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He did. It's just that leftists in the US won't accept that and pretend that the Cold War just "ended" one day, because of the goodwill of the Russians, not bec

He did. It's just that leftists in the US won't accept that and pretend that the Cold War just "ended" one day, because of the goodwill of the Russians, not because the US policy forced them into bankruptcy.

the-smug-one 4y ago
Dang, good move to force a whole country into bankruptcy.
- zmgsabst 4y ago
  Seems to be working for China, as well.
  - bediger4000 4y ago
    Should I have been taught Ronald Reagan did that as well?
  - kenned3 4y ago
    I suggest you look at the external debt of China vs other nations, you may be surprised with what you find.
  - _-david-_ 4y ago
    The US did the opposite with China. Instead of trying to bankrupt China, the US opened up trade in hopes of creating a liberal democracy in China.
    - CRConrad 4y ago
      Yeah, and it seems to be working for China -- not on. The US opened up trade with China, and since then China has managed to have the West dismantle its industrial base. It's working great for China! (Except hopefully the rest of the world is finally waking up to what's going on).
      - the-smug-one 4y ago
        It's not like China forced the west to dismantle its industrial base. The west was happy to do it! And now we're living in a globalized world, where the worker has won less than their masters.
woodruffw 4y ago
There's a disconnect here: the US policy in question took place over decades, not the 8 years that Reagan was president.
- avmich 4y ago
  It's easy to argue that it's USSR people, not Western, who benefited most from the end of the Cold War.
  - woodruffw 4y ago
    Are you responding to the right comment? That's sort of unrelated to the GP's remark (that Ronald Reagan can be credited with ending the Cold War). (It's also hard to assert that generally: Russia is by many metrics worse off than it was under the USSR, while most of the rest of Central and Eastern Europe is better off.)
    - avmich 4y ago
      > Are you responding to the right comment? I was adding to your comment, perhaps too tangentially - the GP remark may suggest that USA benefited more than USSR. > It's also hard to assert that generally: Russia is by many metrics worse off than it was under the USSR Economical, cultural, political environment were greatly improved as the direct consequences of the end of the Cold War, up until ~2010, so I'm not sure why do you think the Russia is worse off. What metrics do you choose?
      - woodruffw 4y ago
        My bad! I understand now. > What metrics do you choose? I was thinking of life expectancy and the generally high overall mortality rate in Russia, some of which is attributable to rising alcoholism. But it looks like their life expectancy has also improved somewhat over the last decade, so I can't claim that unequivocally.
  - romwell 4y ago
    Some did, some didn't, the way it happened. The Cold War wasn't a good thing, but it didn't have to end with the dissolution of the USSR, and the dissolution of the USSR didn't have to end with a coup, followed by chaos, which nevertheless kept all the appartchiks in charge. 30 years later, we can see how the people who were in charge of the USSR are the reason if fell apart: because they are still running Russia, and are running it into the ground (Putin, Shoigu, Lavrov, etc are all USSR apparatchiks). Thieves and criminals, the whole lot of them. The USSR ate itself, because it didn't succeed in figuring out a way to refresh the power structures. And so that fish rotted starting from its head.
romwell 4y ago
Yeah right, because the USSR had never before gone through hardship, and it's the "bankruptcy" that led to ousting of Gorbachev in a coup after his reforms (including a de-facto Prohibition, in Russia of all places!). Let's also ignore that little thing that Russia is now doing in Ukraine, and put up a "mission accomplished" banner on the clusterfuck that happened in 1991. The USSR didn't fall apart because of any goodwill, but it did fall apart because Gorbachev fucked up. Reagan deserves as much credit for this as Obama does for the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceleand in 2010. If you disagree, note that the burden of proof is on you here; and you're welcome to point out which specific effects of actions of Reagan's administration caused the collapse of the USSR, along with an explanation why much more severe hardships experienced by people of the USSR in the earlier decades did not.
- avmich 4y ago
  > Yeah right, because the USSR had never before gone through hardship, and it's the "bankruptcy" that led to ousting of Gorbachev in a coup after his reforms (including a de-facto Prohibition, in Russia of all places!). Hardship is something USSR went through many times - until it didn't. And there were many reasons, on many levels, why the situation in late 1980-s was bleak. What was with the oil prices at the time? > The USSR didn't fall apart because of any goodwill, but it did fall apart because Gorbachev fucked up. One of his phrases was "socialism with a human face". Before Gorbachev, Andropov tried to "rule as it should be done", but, as a popular joke states, "has proven that if you rule seriously, you can't live longer than a year". Stalinist times have ended, and more soft, Brezhnev-like ruling turned out to be too incapable. Gorbachev managed to do few mistakes, while trying to rule mostly well - and ended up with opening the country, in the form of many states, to the beneficial external world.
  - romwell 4y ago
    I'm not saying that Gorbachev's ideals were flawed. It's the approach he took to putting them in place. In a way, he was putting "the human face" on socialism in the same hamfisted manner that the "should be done" socialism was pushed down people's throats before. His bright idea to solve the alcoholism problem by having a Prohibition 2.0 is a prime example. What with the oil prices? Forget that, look at the vodka prices. That's solely on Gorbachev. And it worked as well as you'd expect. https://www.nytimes.com/1985/08/27/world/soviet-liquor-prices-up-in-drive-on-alcoholism.html https://www.nytimes.com/1985/08/27/world/soviet-liquor-price...
ajsnigrutin 4y ago
> not because the US policy forced them into bankruptcy what?! It was pretty much the USSR policies that forced them into bankrupcy.... as it did in every other socialist state. source: am from another former socialist country, that also doesn't exist anymore.
- avmich 4y ago
  US definitely were helping to bankrupt... but then just before the putsch in August 1991 USA got really worried that USSR will split in parts, and the nightmare of managing relations with multiple nuclear states led them to support Gorbachev and USSR, until it actually broke. Then the work of gathering all nuclear armaments into one state - Russia - was going on, along with support of Russian scientists (lest them go to places like Iran and help them with their projects). That's one of the big reasons we have ISS now...
- flavius29663 4y ago
  Maybe you're not aware how much the USSR was spending on defense, espionage, space programs...By the end of the decade they ended up spending 14% of the GDP on military, trying to keep up with the US

the-smug-one 4y ago

Dang, good move to force a whole country into bankruptcy.

zmgsabst 4y ago
Seems to be working for China, as well.
- bediger4000 4y ago
  Should I have been taught Ronald Reagan did that as well?
- kenned3 4y ago
  I suggest you look at the external debt of China vs other nations, you may be surprised with what you find.
- _-david-_ 4y ago
  The US did the opposite with China. Instead of trying to bankrupt China, the US opened up trade in hopes of creating a liberal democracy in China.
  - CRConrad 4y ago
    Yeah, and it seems to be working for China -- not on. The US opened up trade with China, and since then China has managed to have the West dismantle its industrial base. It's working great for China! (Except hopefully the rest of the world is finally waking up to what's going on).
    - the-smug-one 4y ago
      It's not like China forced the west to dismantle its industrial base. The west was happy to do it! And now we're living in a globalized world, where the worker has won less than their masters.

woodruffw 4y ago

There's a disconnect here: the US policy in question took place over decades, not the 8 years that Reagan was president.

avmich 4y ago
It's easy to argue that it's USSR people, not Western, who benefited most from the end of the Cold War.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  Are you responding to the right comment? That's sort of unrelated to the GP's remark (that Ronald Reagan can be credited with ending the Cold War). (It's also hard to assert that generally: Russia is by many metrics worse off than it was under the USSR, while most of the rest of Central and Eastern Europe is better off.)
  - avmich 4y ago
    > Are you responding to the right comment? I was adding to your comment, perhaps too tangentially - the GP remark may suggest that USA benefited more than USSR. > It's also hard to assert that generally: Russia is by many metrics worse off than it was under the USSR Economical, cultural, political environment were greatly improved as the direct consequences of the end of the Cold War, up until ~2010, so I'm not sure why do you think the Russia is worse off. What metrics do you choose?
    - woodruffw 4y ago
      My bad! I understand now. > What metrics do you choose? I was thinking of life expectancy and the generally high overall mortality rate in Russia, some of which is attributable to rising alcoholism. But it looks like their life expectancy has also improved somewhat over the last decade, so I can't claim that unequivocally.
- romwell 4y ago
  Some did, some didn't, the way it happened. The Cold War wasn't a good thing, but it didn't have to end with the dissolution of the USSR, and the dissolution of the USSR didn't have to end with a coup, followed by chaos, which nevertheless kept all the appartchiks in charge. 30 years later, we can see how the people who were in charge of the USSR are the reason if fell apart: because they are still running Russia, and are running it into the ground (Putin, Shoigu, Lavrov, etc are all USSR apparatchiks). Thieves and criminals, the whole lot of them. The USSR ate itself, because it didn't succeed in figuring out a way to refresh the power structures. And so that fish rotted starting from its head.

romwell 4y ago

Yeah right, because the USSR had never before gone through hardship, and it's the "bankruptcy" that led to ousting of Gorbachev in a coup after his reforms (including a de-facto Prohibition, in Russia of all places!). Let's also ignore that little thing that Russia is now doing in Ukraine, and put up a "mission accomplished" banner on the clusterfuck that happened in 1991. The USSR didn't fall apart because of any goodwill, but it did fall apart because Gorbachev fucked up. Reagan deserves as much credit for this as Obama does for the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceleand in 2010. If you disagree, note that the burden of proof is on you here; and you're welcome to point out which specific effects of actions of Reagan's administration caused the collapse of the USSR, along with an explanation why much more severe hardships experienced by people of the USSR in the earlier decades did not.

avmich 4y ago
> Yeah right, because the USSR had never before gone through hardship, and it's the "bankruptcy" that led to ousting of Gorbachev in a coup after his reforms (including a de-facto Prohibition, in Russia of all places!). Hardship is something USSR went through many times - until it didn't. And there were many reasons, on many levels, why the situation in late 1980-s was bleak. What was with the oil prices at the time? > The USSR didn't fall apart because of any goodwill, but it did fall apart because Gorbachev fucked up. One of his phrases was "socialism with a human face". Before Gorbachev, Andropov tried to "rule as it should be done", but, as a popular joke states, "has proven that if you rule seriously, you can't live longer than a year". Stalinist times have ended, and more soft, Brezhnev-like ruling turned out to be too incapable. Gorbachev managed to do few mistakes, while trying to rule mostly well - and ended up with opening the country, in the form of many states, to the beneficial external world.
- romwell 4y ago
  I'm not saying that Gorbachev's ideals were flawed. It's the approach he took to putting them in place. In a way, he was putting "the human face" on socialism in the same hamfisted manner that the "should be done" socialism was pushed down people's throats before. His bright idea to solve the alcoholism problem by having a Prohibition 2.0 is a prime example. What with the oil prices? Forget that, look at the vodka prices. That's solely on Gorbachev. And it worked as well as you'd expect. https://www.nytimes.com/1985/08/27/world/soviet-liquor-prices-up-in-drive-on-alcoholism.html https://www.nytimes.com/1985/08/27/world/soviet-liquor-price...

ajsnigrutin 4y ago

> not because the US policy forced them into bankruptcy what?! It was pretty much the USSR policies that forced them into bankrupcy.... as it did in every other socialist state. source: am from another former socialist country, that also doesn't exist anymore.

avmich 4y ago
US definitely were helping to bankrupt... but then just before the putsch in August 1991 USA got really worried that USSR will split in parts, and the nightmare of managing relations with multiple nuclear states led them to support Gorbachev and USSR, until it actually broke. Then the work of gathering all nuclear armaments into one state - Russia - was going on, along with support of Russian scientists (lest them go to places like Iran and help them with their projects). That's one of the big reasons we have ISS now...
flavius29663 4y ago
Maybe you're not aware how much the USSR was spending on defense, espionage, space programs...By the end of the decade they ended up spending 14% of the GDP on military, trying to keep up with the US