The Soviet Union Is Gone, But It’s Still Collapsing

[JayH]

More interesting reading !
 5 other unlearned lessons from leading experts about modern Russia and the death of an empire.

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the creation of 15 new countries in December 1991 remade the world overnight. The Cold War and the threat of nuclear annihilation disappeared, and democracy and free-markets spread across the now defeated Soviet empire. Of course, 25 years later, events didn’t exactly unfold as initially predicted.
 The forces of globalization have mutated former Soviet countries in unseen ways, emboldening autocrats and entrenching corruption across the region. Meanwhile, the geopolitical animosities of the Cold War are resurgent, with relations between Moscow and Washington at their lowest point since the Soviet-era arms race.
 The creation of new countries, meanwhile, has given rise to nationalism and autocracies that are shaping foreign-policy decisions and altering societies in unforeseen ways.

The Soviet Union Is Gone, But It’s Still Collapsing


Yet, the significance of this quarter-century of change is still not fully understood. Why did the Soviet Union really collapse and what lessons have policymakers missed? How is history repeating itself across the lands of the former superpower? In search of answers, Foreign Policy asked six experts with intimate knowledge of the region from their time in finance, academia, journalism, and policymaking. Here are the unlearned lessons from the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The Soviet Union is still collapsing. – Serhii Plokhy
http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/12/22/the-unlearned-lessons-from-the-collapse-of-the-soviet-union/#plokhy

Abandonment has consequences. – Bill Browder
http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/12/22/the-unlearned-lessons-from-the-collapse-of-the-soviet-union/#browder

Ideology should not guide foreign policy. – Dmitri Trenin
http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/12/22/the-unlearned-lessons-from-the-collapse-of-the-soviet-union/#trenin

Russia can’t lead through imperialism. – Nargis Kassenova
http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/12/22/the-unlearned-lessons-from-the-collapse-of-the-soviet-union/#kassenova

Globalization only enriched and empowered autocrats. – Alexander Cooley
http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/12/22/the-unlearned-lessons-from-the-collapse-of-the-soviet-union/#cooley

Moscow is still sacrificing innovation for state security. – Andrei Soldatov
http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/12/22/the-unlearned-lessons-from-the-collapse-of-the-soviet-union/#soldatov



http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/12/22/the-unlearned-lessons-from-the-collapse-of-the-soviet-union/

[JayH]

Once again a  pretty fair summary. Is Trump listening?

"For years, we have seen Russia take one aggressive and destabilizing action after another"

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power gave her final major speech of her tenure on Tuesday, addressing the Atlantic Council in remarks that eschewed softball subjects in favor of what she described as “a major threat facing our great nation: Russia.”

Samantha Power’s Scathing Speech on Russia

Today, I will set out how the Russian Government under President Putin is taking steps that are weakening the rules-based order that we have benefitted from for seven decades. Our values, our security, our prosperity, and our very way of life are tied to this order. And we – and by we, I mean the United States and our closest partners – must come together to prevent Russia from succeeding.

In this same period, we also saw Russia’s systematic efforts to sow doubt and division in democracies, and drive a wedge between the United States and our closest allies. Russia has done this by supporting illiberal parties like France’s National Front, which has a xenophobic, anti-Muslim platform.


http://time.com/4637117/samantha-power-united-nations-russia-speech-transcript/

[JayH]

To be noted --it is simply sad.


Five more disturbing revenants from Soviet past in Putin’s Russia
Even as Vladimir Putin claims that Russia is fated to have a great future, the Kremlin leader is doing little to end the impoverishment and repressions of Russians today and ever more to restore many of the worst features of the dark Soviet past. This week has brought five more examples of that retrograde trend.


http://euromaidanpress.com/2017/02/10/five-more-disturbing-revenants-from-soviet-past-in-putins-russia/

[JayH]

History can seem a splendid weapon—until it bites back, as the Kremlin is now experiencing in the centenary year of Russia’s 1917 revolutions.


Russia's propaganda machine and the ghosts of revolutions past

 If you rejoice over the downfall of the Romanovs, you are also implicitly acknowledging that their recipe of autocracy, nationalism and orthodoxy was a dead-end. It hampered Russia from becoming a modern, industrialized country with a strong middle class and independent institutions. That would sound all too familiar to many latter-day Russians chafing under the stagnant and heavy-handed Putin regime.

http://cepa.org/EuropesEdge/Russias-propaganda-machine-ghosts

[JayH]

By standard scholarly definition, Russia today is not an illiberal democracy: It is an early-stage fascist state


Putin’s Russia: A Moderate Fascist State
Given the absence of effective rule of law in Russia, and the continuing usurpation of authority backed by coercive apparatus, it is no wonder that other concentrations of wealth and power in society are responding in kind. There is now a proliferation of “private armies” of state corporations as well as “ethnic guards” like those in Kadyrov’s Chechnya, estimated to number about 30,000 armed professionals.7 Such groups are reportedly responsible for assaults on and even killings of dissidents and opposition-minded politicians.


http://www.the-american-interest.com/2017/01/23/putins-russia-a-moderate-fascist-state/