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Posted
34 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

Anastasis got very angry that anyone on this board noticed what happened in Bucha and got drunk last night and revealed he supported gas attacks on civilians in Syria.

Fantasy land stuff. What I pointed out was that American foreign policy incoherence makes for the worst bedfellows, eg “AQ is on our side in Syria.” Courtesy Mr. Sullivan. And of course under his watch Julani with a 10mm terrorist bounty from the US on his head took over the presidency. For wildcats rhetorical purposes this translates to “supporting gas attacks on civilians.”  

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Posted
1 hour ago, hobbes2702 said:

It’s pretty amazing you haven’t just said “Russia could fuck off”.

You and I can tell Russia whatever we want. They view military build up by the west and Ukraine admittance into NATO as an existential threat. They will continue to throw meat into the grinder as long as it takes or until shit gets wild and they roll out tactical nukes. Some of you guys are very happy to see that handle keep spending. Some of you are very comfortable with nuclear brinkmanship. I’d prefer to find a pathway to deescalating this shit and learn from our mistakes. Not sure that I would hold my breath on that last part. 

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Posted
2 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

No, they don't. You can tell they don't because they have been removing assets from the border with NATO in order to attack Ukraine. You can tell they don't because their invasion of Ukraine has only prompted increases build up by (non us) NATO. But again, you're not serious. You're just repeating Russian propaganda because you want Ukrainians to die to punish liberals and neocons. You are a deeply shitty person. 

Yeah, and about NATO on their border. Poland? The Baltic States? Now Scandanavia.

Add to that Georgia begging. Lets not pretend Turkey is not on their border. I mean, a few mountain republics. How about Japan? Not NATO, but 1 or 2 US assets there.

It is just a tired assed argument.

Ana is a pendejo. Mods like him. He keeps things "edgy" and smokes cigarettes. Probably wishes he had the balls to wear a beret. Like Ned Flanders' dad 

image.jpeg.620aeaac583af9ffcf3c94ff293122a8.jpeg

 

But who is really is.

image.jpeg.282d7961ec88e7b6bc08f8e3354adfee.jpeg

 

 

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Posted
12 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

No, they don't....You're just repeating Russian propaganda because you want Ukrainians to die to punish liberals and neocons.

Y'all telling me that this is all Russian propaganda right off Lavrov's desk, but the talking points related to the inevitable outcome of NATO expansion and straight from the mouths of George Kennan, Stephen Cohen, Bill Burns, Bob Gates, and numerous other US Ambassadors and diplomats. Not everything that is opposed to our dysfunctional foreign policy strategy is a Putin talking point your clowns.  

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Posted
7 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

Y'all telling me that this is all Russian propaganda right off Lavrov's desk, but the talking points related to the inevitable outcome of NATO expansion and straight from the mouths of George Kennan, Stephen Cohen, Bill Burns, Bob Gates, and numerous other US Ambassadors and diplomats. Not everything that is opposed to our dysfunctional foreign policy strategy is a Putin talking point your clowns.  

Explain why Russia is removing air defense and other military assets from the border of NATO. Explain how giving Europe a reason to rearm supports your position that Russia viewed NATO as an extensial threat. It is a non sense position contradicted by all evidence. 

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Posted
45 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

You and I can tell Russia whatever we want. They view military build up by the west and Ukraine admittance into NATO as an existential threat. They will continue to throw meat into the grinder as long as it takes or until shit gets wild and they roll out tactical nukes. Some of you guys are very happy to see that handle keep spending. Some of you are very comfortable with nuclear brinkmanship. I’d prefer to find a pathway to deescalating this shit and learn from our mistakes. Not sure that I would hold my breath on that last part. 

IMG_1616.gif.ad68b8ea4a2a17134165e53ed943ece6.gif

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Posted
20 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

Y'all telling me that this is all Russian propaganda right off Lavrov's desk, but the talking points related to the inevitable outcome of NATO expansion and straight from the mouths of George Kennan, Stephen Cohen, Bill Burns, Bob Gates, and numerous other US Ambassadors and diplomats. Not everything that is opposed to our dysfunctional foreign policy strategy is a Putin talking point your clowns.  

Not everything is a Putin talking point, but you’re sure playing the hits in this thread.

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Posted

Russia felt so threatened by NATO that in the half-century following World II it invaded two members of its own counter-NATO defense bloc and forced a third to implement martial law upon threat of invasion.  It’s just astoundingly stupid to make the argument that Russia needs a NATO threat to invade and subjugate its neighbors, they are more threatened by their own treaty allies than by NATO.  The common thread in all of them as well as Ukraine and Georgia is that Russia is threatened when its neighbors choose to liberalize internally. 

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Posted
3 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

Russia felt so threatened by NATO that in the half-century following World II it invaded two members of its own counter-NATO defense bloc and forced a third to implement martial law upon threat of invasion.  It’s just astoundingly stupid to make the argument that Russia needs a NATO threat to invade and subjugate its neighbors, they are more threatened by their own treaty allies than by NATO.  The common thread in all of them as well as Ukraine and Georgia is that Russia is threatened when its neighbors choose to liberalize internally. 

Yeah exactly how do you differentiate "an existential threat" from something more like "ignites a megalomaniac dictator's territorial ambitions."

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Posted
7 minutes ago, 956 Worldwide said:

Russia felt so threatened by NATO that in the half-century following World II it invaded two members of its own counter-NATO defense bloc and forced a third to implement martial law upon threat of invasion.  It’s just astoundingly stupid to make the argument that Russia needs a NATO threat to invade and subjugate its neighbors, they are more threatened by their own treaty allies than by NATO.  The common thread in all of them as well as Ukraine and Georgia is that Russia is threatened when its neighbors choose to liberalize internally. 

*Ana* see, liberals are the problem! *Ana*

Posted

Incidentally Russia’s hostility towards any successful small-l liberal neighbor closely tracks with MAGA’s anger at Canada.  It’s not about trade or defense spending or anything else.  The simple existence of a successful more liberal nation so close to MAGA is seen as a rebuke and potential threat to a paranoid and authoritarian regime. 

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Posted
8 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

Y’all all look like neocons to me. Sad!

IMG_4247.gif.2ee440d09f3be1fb76b003f869cecf38.gif

Talk points from Putin, condescending and awkward…

Stanning for Russia, wanting peace just like Doddard…

Labeling “clowns”, spewing Neo-con dings…

These are a few of my favorite things!

 

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Posted
1 hour ago, Anastasis said:

Y'all telling me that this is all Russian propaganda right off Lavrov's desk, but the talking points related to the inevitable outcome of NATO expansion and straight from the mouths of George Kennan, Stephen Cohen, Bill Burns, Bob Gates, and numerous other US Ambassadors and diplomats. Not everything that is opposed to our dysfunctional foreign policy strategy is a Putin talking point your clowns.  

There was 1 modern alliance created to punish. It was created by Stalin. Ask the Eastern Europeans if they wanted to be part of the W Pact. What Post WW2 nation has invaded neighbors? Lets see. Russia. And Serbia (backed by Russia.) Hmmm.. I wonder if there is a pattern.

Ana- Well see they are wrong. I took a class and read about Allende, so everything is like that. And Bernie went to moscow so they must be right.

Next will be the Gulag archipelago was a lie and CIA propaganda. The Russian courts and papers? Fake. Bucha? Crisis actors.

Poor little Anastasia.

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Posted
4 minutes ago, InkaUtexas said:

There was 1 modern alliance created to punish. It was created by Stalin. Ask the Eastern Europeans if they wanted to be part of the W Pact. What Post WW2 nation has invaded neighbors? Lets see. Russia. And Serbia (backed by Russia.) Hmmm.. I wonder if there is a pattern.

Ana- Well see they are wrong. I took a class and read about Allende, so everything is like that. And Bernie went to moscow so they must be right.

Next will be the Gulag archipelago was a lie and CIA propaganda. The Russian courts and papers? Fake. Bucha? Crisis actors.

Poor little Anastasia.

It is hilarious how the people that actually know about Russia or have experience with it know what is happening while Annie, with his bullshit, it is cool to hate everything about the US led global world order, chugs Russian propaganda in ignorance. 

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Posted
It is hilarious how the people that actually know about Russia or have experience with it know what is happening while Annie, with his bullshit, it is cool to hate everything about the US led global world order, chugs Russian propaganda in ignorance. 

Truly…that’s such a tell.
The people who have intimate experience with Russia and how Russia operates are almost entirely of one mind at present.
People who have mainlined Russian propaganda, like Ana, think they understand Russia, its motives, patterns, and likely next steps better than the people who have lived it. The hubris and arrogance is pretty spectacular.

Remember how the rest of the SEC really didn’t believe us back when aggy was joining them, when we told them what barshit weirdos aggy is? Then…they got to experience aggy firsthand, and have said in recent years “man, yall were right. Those folks are fucking weird.”
We know aggy. We have lived with aggy for over a century as neighbors. We have had to deal with their relentless idiocy. We known them better than anyone. The other SEC schools should have listened to us.
Ana is out there telling the world that Longhorns don’t understand aggy, they’re all wrong. Really, what the world needs to do is welcome aggy with open arms, embrace their traditions, and build a bonfire with them.
Fuck that. Pay attention to the people who know the adversary. Listen and learn.
Ana will do neither.
I’m a nobody. But I’ve been to several of the relevant places. And I was objectively surprised by the nature, degree, and depth of anti-Russian sentiment. It occurred to me “wow…these folks really hate Russia.” And I didn’t have to wonder why for long; they literally have museums and exhibits on the street explaining exactly why.
For example, Estonia has preserved the KGB’s prison used to hold and abuse Estonians who ran afoul of the Russian order.
a45179be1c9b9734b99bca83d7d49d55.jpg

But, you know…Estonia should probably just surrender to Russia, instead of provoking them by having a functioning democracy right next door.
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Posted
1 hour ago, Dahobbs said:

It is hilarious how the people that actually know about Russia or have experience with it know what is happening

Y'all are right, obviously. None of the people I noted know anything about the long-run history wrt Russia, the post-cold war landscape, nor predicting exactly how this would all play out. Certainly not the architect of Cold War strategy. Forget the fact that they have been largely proven correct and prescient. Old, out of touch, and washed up.

And y'all claim that I am the one consuming propaganda. Really choice shit y'all running out there.  

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Posted
5 hours ago, 956 Worldwide said:

I don’t know how to tell you this dawg but targeting the downtown of a city simply for its symbolic and personal value to a nation and its leader is kind of the definition of terror bombing. This is the same logic behind Al Qaeda’s constant targeting of WTC. 

Agree 100%.

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Posted (edited)
20 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

Y'all are right, obviously. None of the people I noted know anything about the long-run history wrt Russia, the post-cold war landscape, nor predicting exactly how this would all play out. Certainly not the architect of Cold War strategy. Forget the fact that they have been largely proven correct and prescient. Old, out of touch, and washed up.

And y'all claim that I am the one consuming propaganda. Really choice shit y'all running out there.  

You know nothing about Russia. You just read russophile fantasy bullshit. 

Edited by Dahobbs
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Posted
Just now, Anastasis said:

Nothing I have said here was outside of the mainstream media ca 1996-2014. 

The same media that had trumpeted the wonder weapons of Russia? What exactly is it that you think occurred in post cold war Russia? I can tell it none of it has had anything to do with fear of NATO as existential threat. You've read junk pop russophile bullshit and bought it without a second of thought because it aligned with your hatred of the military industrial complex. 

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Posted (edited)
30 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

You know nothing about Russia. You just read russophile fantasy bullshit. 

This guy seems knowledgeable about the state of the Russian disaster. Putin: “We started the war to increase the safety of Russian citizens.” Now there are air raid sirens going off in interior Russian cities. Aryanastan doesn’t care about Russians. Just the oligarchs.

 

Edited by Willfully Horn
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Posted
35 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

This one is fun as well, if you want to do the Rise of Putin origin story. 

TIME Magazine Cover: Boris Yeltsin - July 15, 1996 - Boris Yeltsin - Russia

 

VAPA used to post house of cards screenshots.   He was always right and everybody else was wrong. It seems to be a thing.  Post a screenshot and smugly laugh to himself that the smooth brains can’t connect the dots on your brilliant riposte. 

 

Posted
On 3/7/2025 at 6:24 AM, WhatTheBuck said:

Because negative attention is better than no attention at all.  Just ignore him. 

 

On 3/7/2025 at 8:24 AM, InkaUtexas said:

I do. Just really tired of good threads getting derailed by him.

You do?

Posted
So the US should have no policies towards russia? Just let them do what they want?

He won’t answer. But the answer is “yes.”
Because you see, Russia is actually the savior of civilization, and the only ideologically pure society on earth.
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Posted
9 minutes ago, InkaUtexas said:

So the US should have no policies towards russia? Just let them do what they want?

Of course we should have foreign policy. And hopefully one that is informed by the outcomes of our past policy failures. Speaking of Russian oligarchs, shock therapy is a good example in this exchange. 

 

 

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Posted
15 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

Of course we should have foreign policy. And hopefully one that is informed by the outcomes of our past policy failures. Speaking of Russian oligarchs, shock therapy is a good example in this exchange. 

 

 

OK, we will try this again.

What failures? What did we do, or Ukraine really since this is about them, that touched them in the fee fee?

And please don't bring up school of the americas, 1954 whatever. Can we try and stick to this century? Because we can also talk the shit ton of US aid to Russia in a lot of ways since WW2.

13 minutes ago, immamac said:

If someone shops his avatar I'll think about it if it's good enough. 

so a picture of a donkey's ass won't do?

Posted
3 minutes ago, InkaUtexas said:

OK, we will try this again.

What failures?

I just gave you shock therapy as one example. I think that it is a pretty mainstream assessment that shock therapy was a failure, primarily hurt ordinary Russian people, consolidated broad anti-Western sentiment, and directly led to the rise of the oligarchs. 

We botched the biggest moment of influence at the end of the Cold War. Both economically and militarily. 

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Posted
25 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

I just gave you shock therapy as one example. I think that it is a pretty mainstream assessment that shock therapy was a failure, primarily hurt ordinary Russian people, consolidated broad anti-Western sentiment, and directly led to the rise of the oligarchs. 

We botched the biggest moment of influence at the end of the Cold War. Both economically and militarily. 

Ok, so their economy really was bad. You know that right?

And you can also blame the collapse on them? Oligarchs? Really? That is DC's fault? The pillaging of Soviet factories? Weapons? Sold to anyone? DC wrote that policy?

You just cannot admit they are not perfect. And of ALL the examples, that is the 1? If that is all you have then you know you are in a hole and some oligarch stole your rope/ladder and the shovel you used to dig it.

 

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Posted

Ana, guess they should not have been there.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia launched heavy aerial attacks on Ukraine for a second night Saturday after the United States stopped sharing satellite images with the Ukrainian government, officials said. At least 20 people have been killed.

https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-dobropillya-us-intelligence-3d0bad105a93933e9cdaca5cf31fcf74

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Posted
2 hours ago, WhatTheBuck said:

 

You do?

I like a good argument. There were a few in the Israel thread. I did not agree with the take, but I could understand the perspective.

Ana? Nah. You folks are right.

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Posted
11 minutes ago, InkaUtexas said:

And you can also blame the collapse on them? Oligarchs? Really? That is DC's fault? The pillaging of Soviet factories? Weapons? Sold to anyone? DC wrote that policy?

Like I said, none of these takes are really outside of the mainstream. Here's a piece from NPR on it. Under the tags takes you through Yeltsin's re-election with oligarch support and finally the emergence of Putin. 

Look I understand that there is an element of monday morning QB'ing involved here, as with all this stuff. But we have to be willing to learn from our mistakes. We can't even get to that point though if we cannot acknowledge that there were mistakes and ramifications that we have to work through today. This isn't just related to post-cold war policy in general and russian in particular, it generally applies to every single continent on this earth. For example, check in on dailies coming out of Syria. 

How 'shock therapy' created Russian oligarchs and paved the path for Putin

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2022/03/22/1087654279/how-shock-therapy-created-russian-oligarchs-and-paved-the-path-for-putin

The Rise Of The Oligarchy

The Russian oligarchy arose out of the mayhem of rapid privatization in the 1990s. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russian president Boris Yeltsin, a leader in the revolt against communism, had to figure out how to transition from a command-and-control economy to a market one. Yeltsin turned to the Russian economists Yegor Gaidar and Anatoly Chubais, who, with the aid of Western advisers, hammered out the details.

Spoiler

There were many economists — including even Gaidar and Chubais themselves before they became government officials — who believed that the transition to capitalism would best be handled gradually. They knew the transition would be complex and painful, and it made sense for Russia to first create the institutions that healthy, competitive markets need to flourish — like independent courts, functioning capital markets, and strong regulatory bodies.

But Yeltsin and his allies believed that time was not on their side. An attempted coup in August 1991 by Soviet hardliners against the reformers almost derailed the whole project. Entrenched Soviet industrialists and party insiders wanted a return to the old order. The Yeltsin administration decided that a program known as "shock therapy" — rapidly unleashing market forces — was the way to electrocute the old Soviet system and jolt Russia into embracing capitalism.

American advisors and global creditors, especially the International Monetary Fund, played a notable role advocating for shock therapy. But some influential shock therapists, like the economist Jeffrey Sachs, then at Harvard, believed such a radical program needed support. He proposed the United States and multilateral development agencies help Russian reformers succeed with a $30 billion aid package, akin to what America had provided Europe after WWII with the Marshall Plan. Sachs also called for the cancellation of Russia's debts. But these ideas were rejected by American leaders.

President Yeltsin delivered the first big shock to the Russian economy when he lifted price controls in December 1991. As the Soviet economy collapsed, however, the policy ended up unleashing hyperinflation. By 1994, consumer prices in Russia would skyrocket to almost 2000 times what they had been in 1990. That candy bar that had cost $1 now cost $2000. Hyperinflation devastated ordinary Russians.

Meanwhile, Chubais was tasked with overseeing mass privatization. That entailed transforming a nation whose almost entire economy consisted of state-controlled industries — manufacturing plants, oil refineries, mines, media outlets, biscuit factories, you name it — into private enterprises. It was, to date, surely the biggest transfer of state assets to private owners in world history.

Privatization was conducted in two waves. The first wave, which began in October 1992, had at least the veneer of being a fair and open process. Russia issued 148 million "privatization checks," or vouchers, to Russian citizens. These vouchers could be freely sold or traded. They could then be used to buy shares of state enterprises going private at public auctions around the nation. It was like the former Soviet Union was holding the world's largest garage sale and vouchers were the tickets to shop.

The people on their way to becoming Russia's first class of oligarchs scoured the nation, trying to buy as many vouchers as they could. Many of the oligarchs had come from nothing. They had initially gotten rich — but not quite buy-superyachts rich just yet — by hustling in the black market or through legitimate businesses when the Soviet Union first allowed private entrepreneurship in the late 1980s. For example, Roman Abramovich made his first pot of money selling rubber ducks and other random objects to Russians out of his Moscow apartment (seriously). He was also a mechanic. By the time privatization began, many soon-to-be oligarchs owned banks and had enough money to buy lots of vouchers.

The oligarchs went on a buying spree, purchasing hundreds of thousands of vouchers, each of which were worth 10,000 rubles, or about $40 or less back in the 1990s. Average Russians, who were struggling during hyperinflation, were often eager to sell. After amassing vouchers, the oligarchs — both come-up-from-nothing hustlers and former Soviet government insiders — used them at auctions to buy up stocks in newly private companies. By all accounts, many of these enterprises were shockingly undervalued — and those who were able to get large chunks of lucrative enterprises became fabulously wealthy in a very short period of time. Between 1992 and 1994, about 15,000 state-run enterprises went private under the program.

By 1994, when the voucher program ended, around 70 percent of the Russian economy had been privatized. But some of the biggest, most valuable industries remained in the government's hands. Chubais had plans to privatize these state enterprises and raise much needed funds for the government by selling them off for cash to the highest bidder in legitimate auctions. However, politics got in the way of the increasingly unpopular privatization drive — and even threatened to reverse it. That's when the Yeltsin administration resorted to a much shadier form of privatization.

The "Loans For Shares" Scheme

By 1995, Boris Yeltsin was very unpopular. Hyperinflation. The decline of law and order. The rise of the mafia and execution-style killings on the streets of Moscow. Russia's inability to pay government salaries and pensions. The sense that unscrupulous men in suits were the only ones winning in the new economy. Plus, Yeltsin was a notorious drunk with serious health problems. Just a year away from reelection, Yeltsin's approval rating fell to the low single digits, and he faced the specter of an increasingly popular Communist challenger who looked like he could win the 1996 presidential elections.

With privatization stalling, the government desperate for money, and a growing fear that Russia was about to slide back into communism, Chubais and the Yeltsin administration turned to a shady scheme known as "Loans For Shares." The secret plot basically worked like this: the richest oligarchs loaned the government billions of dollars in exchange for massive shares of Russia's most valuable state enterprises. When the government defaulted on paying back the loans, as the schemers expected they would, the oligarchs would walk away with the keys to Russia's most profitable corporations. In exchange, the government would get the money it needed to pay its bills, privatization would keep moving forward — and, most importantly, the oligarchs would do everything in their power to ensure Yeltsin was reelected.

Between November and December 1995, twelve of Russia's most profitable industrial enterprises were auctioned off to the oligarchs, including a mining company, two steel companies, two shipping companies, and five oil companies. The auctions were a complete farce. Chubais and his team had predetermined with the oligarchs who would get what and for roughly how much. And the prices the oligarchs paid for these corporations were a steal — almost literally. For example, Boris Berezovsky and Roman Abramovich, now well beyond his days of selling rubber ducks, got a large stake in the oil company Sibneft for about $200 million. In 2009, when Putin renationalized the company, Abramovich sold his stake back to the government for $11.9 billion. Talk about a payday.

"Chubais never advertised it publicly — he attempted to keep the goal obscure so as not to alarm the opposition— but loans for shares should really have been called 'tycoons for Yeltsin,'" writes David Hoffman, the former Moscow bureau chief for The Washington Post, in his book The Oligarchs: Wealth And Power In The New Russia. "Chubais was willing to hand over the property without competition, without openness, and, as it turned out, for a bargain price, but in a way that would keep the businessmen at Yeltsin's side in the 1996 reelection campaign."

Yeltsin Is Reelected With Oligarch Money

Holding up their end of the bargain, the oligarchs, who often fought with each other, united forces behind Yeltsin's reelection campaign. They donated millions of dollars to the effort. They hired the best political operatives they knew. They laundered government money with their banks, and fed it into the Yeltsin campaign machine. Two of the oligarchs, Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky, controlled two of the three major Russian television networks — and they blanketed the airwaves with pro-Yeltsin propaganda. Fueled by the immense power of the oligarchs, Yeltsin conducted Russia's first American-style presidential campaign.

As the election approached, Yeltsin made a cynical move to placate critics of his privatization scheme, publicly firing his super unpopular privatization czar Chubais. "He sold off a big industry for next to nothing," Yeltsin told the press. "We cannot forgive this."

Despite waving the banner of free markets and democracy, the reformers of the 1990s — perhaps ironically — did much of their reforms undemocratically, often by presidential decrees that were hammered out through backroom deals with the rich and powerful. Thanks in no small part to the oligarchic beneficiaries of these deals, Yeltsin beat the odds and won reelection. Russian-style crony capitalism was here to stay.

Weeks after the victory, Boris Berezovsky bragged to The Financial Times that he and six other Russian oligarchs controlled half of Russia's economy. That number seems to have been significantly inflated. Nonetheless, by 1996, the world could see that Russia had a new class of industrialists and bankers who wielded enormous power. A class that made their fortunes not through society-improving ideas, consumer-pleasing products, or technological innovations — but rather through corruption, skullduggery, and the plunder of Russia's raw materials. Many Russians would come to resent the oligarchs and the liberal reformers who empowered them.

As Yeltsin's health continued to deteriorate in the late 1990s, the oligarchs began to worry about who would be his successor. The natural heir to Yeltsin would be whoever occupied the post of prime minister. If Yeltsin stepped down, the prime minister automatically became acting president and would have the advantage of incumbency during election time.

In 1999, Boris Yeltsin and his oligarchic allies agreed that an obscure former KGB officer named Vladimir Putin was the man to become Yeltsin's prime minister, and soon Russia's next president. He was a nobody, barely a public figure, but he had a reputation for loyalty. They trusted that, once in power, he would look after their interests. Little did they know that they were unleashing a monster they soon would be unable to control.

 

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Posted (edited)
7 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

Like I said, none of these takes are really outside of the mainstream. Here's a piece from NPR on it. Under the tags takes you through Yeltsin's re-election with oligarch support and finally the emergence of Putin. 

Look I understand that there is an element of monday morning QB'ing involved here, as with all this stuff. But we have to be willing to learn from our mistakes. We can't even get to that point though if we cannot acknowledge that there were mistakes and ramifications that we have to work through today. This isn't just related to post-cold war policy in general and russian in particular, it generally applies to every single continent on this earth. For example, check in on dailies coming out of Syria. 

How 'shock therapy' created Russian oligarchs and paved the path for Putin

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2022/03/22/1087654279/how-shock-therapy-created-russian-oligarchs-and-paved-the-path-for-putin

The Rise Of The Oligarchy

The Russian oligarchy arose out of the mayhem of rapid privatization in the 1990s. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russian president Boris Yeltsin, a leader in the revolt against communism, had to figure out how to transition from a command-and-control economy to a market one. Yeltsin turned to the Russian economists Yegor Gaidar and Anatoly Chubais, who, with the aid of Western advisers, hammered out the details.

  Reveal hidden contents

There were many economists — including even Gaidar and Chubais themselves before they became government officials — who believed that the transition to capitalism would best be handled gradually. They knew the transition would be complex and painful, and it made sense for Russia to first create the institutions that healthy, competitive markets need to flourish — like independent courts, functioning capital markets, and strong regulatory bodies.

But Yeltsin and his allies believed that time was not on their side. An attempted coup in August 1991 by Soviet hardliners against the reformers almost derailed the whole project. Entrenched Soviet industrialists and party insiders wanted a return to the old order. The Yeltsin administration decided that a program known as "shock therapy" — rapidly unleashing market forces — was the way to electrocute the old Soviet system and jolt Russia into embracing capitalism.

American advisors and global creditors, especially the International Monetary Fund, played a notable role advocating for shock therapy. But some influential shock therapists, like the economist Jeffrey Sachs, then at Harvard, believed such a radical program needed support. He proposed the United States and multilateral development agencies help Russian reformers succeed with a $30 billion aid package, akin to what America had provided Europe after WWII with the Marshall Plan. Sachs also called for the cancellation of Russia's debts. But these ideas were rejected by American leaders.

President Yeltsin delivered the first big shock to the Russian economy when he lifted price controls in December 1991. As the Soviet economy collapsed, however, the policy ended up unleashing hyperinflation. By 1994, consumer prices in Russia would skyrocket to almost 2000 times what they had been in 1990. That candy bar that had cost $1 now cost $2000. Hyperinflation devastated ordinary Russians.

Meanwhile, Chubais was tasked with overseeing mass privatization. That entailed transforming a nation whose almost entire economy consisted of state-controlled industries — manufacturing plants, oil refineries, mines, media outlets, biscuit factories, you name it — into private enterprises. It was, to date, surely the biggest transfer of state assets to private owners in world history.

Privatization was conducted in two waves. The first wave, which began in October 1992, had at least the veneer of being a fair and open process. Russia issued 148 million "privatization checks," or vouchers, to Russian citizens. These vouchers could be freely sold or traded. They could then be used to buy shares of state enterprises going private at public auctions around the nation. It was like the former Soviet Union was holding the world's largest garage sale and vouchers were the tickets to shop.

The people on their way to becoming Russia's first class of oligarchs scoured the nation, trying to buy as many vouchers as they could. Many of the oligarchs had come from nothing. They had initially gotten rich — but not quite buy-superyachts rich just yet — by hustling in the black market or through legitimate businesses when the Soviet Union first allowed private entrepreneurship in the late 1980s. For example, Roman Abramovich made his first pot of money selling rubber ducks and other random objects to Russians out of his Moscow apartment (seriously). He was also a mechanic. By the time privatization began, many soon-to-be oligarchs owned banks and had enough money to buy lots of vouchers.

The oligarchs went on a buying spree, purchasing hundreds of thousands of vouchers, each of which were worth 10,000 rubles, or about $40 or less back in the 1990s. Average Russians, who were struggling during hyperinflation, were often eager to sell. After amassing vouchers, the oligarchs — both come-up-from-nothing hustlers and former Soviet government insiders — used them at auctions to buy up stocks in newly private companies. By all accounts, many of these enterprises were shockingly undervalued — and those who were able to get large chunks of lucrative enterprises became fabulously wealthy in a very short period of time. Between 1992 and 1994, about 15,000 state-run enterprises went private under the program.

By 1994, when the voucher program ended, around 70 percent of the Russian economy had been privatized. But some of the biggest, most valuable industries remained in the government's hands. Chubais had plans to privatize these state enterprises and raise much needed funds for the government by selling them off for cash to the highest bidder in legitimate auctions. However, politics got in the way of the increasingly unpopular privatization drive — and even threatened to reverse it. That's when the Yeltsin administration resorted to a much shadier form of privatization.

The "Loans For Shares" Scheme

By 1995, Boris Yeltsin was very unpopular. Hyperinflation. The decline of law and order. The rise of the mafia and execution-style killings on the streets of Moscow. Russia's inability to pay government salaries and pensions. The sense that unscrupulous men in suits were the only ones winning in the new economy. Plus, Yeltsin was a notorious drunk with serious health problems. Just a year away from reelection, Yeltsin's approval rating fell to the low single digits, and he faced the specter of an increasingly popular Communist challenger who looked like he could win the 1996 presidential elections.

With privatization stalling, the government desperate for money, and a growing fear that Russia was about to slide back into communism, Chubais and the Yeltsin administration turned to a shady scheme known as "Loans For Shares." The secret plot basically worked like this: the richest oligarchs loaned the government billions of dollars in exchange for massive shares of Russia's most valuable state enterprises. When the government defaulted on paying back the loans, as the schemers expected they would, the oligarchs would walk away with the keys to Russia's most profitable corporations. In exchange, the government would get the money it needed to pay its bills, privatization would keep moving forward — and, most importantly, the oligarchs would do everything in their power to ensure Yeltsin was reelected.

Between November and December 1995, twelve of Russia's most profitable industrial enterprises were auctioned off to the oligarchs, including a mining company, two steel companies, two shipping companies, and five oil companies. The auctions were a complete farce. Chubais and his team had predetermined with the oligarchs who would get what and for roughly how much. And the prices the oligarchs paid for these corporations were a steal — almost literally. For example, Boris Berezovsky and Roman Abramovich, now well beyond his days of selling rubber ducks, got a large stake in the oil company Sibneft for about $200 million. In 2009, when Putin renationalized the company, Abramovich sold his stake back to the government for $11.9 billion. Talk about a payday.

"Chubais never advertised it publicly — he attempted to keep the goal obscure so as not to alarm the opposition— but loans for shares should really have been called 'tycoons for Yeltsin,'" writes David Hoffman, the former Moscow bureau chief for The Washington Post, in his book The Oligarchs: Wealth And Power In The New Russia. "Chubais was willing to hand over the property without competition, without openness, and, as it turned out, for a bargain price, but in a way that would keep the businessmen at Yeltsin's side in the 1996 reelection campaign."

Yeltsin Is Reelected With Oligarch Money

Holding up their end of the bargain, the oligarchs, who often fought with each other, united forces behind Yeltsin's reelection campaign. They donated millions of dollars to the effort. They hired the best political operatives they knew. They laundered government money with their banks, and fed it into the Yeltsin campaign machine. Two of the oligarchs, Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky, controlled two of the three major Russian television networks — and they blanketed the airwaves with pro-Yeltsin propaganda. Fueled by the immense power of the oligarchs, Yeltsin conducted Russia's first American-style presidential campaign.

As the election approached, Yeltsin made a cynical move to placate critics of his privatization scheme, publicly firing his super unpopular privatization czar Chubais. "He sold off a big industry for next to nothing," Yeltsin told the press. "We cannot forgive this."

Despite waving the banner of free markets and democracy, the reformers of the 1990s — perhaps ironically — did much of their reforms undemocratically, often by presidential decrees that were hammered out through backroom deals with the rich and powerful. Thanks in no small part to the oligarchic beneficiaries of these deals, Yeltsin beat the odds and won reelection. Russian-style crony capitalism was here to stay.

Weeks after the victory, Boris Berezovsky bragged to The Financial Times that he and six other Russian oligarchs controlled half of Russia's economy. That number seems to have been significantly inflated. Nonetheless, by 1996, the world could see that Russia had a new class of industrialists and bankers who wielded enormous power. A class that made their fortunes not through society-improving ideas, consumer-pleasing products, or technological innovations — but rather through corruption, skullduggery, and the plunder of Russia's raw materials. Many Russians would come to resent the oligarchs and the liberal reformers who empowered them.

As Yeltsin's health continued to deteriorate in the late 1990s, the oligarchs began to worry about who would be his successor. The natural heir to Yeltsin would be whoever occupied the post of prime minister. If Yeltsin stepped down, the prime minister automatically became acting president and would have the advantage of incumbency during election time.

In 1999, Boris Yeltsin and his oligarchic allies agreed that an obscure former KGB officer named Vladimir Putin was the man to become Yeltsin's prime minister, and soon Russia's next president. He was a nobody, barely a public figure, but he had a reputation for loyalty. They trusted that, once in power, he would look after their interests. Little did they know that they were unleashing a monster they soon would be unable to control.

 

Complete non-sequiturs. None of that has anything to do with Ukraine, Russian aggression, or NATO.  Putin rose to power initially as a challenge to Oligarchs before becoming one. Why you think that justifies Russian invading Ukraine, Russia targeting civilians, or the US ceasing support of Ukraine is beyond me. Actually, no it isn't. You are a Russian stooge. 

Edited by Dahobbs
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Posted
Ana, guess they should not have been there.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia launched heavy aerial attacks on Ukraine for a second night Saturday after the United States stopped sharing satellite images with the Ukrainian government, officials said. At least 20 people have been killed.
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-dobropillya-us-intelligence-3d0bad105a93933e9cdaca5cf31fcf74

We have the satellite data; we just don't share it because our president is a Russian asset. Unbelievable what the party of Reagan has become. It pleases me Trump will leave this planet like Reagan...shitting his pants and never remembering he was president. We're already halfway there.
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Posted (edited)

So, if I understand the argument, it is: the rise of Putin, a strongman dictator, is the US's fault because Russia was poor in the 90s. And I'm guessing the fact that Russia has always had a strongman dictator essentially its entire existence is completely coincidental? Maybe, just maybe, it is ingrained in Russian society and culture to be predisposed to the strongman types? Maybe a society that has always taken a perverse pride in its ability to handle suffering without complaint, to simple do as your told, might just naturally bread leaders like Putin? Maybe a culture that adapted to constant invasion hundreds of years ago by itself constantly invading its neighbors simply does not know how to exist in a stable rule of law world order? Maybe a culture that views might as right was always going to be aggressive towards its neighbors regardless of what the US did Or maybe the past is completely coincidental and no other country has any agency of responsibility other than the United States. 

Annie, you should actually try reading about Russian history and reading actual Russian literature. None of these themes are new to Russia. They were there before the United States was even a thought. 

Edited by Dahobbs
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