The Memory Trap

?"""""""""""""Yet in the two decades that have followed, Russia has been largely aloof from the liberalizing tide of history. The reason is that Russians have never accepted the narrative of being an empire diminished."""""""

Really ? I thought because they saw their own lives being diminished due to the misguided reforms & broken promises of the 90s ??? Maybe its this insensitivity that has turned the RUssians away from the west in general ?

Perhaps the fact that capitalism has been materially worse for Russians than Communism too? The problems that made communism fail in Russia have only been exacerbated, it seems, by the fall of the USSR, not improved; specifically, national chauvinism instead of a genuine concern for the poor/weak, corruption and nepotism at the party/state level, oligarchy, politically motivated courts, and a lack of visible economic or political freedom.

Perhaps we should be more focused with educating and improving the lives of everyday Russians, the only people who have been left behind since the fall of Communism (and arguably, the people who the system was built to keep happy in the first place; it was for Russian, not Ukranian or Polish security, or even socialist ideology, that compelled the USSR and Stalin to occupy Eastern Europe)? Russians seem to have poor access to serious health care and education, and as Biden so eloquently put it, they run the serious risk of becoming a dying society if they continue on their current path.

The tragedy, I think, is that the Russian people failed to buy into Gorbachov's democratic socialism. Too little too late? Instead, they got robbed by a new Oligarchy ex-"communists" during the 90s when half the bureaucrats left their jobs for the new private sector.

People may vote for the government they want, but that doesn't make it right for that government to abuse their privileges.

Russian Mindset has put the nation into disgrace. USSR would collapse somehow even if Gorbachev didn't do so since its economy has already collapsed by the defense budgets and protection of eastern bloc from capitalism. Putin is the real villain. He's been wasting the profits from natural resources and is an asshole who doesn't know what is human rights and democracy since being an Ex-KGB. I'm sure he's dragging Russia into further disintegration. People from former USSR hate Russia whilst EU member's peoples are enjoying the prosperity so no more USSR like Super Power and no more Great Power Russia. Shang Hai Cooperation Council is just a rhetoric like Chavez's rhetoric. You are alone buddy.. Obviously no one is sorry about that..but seems delightful..

I wish for the West of such president as Mikhail Gorbachev. The West it for a long time has deserved.

Use google translator for reading comments to this note in runet
The reference to clause with comments of Russian
http: // inosmi.ru/social //20091109/156503043.html

I re-read the article several times, then the comments that followed and I realized something. This wasn't a critique of the Russian government policy or illiberalism in general. No, this was a slam against the Russian people, with a sort of a passive-agressive hostility that is almost laughable. It's like the author was trying to (im)politley say, "your country is messed up and its all your peoples' faults, I hope you rot in you little corner of hell you created!" I could imagine the smug look on the author's face, its almost schaudenfreude.

Here's a Russian perspective. The Soviet Union collapsed overnight when most empires historically decline over a long period of time. The standard of living and life expectancy went nose-down right after. The rest of the world watching in smug satisfaction while Russia when through the hell that was the 90s. Then someone comes along, someone who looks like extremely competent and confident, and tells you that he'll give you back a bit of what you lost, starting with your dignity. And you say yes.

Dignity.

Like it or not, people need it, especially people who've been knocked down. It's psychological crack. A defense mechanism. It lets people keep their sense of self-worth when everything else is taken from them. People have died for the sake of dignity, traded in their self-survival for self-respect. Yes, it can be irrational sometimes, sometimes destructive, but that's human nature. God forbid the Russians for showing their human side once in a while.

After 20 years it has become obvious that while the states of Eastern Europe have, mostly, become relatively prosperous and democratic, the former Russian empire is slowily slinking back into its typical bearish dictatorial rule and relative poverty. I can't say for sure why Russia has always been such a basket case, but Nina Khrusheva, as the granddaughter of one of the Soviet Union's least odious Premier's, has as much insight as anyone into this puzzle.

It is fair to say that the Russian people have never had anything resembling a good government, except perhaps during the Yetsin years, which were economically terrible for many Russians (due of course to the dislocations caused by the collapse of communism itself). Still, it is the Russian people who routinely support the likes of Putin and, apparently, aren't particularly bothered when he kills or imprisons anyone who opposes him. It is too easy to just blame the Russian people for their predicament; but, like the the Germans during the Nazi era, they are certainly complicit in it.

You should live in Russia not less than year, to do a bit of travelling across the East Europe. Or it is a lot of to read different sources, and not just paid Jewish marginal (Hruscheva, Lipman, Kasparov, Filkengauer, etc.).
Then probably once you become are adequate and write something clever