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To me it’s a warning that when you rightfully overthrow an authoritarian you have to be careful not to trade that authoritarian against another one. This seems
by maxxxxx 8y ago
To me it’s a warning that when you rightfully overthrow an authoritarian you have to be careful not to trade that authoritarian against another one. This seems to happen all the time. Cuba, Iran, Nicaragua, Russia and probably many more.
- O_H_E 8y agoAnd Egypt 2011
- jessaustin 8y agoThat episode just proves that Egypt's masters in the West don't really value democracy as much as they constantly claim to value it.
- fdsak 8y agoAnd West ! failed to accept real democracy when they saw that real democracy is very dangerous and unacceptable and not aligned with their interests.
- aasasd 8y agoRussians have basically given up after riding this merry-go-round for the past almost two centuries.
- maxxxxx 8y agoTrue. Russians and also Poles have suffered a lot over the last centuries. From one bad situation to a worse one.
- tim333 8y agoAt least the Poles are doing ok now as part of the EU. I wonder if Russia could go properly democratic and join during my lifetime.
- pm90 8y agoRussians are probably the least luckiest people in the world. * they bore the brunt of Mongol invasion which utterly wiped the aristocracy at the time and set back the countries development by generations and depopulating the land. Luckily, the Mongols stopped there and didn't move further west, saving the populace of Western Europe * Without warmwater ports, Russia lacked the capacity to participate in maritime trade that bolstered the economy of Western Europe * Brutal and absolute monarchical rule suppressed any kind of representative government; Serfdom (essentially, slavery) was abolished only in the late 19th century * Once it got its act together and started Industrializing in good stead... now comes the Crimean War, depleting morale, resources and will of the people * Oh... was that not bad enough? World War 1, which strains the country so bad, that Germans successfully foment unrest and ultimately Revolution. The Revolution itself ends up being the best strategic decision by the Germans, and the Communist Government signs a treaty essentially ceding large parts of the country to the Central Powers * But wait! That didn't mean the end of troubles for Russians, and they endure a prolonged Civil War fought not just on the Western theater, but also on their Eastern provinces. Red and White Russians fight each other constantly, appropriate resources from the peasants by force. * The Country has barely recovered from all of this, Stalin comes to power. The madman purges experienced officers and intelligentsia leading to a very ineffective State and Military; he signs a pact leading to (temporary) peace as they know they can't fight the Germans * Whoops, nope, the Germans invade anyways, reach as far as Moscow. Millions of Russians perish. St. Petersburg is besieged in one of the most destructive sieges ever, period * At the end of the war, Russia has lost millions of its population, resulting in a demographic catastrophe that will affect it forever * Once again, Stalin foolishly throws away a chance for friendship, and instead of working in good faith, we end up in the Cold War. The Soviet Union makes tremendous progress, but is no match for the economic and military might that comes with the vast (and now booming) population of the West. The Soviet Union was _offered_ aid as part of the Marshall Plan, and could have possibly used it for kickstarting their economy and supercharging economic growth but no * Despite having a highly educated workforce, Soviets fail to capitalize on it, instead becoming the same repressive state they replaced. They fail to take advantage of the technological improvements and ultimately fall far behind * the final kick: right after the fall of Soviet Union, when the people finally hope to be free and pursue and obtain the benefits of modernity, they're hit by an economic and social collapse. Again, the result is depopulation; crimes are high, lives are wasted by alcohol and tobacco. And this is just the highlights. So... I do feel bad for the Russian people.
- james_s_tayler 8y agoThat's how it goes 9 times out of 10. I learned that from reading Why Nations Fail. It busted the whole myth of "progress" and replaced it with "change".
- barry-cotter 8y agoThat’s real optimism there, assuming it goes well 10% of the time.
- james_s_tayler 8y agoNot an assumption. Look at the world. Read history. Most times power structures are challenged the challenge isn't successful or it is overthrown and the same or worse power structures replace it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_freedom_indices https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_freedom_indices Shockingly less blue than you might hope.
- barry-cotter 8y ago10% is still optimistic. The Russian, French and Haitian revolutions all worked out pretty horribly and the American Revolution killed a ton of people and destroyed an enormous amount of property to avoid the terrors of Canada.
- KayEss 8y agoThe word "revolution" is probably the most deeply ironic one in the whole of the English language. You fight and die to overthrow the oppressor only to end up back where you started.
- jacknews 8y agoAnd that meaning, "going round in circles" is tacitly encoded by it's very use.
- andruby 8y agoTIL. Thank you. As a non-native english speaker, I've only now had this epiphany.
- api 8y agoThe only exceptions are revolutions guided by good ideas and solid values. Just "overthrow the current leaders and then (??? magic happens here ???) and then we get a better society" doesn't work. You end up where you started or worse because usually the ideas haven't changed. Intellectual revolutions must precede political ones. This is why I'm kind of a dull boring centrist politically. I dont support any major attempt to rock the boat because there has been no intellectual improvements that might guide such a thing.
- maxxxxx 8y agoI guess that's why the US revolution worked. They were going into the war with a full fledged constitution ready to go.
- dragonwriter 8y ago> I guess that's why the US revolution worked. The US “Revolution” was a regional separatist movement led by the local elites and local governments that did not upend the basic local social, economic, or political power structure save for severing the latter from a remote central government (and the resulting new central system was replaced with something more closely approximating, and deliberately modeled on, the old one very shortly after the Revolution in the face of widespread perception of imminent failure otherwise.) In other words, it mostly wasn't revolutionary and in the one way that it was it mostly failed.
- fdsak 8y agoYour last sentence diminished the value of first sentence. The countries your mentioned are just different not authoritarian and probably are so because of too-much-fingering by imperialist countries.
- tomohawk 8y agoWashington was quite the exception. So many at the time predicted he would be a dictator, but he gave up power 3 times voluntarily, and set an amazing example.