors caused World War II. These four aggressors were Germany, Italy, Japan and the Soviet Union. Then the Germans flipped the Soviets by invading them. The Siege of Leningrad stalled the invasion, and the Battle of Stalingrad reversed it. The Soviets did most of the work to defeat Germany — I understand that America Wins the War is only a trope for fiction.

So, should the Soviets have surrendered Leningrad to the Germans? This is not an evil question. My answer would be long enough to have its own forum thread.

---

In reply to post 30, Boston Marathon bombing review says Russia withheld information:

I don't expect Russia, or any other country, to share all of its intelligence with the United States. No one knew that those two people would attack Boston.

edited 11th Apr '14 10:12:45 AM by Kernigh

Well, I was reaching for anything not ancient history or Ukrainian related. With respect to Dozhd, there is value in maintaining independent news sources- bad as the commercial news channels of the West are, at least they disagree with each other, and with the gov't line, giving people the correct impression that there are significant differences of opinion on most issues. Russia may be lacking in that.

edited 11th Apr '14 10:31:26 AM by demarquis

From what I remember of my history books, they were mostly even-handed. Which might probably mean "whitewashing" Stalin to you, since he has shown in ambiguous light instead of fully black. That is to say, there was the room for industrial achievements and making this country great, and there also was room for GULA Gs. Speaking of which, Solzhenitsin was very much a part of the school literature course.

To claim that the Great Patriotic War was Evil versus Evil is not looked kindly upon here. Said war is big deal here. It it almost a founding myth, or at least the one that defines the country in 20-th century. That was have almost single-handedly (with allies mostly cheering at the sidelines) saved the world from the greatest evil ever, and paid the highest price. Only to be betrayed by the allies during the peace that followed.

That being said, the shifty dealings between Nazi Germany and USSR were covered in our textbooks too.

Of course the Russian government jumped at the opportunity. But I can imagine that some of the outrage by the populace was legitimate. World War Two is a huge Sacred Cow here. Maybe one of the few things absolutely everyone considers a Sacred Cow

edited 11th Apr '14 11:39:37 AM by Beholderess

If we disagree, that much, at least, we have in common

I suspect that the question was made more offensive since, given the effects the Nazi policies had on the places they occupied, it's hard to imagine why surrendering to them would have improved the death toll.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Given how Russians right now don't like Gorbachev and Yeltsin, what's their opinion on the Romanov Family Foundation?

I'm ok with occasional historical discussions (especially those pertaining to The Great Politics Mess Up and the early years of The New Russia), but I prefer those discussions to not take many pages, in order to focus more on current issues, as the title of this thread implies. Don't forget that we have the History Thread to develop such discussions.

BP tells its investors that it is business as usual with Russia.

Russian Capital Flight Could Nearly Double in 2014.

edited 11th Apr '14 1:40:39 PM by Quag15

Not entirely — the Soviet Union wouldn't have been as successful as they were without the hundreds of thousands of American trucks they received...

Keep Rolling On

Soviets did most of the actual fighting, we just gave them the materials needed to do so.

Without them there's no way we could have won the war

Oh really when?

Although Stalin is widely seen as evil here, he is generally considered to have been the "lesser evil" next to Hitler. Pretty much the only people who think Stalin was the greater evil are the sort of people who think the Holocaust didn't happen. That said, there is the attitude that aligning with the Soviets to defeat the Nazis was a necessary evil of the times and such. Also, it's traditional to quickly write-off the Soviet victory as a combination of lend-lease and Zerg Rushes.

I don't think most Americans realize just how big a deal WWII is in Russia. I mean, WWII is a fairly big deal here and it's arguably what made the U.S. into a superpower, but we were never attacked by the Axis powers, unless you count Pearl Harbor and some Alaskan islands bombed by the Japanese. About the worst things people within the United States had to deal with during WWII were women working in factories while the men were at war (the horror!) and rationing of things like nylon (well, and relatives dying in the war, obviously).

How is the Cold War viewed/taught in Russia?

edited 11th Apr '14 4:16:59 PM by Random888

Stalin's turning on groups of people within the Union should never be underplayed, though. Dammit: they were a part of the Union! Even if you honestly thought they'd turn on it. -_- (Seriously: when some of the purges you start can be boiled down to "because they looked at me funny" or "just in case" — you have questions to answer for historians and human rights activists both.)

Yes, he achieved much. Dragging the whole region into the C20th was no mean feat and very easy to downplay. But, there were some terrible social costs in how he went about it. And, encouraged others to. We're still feeling the effects of the forced migrations, for example. <_<

edited 12th Apr '14 12:39:08 AM by Euodiachloris

Stalin and border markers should not be placed in the same sentence. Bad juju happens.

Final Fantasy, Foreign Policy, and Bollywood. Helluva combo, that...

Wasn't a lot of that dragging done via prison slave labor?

Trump delenda est

@ Quag15

I asked due to these thoughts:

1. What's their opinion on Putin in general.

2. Their reaction to what's going on in Crimea.

edited 12th Apr '14 9:49:02 AM by HallowHawk

Don't worry, I'm not blaming you.

Concerning opinion of Putin, he would have been loved by the populace anyway just because he is not Gorbachev or Yeltsin, even if he did not have any other good qualities.

You know, we are used to corrupt government - it's always been that way. We are used to the powers that be sending "troublemakers" to Siberia - it's always been that way. Not saying it is seen as a good thing (the corruption, at least. Dissent is another matter entirely, and let's just say there is a long tradition of the liberal dissenting and impotent intelligentsia being hated by the populace. Long story), but it it seen as the way the world works.A kind of "dog bites man" story - well, yes, didn't you know the dogs are bitey?

Now, shootouts on the streets, the ruler who manages to lose an entire country, or constantly embarrasses it - now that's new, and thus, to many, unforgivable. A "man bites dog" story

If we disagree, that much, at least, we have in common

Anyway, about Putin - it seems that many people here tend to forget that he was a very decent president during his first two terms. Sure, he was very much into the "vertical of power" and rather authoritarian, which was worrisome. Nevertheless, he was rather Western-oriented, tried to make his country accepted by international community, and, while leery of political freedoms, was quite willing to leave the personal freedoms alone.

I wonder lately if the current crazy nationalist/anti-Western/anti-"liberal"/"traditional values" course might have been "our" fault. After the trouble with elections, he became much less tolerant of the urban middle class and it's "Western" values and lifestyle, while before he was quite content to let them have their toys.

Maybe... maybe it really wasn't a good idea to provoke him. It seems to have backfired, badly.

If we disagree, that much, at least, we have in common

I think that's the long and short of it. I myself believed that he had good intentions right up until he led the constitutional amendment to make sure that he stayed in power for another 12 years after Medvedev's term, instead of a mere 8. The gay law and the harsher crackdowns on dissent since his return have had me badly disappointed in Putin, as i once held him up as proof that Russia was changing for the better, if in their own way. "Putin: The Second Chapter" is a much darker one for Russia, it seems.

When are the next round of federal elections in the country? I know Putin's term now isn't up until 2018.

That's interesting. I did have the impression that Putin got more authoritarian as time went on, but assumed it was just because he was gradually consolidating his power. From what I can recall, U.S.-Russian relations were also pretty good in the early '00s, at least before Iraq. That was around the time Bush said (now rather infamously) that, "I looked into his [Putin's] eyes and saw his soul. He's a good man."