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| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia | ||
| Gorbachev Urges Chechnyan Special Status | ||
| 2004-10-12 | ||
Looking at Russia's most immediate crisis, Gorbachev said the solution in separatist Chechnya must be political. Russia has twice invaded largely Muslim Chechnya on Russia's southern rim, fighting a 1994-96 war to end a self-declared independence and a second war starting in 1999 after apartment bombings that Russia blamed on Chechen terrorists. The second war is still raging, and Putin classifies it as part of the global war on terror. But at the same time, Putin is trying to make Chechnya self-governing with a native leadership. | ||
| Posted by:Fred |
| #12 Valentine and trailing wife, rephrase "who decisively won the Cold War on the side of freedom" to "who decisively caused the Cold War to be won on the side of freedom", if that's better for you. And Valentine, please reread my point about Gorbachev wanting to preserve the Soviet Union (in a more free form however). Ofcourse it had been bound together by brutality for so long that any substitute-glue would have been insufficient. I'm too young to remember on my own clearly the sequence of events in an age where playing with a Spectrum and then an Amstrad interested me more than politics, but from what I've been reading now, from his first year at the head of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev introduced freedoms of speech and press with "glasnost". And the collapse of communism in the whole of eastern Europe was the result of the "Sinatra doctrine" in which Gorbachev said that the Soviet Union was abandoning the Brezhnev doctrine and would let each nation decide its own affairs. That for me speaks of a WILLING ABANDONMENT OF EMPIRE on Gorbachev's part and therefore something praiseworthy. He wasn't destroying the Soviet Union but he was demolishing the Eastern bloc. Now, was this willing abandonment of empire the result of *necessity*, perhaps because Reagan put him in a position where he could do nothing else? Would Gorbachev have done it were it not for Reagan's pressure on the Soviet Union? Would he have been *able* to do it? I don't know. I'm no economist and don't know how dire the Soviet Union's economic situation was. And frankly since I wasn't discussing Reagan that's mostly irrelevant. You seem to think, Valentine, that praising Gorbachev means dissing Reagan. It isn't. The Soviet Union still had troops and Gorbachev said they wouldn't use them. What does that make him to you, Valentine? |
| Posted by: Aris Katsaris 2004-10-12 10:46:13 PM |
| #11 Wow Aris. Right out of the left's own talking points about who won the Cold War. I remember reading about how several historians were changing how the Cold War really ended by saying it was Gorbachev's plan all along to end the Soviet Union and Reagan had nothing to do with it, he was just a bully by starting up SDI, massively building up our own armed forces and forcing Russia into an economic competition. Yep righto Aris try another trick this talking point is so lame it doesn't even pass the BS meter. |
| Posted by: Valentine 2004-10-12 9:36:40 PM |
| #10 Aris, perhaps I'm wrong, but I always thought Gorbachev was trying to loosen the economic straightjacket of socialism, without letting go of the reins of power. However, unlike Red China, he chose to relax politically first, and lost control of the situation. I don't remember freeing the people being one of his objectives at the time. However, I do respect the fact that when the satellite countries insisted on going their own way, G. did not send in the troops. I remember being in Wenceslaus Square in Prague one cold evening. It was very crowded, and then suddenly everyone started singing. It was lovely. Only later did I learn that the Czechs expected the tanks to come through that night (my husband often enough doesn't tell me things he thinks might upset me -- like the time he didn't quite die in India. But that's another story). I would not describe Gorbachev as having won the Cold War, snce he did not achieve his objective of an economically vibrant, Communist Party ruled Soviet Union. But absolutely he did concede the loss gracefully, thus allowing the whole world to win. At the time we were concerned that the Soviet generals would choose to stage a Pyrrhic defeat. Then all would have indeed lost. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2004-10-12 9:36:34 PM |
| #9 I'd like to know how e.g. Polish and other Eastern Europeans feel about Gorbachev -- namely the captive nations freed by Gorbachev. Rather than people who blame him for the dissolution of the Soviet Union, something which Yeltsin imposed, and Gorbachev strove against. Gorbachev (whether competently or incompetently) was simply trying to let freedom through the window, for the Soviet Union and the countries of Eastern Europe both. Which makes him a person who decisively won the Cold War on the side of freedom -- freeing half the European continent from the stranglehold that his predecessors in his own nation had imposed. Perhaps the "Western Left" has a more unbiased view of Gorbachev than the Russian people themselves, Westerners being after all people who *didn't* lose a big chunk of their empire. |
| Posted by: Aris Katsaris 2004-10-12 7:12:54 PM |
| #8 Lived in Russia, have Russian family there, and can report that Gorbachev is universally despised in Russia as a moronic hick politico whose incompetence brought down the roof on the SU. Part of the reason I have such (perhaps unrealistic) hope for Russians is their complete contempt for this icon of the western Left. |
| Posted by: lex 2004-10-12 5:37:32 PM |
| #7 never thought of it that way mojo man! Yes! |
| Posted by: Shipman 2004-10-12 5:31:57 PM |
| #6 Sounds like Vlad's got his own Jimmuh, don't it? |
| Posted by: mojo 2004-10-12 4:57:38 PM |
| #5 LOL, Frank G - my thought exactly. |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2004-10-12 10:43:06 AM |
| #4 Hey Pukin - when Iran points it's nukes in your atheist direction, don't come wanking to us. |
| Posted by: 2b 2004-10-12 10:00:23 AM |
| #3 Special Status? Like "targets"? |
| Posted by: Frank G 2004-10-12 9:57:52 AM |
| #2 It is not also the Russians who are moonbats, Memesis. They are springing up everywhere, like daisies! |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2004-10-12 9:31:18 AM |
| #1 У Русскых также moonbats. |
| Posted by: Memesis 2004-10-12 1:09:06 AM |