The General Russia Thread

I never mentioned a thing about trust. That's the two of you. That isn't something pragmatism requires.

Russia is perfectly happy with Putin. To them, it's a repudiation of what the West wanted, as represented by Yeltsin. Maybe don't treat them with contempt either, when they were too weak to do anything.

And the Baltics and Poland were in the cold war mindset long before Putin.

Russia may be happy with Putin but he's certainly doing them no favors. There isn't going to be any change in diplomatic attitudes towards Russia as long as he's behind the wheel.

And yeah...no. Saying the Baltics want a new Cold War is historical revisionism up there with calling the Civil War the "War of Northern Aggression".

Russia is perfectly happy with Putin the same way Trumpist are perfectly happy with Trump, Erdogan followers are perfectly happy with him and Brexiters are a big fan of Boris Johnson.

The truth is that Russia and the people living there could be WAY better off if the money which comes in from the natural resources they have would be invested for the benefit of the country instead of funnelled in the pockets of a few people, the sanctions really hurt Russia's economic grown and they are completely on Putin, and everyone who dares to say something against Putin either ends up dead or has to flee the country eventually.

Also, trust is a very important currency on the world stage. Without trust you might be able to do a deal or two, but with it you get staunch allies.

Also "Long before Putin"? There isn't "long before Putin". There is maybe a decade between the fall of the iron curtain and the economic damage Russia did to its former vasal states in the aftermath and the rise of Putin and his ilk. You can hardly blame the Eastern European states to need a little bit more than a decade to reconsider Russia after having lived (and suffered) under its control for 45 years.

Edited by Swanpride on Aug 19th 2018 at 3:24:08 AM

Russia is doing just fine outside of Europe. And even within Europe, it's not all or nothing when it comes to relations with Moscow.

Not really. The Baltics and Poland specifically made it a point to treat Russia with contempt from the 90s onwards (the way the Baltics in particular treated and still treat Russian minorities did not start with Putin's ascent to power), and encouraged other countries to do so, initially to little effect, but now its all the rage. This as opposed to the rest of Eastern Europe, which was happy to just move on and leave the baggage behind. Even now they aren't nearly as militant about Moscow as those four are.

Putin enjoys popularity ratings those other three would kill to have. Genuine popularity too (per the likes of the BBC et al), not just something ginned up via his authoritarianism (which is more Dick Dastardly Stops to Cheat more than anything).

The sanctions hurt when they first happened, but Russia has weathered it fine thus far. And the problem Russia has with oligarchy is hardly unique to them.

Who said anything about staunch allies? My initial comment was Merkel and Putin can deal with each other in lieu of Trump being an idiot. In a purely transactional way. You seem to be confusing my observation for some sort of declaration that they are friends. They are not, nor did I ever say they are, nevermind allies.

A decade is an eternity in politics. Especially when, during said decade, the West had a leader they could "deal with", and they did not do so with the hand of friendship. Now they are reaping what they had sown, as far as the Russians are concerned. Not like they were gonna get the opportunity to enjoy the manna of being the EU or NATO's poodle, the way the rest of the former East Bloc did. The 90s proved that to them.

Funny, the rest of Eastern Europe was able to deal fine with Russia. And still can. Only those four needed more than said decade to do so.

I'd hardly describe Russia as "doing fine" these days, and their allies are few and far between. Even historical allies like India and Vietnam are starting to move away from them.

I'm a little surprised to see that kind of pro-Russia historical revisionism on this forum. Those countries have an antagonistic relationship with Russia for a reason, and it's not because they just can't move on.

Russian relations with the major players in Europe aren't going to change any time soon.

India still buys from Russia. Indeed, they are the only country so far to take advantage of India's nuclear deal with the US for new reactors, at the US's expense. As for weapons, does India buy at the same volume as it used to? No, but that's because they have their own defense industry now, not because of any perceived cooling of relations.

And I do mean the economy is fine. Which is not the same thing as great. It's not in free fall, it's not in recession (which was the initial effect of the sanctions), it's doing business with all the nations of Asia, including SK and Japan.

It's not revisionist history just because one mentions facts that don't follow the narrative of Russia being mustache-twirling evil and the West being all innocent. The world does not fit in easy boxes like that, and the quicker people here understand it, the less in the bubble they will be about why things are happening and thus will actually be able to fight it off in the future. As it is now, the loudest opinion on Russia here is mostly a reflection of the same Western doubling down on the same nonsense that led to the Russians picking someone like Putin in the first place. And with the same toxic accompaniment of absolutism that causes you lot to dive on anyone who gives even low level devil's advocacy of maaaaaybe there is a reason the Russians are doing what they are doing. Does it absolve them? No. But it does explain things and, <gasp> actually dares to suggest the West fucked up with the Russians after the cold war. Or that treating Putin like a Bond villain has only played into his hands and strengthened his cult of personality that is the United Russia party.

Revisionism would be to say a nation did nothing wrong (which I have not said), or that they are perfect (which I have not said). Funny though, I do see that happening when it comes to any discussion here about other countries and their own actions and behavior vis a vis Russia. Or when people have to put words in the mouths of those they disagree with in order to set up straw men to defeat. No wonder this thread has become so toxic to actual discussion.

So can it with the "revisionist" talk.

Revisionism is also acting as if something wasn't as bad as it is portrayed.

So, to be clear here: What Russia did in the time which lead up to WWII was criminal. Stalin basically made a deal with freaking Hitler to split Europe between them. What Russia did immediately after the War was mass murder. They basically just moved Poland further to the West in order to get the borders they wanted and countless people died during the death marches which resulted out of it. What Russia did after that was oppression, and the Berlin Wall was just the most visible symbol of it. People who died trying to cross it only make up a fraction of the deaths the Russian regime was responsible for, not just in Germany, but all over Eastern Europe...and, as a reminder, Germany was responsible for WWII, but the country which got hit the most in the aftermath of it were NOT. They were just given to Russia to appease it after they had already been ravaged. And after the finally managed to regain their freedom after 45 years of oppression, you have the GALL to complain that they didn't forgive Russia fast enough?

Russia never did anything which would make those actions forgivable. They never even admitted having been wrong. And the MOMENT Russia recovered from the internal economic crisis which lead to it relenting and giving up its iron grip in the first place, it started to harass its direct neighbours again. So spare me the "woo misunderstood me" act. Woman up!

Oh no, what you’re doing is revisionism. There’s no two ways about that.

Your claims about the Baltic states fly in the face of historical fact, and whether you’re aware of it or not are being put forward to advance a narrative painting Russia as a rightful aggressor, simply fending off Western advances.

For all the talk of shades of grey, you draw a false dichotomy about the very definition of the word revisionism and put forward a version of events casting Russia as a victim, which could not be more false.

Russia’s situation today is sort of a “you’ve made your bed, now lie in it” situation. The fallout with former allies like India and evisceration of their economy and tech sectors are direct results of a neo-Soviet foreign policy being pursued by Russian leadership.

I don’t know about you, I remember The '90s though my memories of it be sketchy at best.

I do remember that last ditch putsch in 1991, tanks over Moscow, and how it failed miserably. Because the people of Moscow and elsewhere in Russia truly didn’t want the old days anymore, they took a stand and stood by it, courageously.
They knew how good you were having it and so they wanted to become like you. Not that they expected anything akin to the postwar “miracles” of Japan and West Germany, but they had hopes.

And there was a sincere questioning, not unanimous of course, but strong nonetheless, not merely of Soviet totalitarianism but of authoritarianism as a whole.
Yet Russia had never known anything else than authoritarianism, with shorts spasms of bardak which are still remembered and not fondly so, and a modern democratic society doesn’t spring spontaneously out of thin air once the shackles of tyranny are removed, just add water.
Yet that was more or less what the Western advisers, big on letting the market do its own thing and privatisation, recommended.
Oblivious to empirical knowledge of the Russian realities, they sought to have the new Russia fit their model and when it didn’t, it failed and miserably so; so it must have been Russia’s fault, mussnit?
So the West treated Russia with contempt for that failure. The Russians took note.
With a feeble government, which is what they mean when saying “small government”, Russia saw both the rise of arrogant oligarchs flaunting their riches while the regular gals and guys saw their lives mired in precarity and indignity; all the while small autonomous republics were rebelling against Moscow (some with legitimate grievances too).

The former satellite countries of Eastern Europe sought safety with the EU and NATO, and justified they were, given how they were treated in Soviet times and even earlier, by Mother Russia. So inclusion into what made Western Europe’s stability and prosperity was the obvious choice and one that’d preserve them from falling again in Russia’s “sphere of influence” (a notion that should have been left to die long ago). That they treated their Russian minorities less than fairly goes without saying, dominant groups do these things when given half a chance, in the absence of solid civil rights.
Russia remembered it had assurances given to Gorbachev that NATO wouldn’t seek eastward expansion, and since it did, mostly because most former COMECON countries wanted it (and as described above, for very good reasons), Russia worried about nefarious Western motives as most anyone would, more so if raised by tyrants, combine this with the arrogance and contempt from the West and yes, it made you look bad.

So when Eltsin and the oligarchs saw that shorter-than-average, former mid-ranking KGB officer, gray apparatus man, they thought that was just what the doctor ordered.
And boy did Comrade Vova deliver! Unable to get hashtag-MRGA, for you don’t get to erase seventysomething years of Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist devastation with the click of a finger, or a wizard’s wand, or a push of a button, he set out to bring the rest of us down, destabilise the West and undermine liberal democracy. Lucky bastard that he is as the West does most of that by its own foolish self.

Most Russians are still miserable, but not as badly as they were before Putin. And now Russia is feared again and therefore respected; and while that shit won’t pay your bills it sure makes you feel like you got your balls again, even if you gotn’t.

Now, Russia’s predicament as a result of that 70-year long reign of untold pain is all of Russia’s doing, as are Russia’s present woes. However, how could I put it delicately, we weren’t helping back when we could.

Edited by AlityrosThePhilosopher on Aug 20th 2018 at 10:40:56 AM

Now I remember the 90s too. I remember a starving Russian population in the fall out of their own dictatorship, I remember packing packages to help our partner school in Moskau, I remember my sister visiting there during the first putsch on a student exchange and how worried I was about her, I remember my own class mates being there during the second exchange, I remember Germany giving Russia credits again and again to keep the struggling government afloat and I remember what actually turned the tide for Russia - which had NOTHING to do with Putin and everything with natural resources and changes in the oil and gas market.

And I remember the realisation that Russia never really stopped being a dictatorship. The KGB just reinvented itself and is now operating under a different name. And whoever you want to blame, the majority of those problems are created in-house.

I agree that the west could have done more to “reach” Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. There’s a definite missed opportunity there.

That said, they didn’t particularly want to be reached. Their current situation is entirely of their own making.

I don’t actually remember the ‘90s either, but I do know Russians who pretty much do. They do remember the support the Yeltsin government received, in spite of being a blatant failure at everything its Western patrons tried to justify their support with. All despite many of these Russians looking at Western great powers as their mentors and saviors who would bring democracy and prosperity to their country.

Considering the mentioned obviousness of the mentioned failures and the benefits the mentioned great powers could gain from tranforming their greatest political and military adversary into a banana republic, I beg to disagree not only about Russians not wanting to be reached, but also about being the main culprit of the current situation. (Even if these Western states are indeed prospering democracies when it comes to domestic policies.)

Edited by LordforlornII on Aug 20th 2018 at 5:18:28 AM

And you don't think that said Russians might be mislead by their own government to look for the fault somewhere else? It is after all what all politicians love to do, blame other countries for homemade problems. See Brexit. See Trump. See Greece.

The Western support of the Yeltsin government is a fact. Its failures are a fact too. These are not stories fabricated by some kind of vile Putinist propaganda.

Neither are the mentioned benefits, even if it’s hard to believe that the concerning countries, which are indeed prospering democracies domestically, are capable of doing such things. Considering all of that, no, I don’t think the views of these Russians would be groundless.

Edited by LordforlornII on Aug 20th 2018 at 6:08:16 AM

What exactly should the west have done differently in your opinion?

I have seen the press coverage back then and helping the Russia government was not about keeping Yelzin in power, it was about Russian people dying in the street and the knowledge that without financial help, Europe would have a humanitarian catastrophe at its hand. Nobody was happy about the notion to prop up oligarchs, but it was either that or the end of any kind of order in Russia. Take a good look at Syria to understand what the alternatives were.

Putin somehow managed to do it without a civil war (yes, some oligarchs did remain, but, contrary to popular beliefs, his policies were quintessential to the economic stabilization and growth experienced by Russia from 2000 to 2014, without which high oil prizes would have made only the oligarchs richer).

I do believe there was some official lamentation about the situation in Russia, yet that didn’t stop money institutions or state actors from supporting the oligarchs through the government. And no, I don’t believe that any of these were unaware who they were actually giving money to.

Edited by LordforlornII on Jul 13th 2020 at 2:10:12 AM

Eh, no, you don't get it. Putin managed to ensure that the Oligarch have the absolute power now. He is their puppet. Claiming that he managed to do it without civil war is like saying that Stalin rescued Russia from Lenin.

Being allied with some of them doesn't mean he is controlled by them. If you even vaguely remember Russia in the 1990s, you should know how real oligarch rule looks like.

Putin is hardly the puppet to the oligarchs. He's leveraged them to fund the state, if anything it's the other way around.

No, what he actually did was to organize them in a way that they can continue their stealing in a more stealthy manner than before. It's still stealing, and it is still the Russian population which suffers under it more than anyone else.

It's not "stealthy", rather much less problematic. Exactly because it has decreased significantly. Oligarchs didn't vanish, true, but that indeed would have been possible only at the cost of a civil war.

It would have been possible with a leadership which actually cares about the people instead of just wanting to fill its own pockets.

Putin didn't rescue Russia. He is just leading it to its downfall in a slower pace. And the only way to change this is for the Russian people to insist on a leadership which actually bats for their interests. But that won't happen, because if there is one thing Putin can do well, it's propaganda.

×13; ×12
I won’t bore you with anecdotes (because the the ones I have are, well, boring), yet while the Russian government under Yelstin was ineffective, so was the Western advice it was getting at the time (and it was up to them not to listen to bad advice and seek better one) yet the arrogance and contempt on the part of the self-satisfied West was there too, and that wasn’t helping to say the least.
When mentioning how Comrade Vova delivered, it wasn’t so much about the economy doing better as it was about restoring order (in a Hobbes Was Right sort of way) just as it was about making Russia respected again, both though cruelty and intimidation. Many will react favourably to that, and not just in Russia.

As for Russians not wanting to be reached, perhaps not so much in government yet more than a few on the ground. And they were despised as stoopid Russians from by the West and as unpatriotic sellouts betraying the Eternal Virtues of Authentic Ourdom from their power elite and its lackeys.

Other than that, as I stated above, both the devastation visited upon Russia in Soviet times, itself still far from healed, and the troubles it’s undergoing at present time are wholly owned by Russia.
Outside help could have made a change or it couldn’t, we’ll never know for (outside of praiseworthy yet too small individual efforts) we didn’t help meaningfully when we could.

Comrade Vova indeed didn’t rescue Russia and he doesn’t rescue it now, he just tries to slow its downfall (and not that efficiently so) while trying to make us fall with it, hoping we fall even lower.

I daresay that advice was not as much ineffective as intentionally damaging, aiming to destroy the greatest adversary most Western great powers had had for 40 years.

As if the European country had any interest in having a basket case on their doorsteps. They tried. They truly tried, not just for Russia, for all states in the former Soviet Union. If they hadn't done it, eastern Europe would be a giant conflict today.