He thinks we have all seen reports of a type.
Maybe you haven’t seen them? No? Doesn’t unmake the reports.
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Which system and which people? I ask because just last week there was an election with surprising results.
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Don’t be silly, Lily
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Historically? Very, very, very bad.
The nature of authoritarian regimes is that they chip away at freedom gradually, and today is always just a little bit worse than yesterday. You adapt to the new normal, and then you do it again.
Worth a listen:
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What has happened in the US has uncomfortable parallels to the rise of Yeltsin in Russia. Yeltsin promised a break with the old politics, and promptly set up a government which just included a different subset of nomenklatura who were completely rapacious. As Russians lost their jobs and became ever poorer while the rich got richer, the backlash set in and they ended up with Putin.
The difference is that Yeltsin basically gave Russia away to the West, whereas Trump doesn’t have anywhere to give the US to other than China - which holds lots of US bonds and debt. How is Trump going to make protectionism work?
And, if the parallel continues, what rough beast is going to slouch towards Washington to be born? The forces that elected Trump could easily be turned against him if he doesn’t deliver, and next time it might be someone with a clear strategy who will speak out against the CEOs and credibly propose to repatriate their wealth, coming from within the Federal government without ties to Wall Street. Like Putin…
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the White House was already shelled in an attempted (and finally failed) coup d’etat in 1993. how strict are the parallels?
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I don’t know. Also, to clarify my earlier post (I hope), I’m not suggesting the rise of Putin was a good thing, just that, given Yeltsin, it was the lesser of two evils.
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I’m putting my money on Andropov!
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[quote=“Enkita, post:109, topic:89674, full:true”]I don’t know. Also, to clarify my earlier post (I hope), I’m not suggesting the rise of Putin was a good thing, just that, given Yeltsin, it was the lesser of two evils.
[/quote]
Extremely debatable.
Yeltsin was an incompetent fool who handed the Russian economy to his gangster drinking buddies.
Putin is a mass-murdering authoritarian dictator.
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Okie dokie, artichokie.
In 1994, Russian male life expectancy reached Third World levels - 58. After levelling off till around 2005, Russian life expectancy has been rising steadily, 4 years for women and 6 for men.
I don’t agree that Putin is a dictator, because he governs with the consent of, inter alia, the Russian Orthodox Church - which is quite a power again. If he is a dictator, he’s a deposable one like Mussolini. Authoritarian I give you, but that applies to the entire senior level of the US Republicans and the British UKIP and Conservatives. Mass-murdering; we need to be very careful here. I will give you that if you agree that GWBIII, Nixon and Johnson were mass murderers. This isn’t whataboutery so much as seeking equivalence.
From a Russian point of view Putin is a success. The Chinese Politburo are a success from the Chinese POV. If I had been a Russian choosing between Yeltsin and Putin, and I voted Putin, I would by now think I had done the right thing, and that’s what I meant. I can see a disastrous Trump/Republican period ending in the election of a Putin figure; that could be good for the majority in the US and bad for the rest of the world.
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How? Is Putin even great for the majority? The majority has little voice now, so a minority of hatemongers and top class sees the “social” and economic benefits.
Really? How so?
Sorry!
As I noted above, under Yeltsin life expectancy was falling to Third World levels as the economy was looted. Russia has really failed to develop as a modern country; it’s still an extraction economy (like Australia but, having a large population, the GDP/head is much lower.) The extraction products were looted, thus ensuring that ordinary Russians would get poorer. (Currently in both the US and the UK ordinary people are also getting poorer.)
By repatriating part of the income from the looting and ensuring that more of the extraction income came into the Russian economy, Putin has at least reversed the trend on life expectancy. He and his cronies continue to loot but it’s a bit, I imagine, like the reason that the Crusader State lasted as long as it did in the Middle East; the Europeans actually taxed the locals less heavily than their Muslim overlords had done. The increase in life expectancy is well documented and very significant.
We talk about first world problems, but when you are malnourished, infant mortality and the mortality of the elderly is at record highs and drug addiction is spreading, democracy and the rule of law are secondary to a reliable food supply.
I’m currently reading Ostrovsky’s The Invention of Russia, in which he remarks that under the failure of State Socialism to deliver, the Russians abandoned ideology but failed to fix the economy while the Chinese kept the ideology but fixed the economy. Under Yeltsin, far from helping Russia to transition to market economics, the West simply treated it as the British had treated North America, Southern Africa or India. If the intention was to destroy Russia economically so that it could never rise again, or if (as I suspect) it was simply the effect of rapacious individuals, makes little difference for the fate of the people concerned. That’s why I say that from the point of view of the average Russian, Putin is better than Yeltsin. Russia simply doesn’t have a mechanism to produce a democratic, progressive government; nor does Iraq, nor does Syria or Afghanistan. The idea of US foreign policy that the world’s problems can be solved by crowning some “democratic” politicians and introducing bicameral parliaments has repeatedly been shown not to work.
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And what about the LBGQT community, Jewish community, and other political minorities? How do you think they feel about Putin vs. Yeltsin?
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I suspect that we are in complete agreement that a major test of any politician or administration is their treatment of minorities. The question was solely one of what was the best overall option for Russia as the Yeltsin era descended completely into chaos and anarchy. There wasn’t a third, progressive candidate available. The Russians as a whole got something closer to what they wanted. It’s a bit like Syria; Assad is not someone you’d want in charge of your own country, or even your own village, but the US keeps coming up with alternative proposals that are even worse. (How about Al-Queda? No? What about Al-Nusra? Perhaps we can find some moderate Taliban?)
Although this isn’t proof of anything, it may be a pointer: Most Russian Jews emigrated during the 1990s, to the extent that since 2000 emigration has fallen to very low levels because there are so few Jews left. That is hardly a ringing endorsement of Boris.
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