@molotovinpeikko I think I did. I gotta be honest, I don't care for the way comments on this website work...
But yeah, I think we let the Russians, and much of Eastern Europe too, by not offering to them what we did to Western Europe in 1945. Communism was such a disaster that y'all absolutely needed a Marshall plan of sorts -- not just to help transition (SLOWLY! "shock therapy" was a bad idea) out of a failed economic system, but to teach the Russian middle class how to do business. One could claim that's wasteful spending, but imagine a Russia that went the way of Finland or Estonia after 1990... one that would have helped against the fight on radical Islamic terrorism... one that would have perhaps exported more of its nuclear technology to help decarbonize the world... I think Gorbachev perhaps would have had a better shot at such a future than that lowlife Yeltsin. It's a pity.
27
@molotovinpeikko I think I did. I gotta be honest, I don't care for the way comments on this website work...
But yeah, I think we let the Russians, and much of Eastern Europe too, by not offering to them what we did to Western Europe in 1945. Communism was such a disaster that y'all absolutely needed a Marshall plan of sorts -- not just to help transition (SLOWLY! "shock therapy" was a bad idea) out of a failed economic system, but to teach the Russian middle class how to do business. One could claim that's wasteful spending, but imagine a Russia that went the way of Finland or Estonia after 1990... one that would have helped against the fight on radical Islamic terrorism... one that would have perhaps exported more of its nuclear technology to help decarbonize the world... I think Gorbachev perhaps would have had a better shot at such a future than that lowlife Yeltsin. It's a pity.
A missed opportunity to be sure.