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this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2023
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If you think that the answer to this is simply "because Russia bad" you have the mind of a child.
Eastern European countries that opened to western trade and diplomatic relationships improved significantly.
Eastern European countries that became Russian puppets didn't.
Explain that.
imagine ignoring the absolutely ruthless, western led cannibalization of the former soviet union and pretending history's baseline started AFTER the largest decline of living standards in global history.
human trafficking, prostitution, alcoholism, food/energy insecurity, diseases of despair all exploded when the west forced capitalism and privatization onto the former soviet union in the immediate aftermath. Gorbachev thought he was going to get some easy-going nordic social democracy, but instead the west carved up their public sector like a christmas ham. maybe you were too young, but in the 1980s the propaganda portrait the west had of russian women were all heavy-set, ugly babushkas. suddenly, after 1989, the mail order beautiful russian bride phenomenon exploded. they were fleeing the gutting of the public sector and the shattering of the social safety net, which made it near impossible to raise a family in the eastern bloc without becoming a sex worker.
the west sponsored every retrograde nationalist reactionary psycho to undermine any hint of democratic resistance to economic liberalization schemes and bombed the shit out of infrastructure (Yugoslavia) whenever they could get away with it. the west has the most blood on its hands for the aftermath of the USSR, but people like you want to ignore those early days and then claim credit for the "winners" the west propped up in the aftermath of all that chaos. like a killer who torched a town but kidnapped a few kids and now touts his heroic rescue of them. the most ignorant and disgusting take.
You seem to be ignoring the fact that after the fall of the USSR, Russia didn't want their assets to be sold or leased to western companies (understandably), so they let corrupt officials take them for pennies of what they were actually worth. Those officials became the oligarchs.
Russians cannibalised Russia.
the word you are striving not to say is capitalism. capitalists did this to russians, using the playbook developed and advocated for by western institutions.
God you're just... so fucking close to getting it.
What would have happened if instead of the Russian capitalists privatizing all the people's assets the western capitalists did?
Do you think it wouldn't just be western oligarchs cannibalizing Russia?
And yet, tankies still defend this corrupt capitalist state just because it's not the US.
Nevermind political persecution, assassinations, repression of LGBT people, invasion of neighbouring countries, etc. As long as it's not the US, it's all good.
No, it isnt. We at hexbear say "the illegal and undemocratic dissolution of the Soviet Union was the largest humanitarian disaster of the latter half of the twentieth century" and bemoan the loss for human rights(more notably for women, lgbt people, and ethnic minorities) caused by the destruction of the Eastern block.
What we say is that you have to look at the outcomes of weapon distribution by NATO to Ukraine.
Ukraine just wasted a lot of material on one last big push and they didn't do squat. The Ukrainian state has exhausted its ability to conduct offensive operations, and attrition in both absolute quantity and in percentage has been on the Russian's side since the second stage of the war, so what's going to happen now is that Russia will slowly encroach on the rest of Ukraine until they meet their military and political objectives.
So, do we give them more weapons, make their losing war even bloodier for them and the Russians, or do we accept that they've lost, and stop giving the government more time to keep killing conscripts?
yes, capitalism is marked by class war, between the class who own things, and the class who labor. liberalizing the Soviet bloc destroyed the prospects of the working class.
Babybrain