[mopsi]

Since your post is dead already, I'll respond here:

  > speaking as someone who has an interest in history 

If you have interest in history, then why are you clinging to the meme-level Soviet boomer grudges? It's strange to see the USSR mismanage itself to the brink of starvation and then watch Russians blame foreign governments, who to the best of their abilities provided aid and expertise to help find a way out of that situation.

Sure, you can say that their advice was often misguided, but as much as Yeltsin was shocked to see what a regular western supermarket looked like, Europeans and Americans were shocked to see the poverty of the USSR and couldn't even fully grasp that kind of life. You can entertain our western friends by describing how plastic bags with foreign logos like Sony or Adidas were treated like luxury items in the USSR in the 1980s and carefully folded and stored after every use, or how it was children's chore to cut up newspapers for toilet paper because that's the best many could access; or how it was common even for the best and brightest engineers to put in a full day of work, and then go and work on small plots of land in the evening to grow food for their families. It was an unbelievable shithole.

The difficulties that followed the dissolution of the USSR were of your own making, in no way limited to Russia alone. To survive, the entire former USSR and the Eastern Bloc had to pivot overnight to producing something globally useful instead of milling screws at artificial prices for the now-extinct Soviet arms industry. Most swallowed their pride, did what needed to be done, and ultimately saw a meteoric rise in living standards.

Russians turned out to be pussies who balked at the first difficulties and allowed the KGB dinosaurs who had led the USSR into disaster to crawl back and take the lead again. And by the look of it, Russia is heading toward a rerun of the late 1980s and early 1990s, bogged down in pointless wars as its economy rapidly deteriorates.

The narratives you've thrown around are a cheap cope, assigning blame for Russia's failure to modernize to external actors. All of us who lived in the USSR and its aftermath and have an IQ above room temperature know that it is unfiltered bullshit. What interests me is why you cling to it. What would happen if you let go of the victimhood narratives and actually faced the fact that Russians fucked up the ample opportunities they had?

It's the same with the current war against Ukraine, which was lost in the first three weeks, and now is just a meatgrinder with no prospect of success. Why is it so difficult to admit that you fucked up, and let it go? The narratives about coups, Kyiv neo-nazis etc are all obvious cope, and quite pathetic as such. Nobody's forcing you to hold these views in Germany, so why do you hold them?

[alexejb]

> All of us who lived in the USSR [...]

Interesting where are you from and how old are you?

> The narratives about coups, Kyiv neo-nazis etc are all obvious cope, and quite pathetic as such.

The narratives about the benevolent West reaching out it's hand to help and framing every perspective which contradicts yours as "victimhood" (your post history) is also quite pathetic.

> Nobody's forcing you to hold these views in Germany, so why do you hold them?

Free will? My own opinion? Gut feeling? Literature? Culture? Personal history and experiences? Nobody is forcing you to spew russophobia, insults and outright NAFO propaganda but here you are.

[mopsi]

  > The narratives about the benevolent West reaching out it's hand to help and framing every perspective which contradicts yours as "victimhood" (your post history) is also quite pathetic.

But that is exactly that - strange Russian victimhood. The entire USSR and the Eastern Bloc went through a societal collapse, yet Russians treat it as an exceptional event that affected only them and believe it was an intentional humiliation.

Enough time has passed that people who were in top leadership positions at the time have retired, and their memoirs and internal documents have been published. None of these sources show any such intentions, quite the opposite, people like Swedish PM Carl Bildt were scared stiff of potential humanitarian disasters and millions of potential refugees and they did everything they could to stabilize the socio-economic conditions in the former USSR. I vividly remember the photo of the first western cargo ship with a grain shipment in the port of Leningrad, and the celebratory tone that accompanied the photo in the newspaper. Now it's suddenly all forgotten.

Instead of getting credit for their hard work, they are blamed for the fact that Russians fucked up the USSR to the point that it was on the verge of starvation.

  > Free will? My own opinion? Gut feeling? Literature? Culture? Personal history and experiences?

Arguments like "coup in Kyiv" are demonstrably false. Only ignorance can defend them.

[alexejb]

> The narratives about coups, Kyiv neo-nazis etc are all obvious cope

Here you go, chapter 2.4: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/396694016_The_Russi...

coups, nazis, us-meddling...

[wiseowise]

> The Yanukovych treason trial revealed various witness testimonies and other evidence that he fled from Kyiv and then Ukraine not because of his responsibility for the Maidan massacre but because of a number of assassination attempts by the Maidan forces, in particular the far right, and after their attempts to capture him and his residence near Kyiv and likely execute him (Katchanovski, 2020, 2023a). Witnesses testified at the Yanukovych treason trial that right after the Maidan massacre the presidential motorcade was shot at a checkpoint, which was manned by activists with Right Sector and Svoboda flags and that the bullets hit one of the cars and a gun of one of the Yanukovych bodyguards. Helicopter pilots, who flew Yanukovych in Ukraine after the massacre, testified that the air traffic controllers relayed them an order from Maidan leaders to land the helicopter with Yanukovych under threat of its being shot-down by military planes. The witness testimonies also referred to information received by his security personnel about a plan involving Svoboda activists to assassinate him during a congress in Kharkiv where he flew after the Maidan massacre, and then on the road near Melitopol (See Eks-okhoronets’, 2018; Katchanovski, 2020, 2023a).

Lmaooo, who the fuck is this guy, I want to smoke what he smokes.

Was so afraid for his life that you can see more than 10 packed bags, family and multiple pets in the open.

https://youtu.be/DzG6V4PSfa0?si=7y6Wkakg3_hhOU8L

That’s all you need to know about credibility of his opus. It bears as much resemblance to reality as Tom Clancy’s novels.