BIG CRYBABY

[RuMR]

[foraker]

I love guys like this. Pretty much everything I've read and in my interactions with Russians point out that the Soviet Union was pretty much on it's way to collapse before Ronnie. It just happened to occur on his watch. Having lived through the Reagan era, I can say that people in general, and not just the false hobgoblin known as the "liberal press" were rightly concerned about his inflammatory rhetoric. Just because we happened to come out of it unscathed does not mean people's fears were unjustified, especially when you have a sitting president saying things like 'We begin bombing in 5 minutes".....

[Camilo]

While liberal newspapers and talking heads continued their sky-is-falling-routine when debating Iraq . . .

 

From the liberal media (CNN):

Fifteen Iraqi political parties, backed by former Iraqi Governing Council President Adnan Pachachi, called Friday for delaying the elections to pick a 275-seat transitional national assembly.

Wow. There are pessimistic liberals in Iraq too?

[KaskadskyjKozak]

Pretty much everything I've read and in my interactions with Russians point out that the Soviet Union was pretty much on it's way to collapse before Ronnie. It just happened to occur on his watch.

 

What a crock. I just love this type of revisionism: you disagreed with Reagan's policies - which history has proven to have been correct. So, you must attempt to show that he had nothing to do with his successes (or deny they were successes to begin with), rather than admit you were mistaken - all in order to maintain your world view.

 

BTW, you must be talking to a whole different set of "Russians" than I do. Or perhaps something is "lost in translation"...

[lummox]

i dont believe any story coming out of iraq. all that shit has to be deciphered. what the msnbc report means i dont know.

[scott_harpell]

Pretty much everything I've read and in my interactions with Russians point out that the Soviet Union was pretty much on it's way to collapse before Ronnie.

 

No kidding. Why do you think they were scrambling to create glasnost and perestroika?

[scott_harpell]

Pretty much everything I've read and in my interactions with Russians point out that the Soviet Union was pretty much on it's way to collapse before Ronnie. It just happened to occur on his watch.

 

What a crock. I just love this type of revisionism: you disagreed with Reagan's policies - which history has proven to have been correct. So, you must attempt to show that he had nothing to do with his successes (or deny they were successes to begin with), rather than admit you were mistaken - all in order to maintain your world view.

 

BTW, you must be talking to a whole different set of "Russians" than I do. Or perhaps something is "lost in translation"...

 

It is foolish to say taht ronnie did nothing, but also that the fall was not inevitable. there is a reason why a few million people holding hands ended occupation in the baltic.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

It is foolish to say taht ronnie did nothing, but also that the fall was not inevitable. there is a reason why a few million people holding hands ended occupation in the baltic.

 

The policies of the Reagan administration forced the Soviet Union into a political and economic collapse. Had his predecessors' policy of detante continued, there is no guarantee that the collapse would have occurred on the same time frame - if ever. The Soviet Union had weaknesses which were exploited to our advantage at the right time.

 

Gorbachev wanted to fine-tune the communist economy and hold the Soviet Union together (including the Baltics). He is to be credited for trying to reform his country on the one hand and for not taking a hard line when his empire began to crumble.

[scott_harpell]

Gorbachev wanted to fine-tune the communist economy and hold the Soviet Union together

 

I think that major overhaul would be a more accurate term. When you seek so much change is such a short amount of time, it suggests something. After the previous 3-4 forms failed, they tried one last effort with Gorbechev.

 

Ronnie did expedite the situation but it was in the cards.

[foraker]

While it might be 'foolish' to say that Ronnie did nothing, it is also 'foolish', to pump up his image so much that it makes it seem that somehow Reagan had some great plan that was solely responsible for the fall of the SU. As for which Russians I talk to, it would be Russians both here in the US, and there in the Soviet Union, covering a period from the mid-80's onward. I may have disagreed with a lot of his policies about certain things but I still voted for him. Does that muddy your little black and white impression of someone who disagrees with one of your small minded apologists? Best you brush up on some of those critical thinking skills. I might disagree with scott_harpell or old Gotterdamerung on certain issues, just as I would disagree with certain tree hugging liberals on certain issues, but I respect those willing to call bullshit when they see it. You don't seem capable of this. Well, you do but it tends to be the kind where bullshit is everything that doesn't agree with your worldview.

[scott_harpell]

are you talking about me? because I think we agree more than we disagree in this issue.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

Ronnie did expedite the situation but it was in the cards.

 

Nothing was in the cards. You can not possibly know how things would have turned out with a continuation of detante. Slashing of the military budget (say, under a 2nd Carter administration), and retreating from confrontation with Soviet-led international communism would have significantly reduced internal political and economic pressures within the Soviet Union to an extent that could have made their system sustainable. And the cost would have been how many more years of slavery for the peoples of Eastern Europe, the Baltics, Ukraine, and the Central Asian countries?

[scott_harpell]

You can not possibly know how things would have turned out with a continuation of detante.

 

Slashing of the military budget (say, under a 2nd Carter administration), and retreating from confrontation with Soviet-led international communism would have significantly reduced internal political and economic pressures within the Soviet Union to an extent that could have made their system sustainable.

 

Likewise...

 

I just see so many overhauls of the Soviet regime in half a century especially telling. If it were sustainable, then why did it need such dramatic "fine tuning?"

 

It seems rather odd that you can say that you think this system could have sustained itself having seen it. The desperate scrambling by officials to maintain dignity.

 

I saw it happen and my g/f's father, a general was one of those men. Explaining away every crack in the facade of the soviet regime.

 

These are not the signs of a healthy system, but rather one on the verge of collapse reminiscent of the fall of every large political system in the past.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

Likewise...

 

I just see so many overhauls of the Soviet regime in half a century especially telling. If it were sustainable, then why did it need such dramatic "fine tuning?"

 

It was sustainable at the expense of its people. The return of a hard-liner, who clamped down on them could have kept things going.

 

I saw it happen and my g/f's father, a general was one of those men. Explaining away every crack in the facade of the soviet regime.

 

And you are how old? What did you SEE? Give me a break. If you "saw" things going down in 1989-1991 that does not cut it. We are talking about the world as it WOULD have been if Reagan had NOT been president. You need to go back to 1980 for that.

 

It is intellectually dishonest to look at the Soviet Economy in the late 80's and state that Reagan did not have a significant impact on said economy and that it would have collapsed on its own. Reagan's policies were in play for years affecting the economy by this time and the two can not be separated. You need to go back to the state of the Soviet Economy under the Carter administration.

 

These are not the signs of a healthy system, but rather one on the verge of collapse reminiscent of the fall of every large political system in the past.

 

Russia has never had a "healthy" system. Ever. What I expected for the Soviets, given free reign to do as they pleased under a non-confrontation Chamberlain-esque diplomacy, was more misery and suffering for Eastern Europe and the Soviet peoples at any cost necessary to keep the sovyetskaya nomenklatura fat and rich.

[scott_harpell]

It was sustainable at the expense of its people. The return of a hard-liner, who clamped down on them could have kept things going.

 

That is a great little qualifyer.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

It was sustainable at the expense of its people. The return of a hard-liner, who clamped down on them could have kept things going.

 

That is a great little qualifyer.

 

A chto novoye? Vot i istoriya Rosii i russkikh lyudej (da sosyedov yikh tozhe), nesmotrya na politicheskuyu sistemu, chas.

[scott_harpell]

what's new? history of russia and russian people (as well as their neighbours), without paying attention to political system

 

Yeah it is true, but the system was flawed and was doomed. You can only kill/enslave so many people before it is doomed. I would say that this implies that the end was near or at the very least that its demise was certain.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

Yeah it is true, but the system was flawed and was doomed. You can only kill/enslave so many people before it is doomed. I would say that this implies that the end was near or at the very least that its demise was certain.

 

Esli tak, togda podskazhi mne pozhalujste: pochemu komunisty eshche v sili v Kitayu? I kogda ikh sistema raspadetsya? Mne kazhetsya, chto svitlo na konce togo zhe tunnelya eshche ne vidno...

[cj001f]

You need to go back to the state of the Soviet Economy under the Carter administration.

When it was collapsing? If anything I give more credit to Reagan's domestic policy's which magnified the already growing gulf between the Soviet states and the rest of the world.

[scott_harpell]

if so, tell me please:why communists still have power in china and when their system gonna fall i think there is no light in the end of this tunnel

 

I find it rather funny that the only way this system can continue is with the subjugation of others. This is a contradiction of the purpose of the manifesto.

 

Such a stark contradiction will lead to the failure of the system in much the same way that Marx predicted for our system.

[scott_harpell]

we need to get this board cyrillic enabled.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

we need to get this board cyrillic enabled.

 

Yeah, look what happens when you try and post in cyrillic:

 

Вот и что-то написано по-русски

 

I used the Windows 1251 encoding...

[scott_harpell]

I tried before and got the same results.

[cj001f]

if so, tell me please:why communists still have power in china and when their system gonna fall i think there is no light in the end of this tunnel

 

I find it rather funny that the only way this system can continue is with the subjugation of others. This is a contradiction of the purpose of the manifesto.

China's more a state controlled market economy than a "communist" economy now.

[DPS]

Norman Mailer predicted the fall of the Soviet Union due to economic pressure 25 years before it happened.