Eastern Europe: Olivier's sphere of influence

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Eastern Europe: Olivier's sphere of influence

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A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Alchenar posted:

I mean, yes, but 'support' is a word that has a huge left/right of arc. Saying nice things about Yeltsin, sending a few guys over to talk about market economics and otherwise being diplomatically accomodating is a substantially different thing to the far more tangible diplomatic and economic support that say, Poland and the Baltic States got to reform their economies. The reality is that almost immediately after '91 Russia just ceased to be in the minds of western policy makers.

I think I get your point now. Basically, what Russia needed was to get the full makeover, but no one involved wanted to try for that, so it ended up basically just being the Russian leadership grabbing a few bad ideas from the West and loving up their own country with them.

cinci zoo sniper posted:

Sure, that makes sense to me. I�d like to slightly clarify my earlier implication - in my opinion, Russia has only strengthened its model of oligarchy, instead of making even incremental improvements. As far as entrepreneurship in Russia is concerned, the most important changes have been that you�re less likely to be killed for having a successful company, or see your company taken over in a raid.

That's what I mean by that type of economy basically being built for oligarchy. With no intervention, it "naturally" moves towards oligarchy, so you need powerful and persistent attempts to pull the other direction to fix it. Even if Putin wanted to, he would need to be the action hero he pretends to be to succeed.

Cpt_Obvious posted:

They did when Lenin (who was 1/8th Jewish) jailed the paramilitary groups like the Black 100s and forcibly ended the pogroms.

Did that change the attitudes, or just prevent them from being acted upon?

# ¿ Feb 14, 2022 16:39

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 06:02

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Cpt_Obvious posted:

Well, technically executing antisemites does cause a severe alteration in brain chemistry, so yes.

I'm sure the Black Hundreds represented all the anti-semites of the territories they hailed from.

# ¿ Feb 14, 2022 16:45

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Alchenar posted:

Essentially (in terms on where responsibility lies) but I don't think I'd go as far as to say the problem was that Russia didn't do Shock Therapy 'properly'. The USSR was always a petrostate that worked by using the proceeds of oil and gas to subsidise the rest of the economy - the Soviet model needed to go but oil and gas revenue meant they probably had the option to roll on for quite some time slowly subsidising a transition to something else. They could probably have chosen not to do shock therapy at all.

I meant more that they'd need a proper goal, rather than whatever halfway thing they did, not that they'd need full Shock Therapy as such. Well, frankly I didn't really consider the actual process, but yeah, it makes a lot of sense that they could've used oil and gas revenue to ease the transition - though it would have to be managed well and be part of a very deliberate plan to decouple their economy from it.

# ¿ Feb 14, 2022 17:16

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Deki posted:

Yeah. Due to MAD, Russia is in no true danger from NATO no matter how many nations join it. They're never going to be invaded since the cost of doing so would be catastrophic.

This is purely about them not being able to bully and invade their neighbors.

I think the closest to a legitimate point is the issue of Russian-oriented citizens of Ukraine possibly getting screwed over in a scenario where Ukraine joins the EU, or at least makes accommodations with it. Seems like a legitimate worry that border regions might see their economic fortunes undermined, as Ukraine shifts its focus westward. Of course if that was the actual worry, I feel like Russia could've worked together with the EU and Ukraine to ameliorate those fears, maybe set up a special arrangement to reduce the risk of local economies suffering too much. I feel like the EU would've been very amenable to that, seeing it as a way to really start making inroads in Russia, economically and diplomatically. Plus a special transition period would probably be required anyway, given the size of Ukraine and its economy.

Of course there's a very obvious reason why the Russian leadership would not go for that model, that being it would undermine their legitimacy, by having ethnic Ukrainians and Russians both benefit from EU-sourced reforms. Something whichh would be hard to keep secret when the whole deal would rest upon continued economic activity between Russia and Ukraine.

# ¿ Feb 14, 2022 17:50

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

OddObserver posted:

Uh, also that would require Russian leadership to /care/ for regular people in the first place.

I feel like that was heavily implied. If you care more about legitimacy (or PR) than results, that kinda means you know you're loving people over.

# ¿ Feb 14, 2022 18:02

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Eastern Europe: Olivier's sphere of influence

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