Because, Russia

[BansheeOne]

[bojan]

Guy with two AKs instead of two PKMs, and there is no back flipping hatchet throwing, so standards are obviously slipping.

[Ssnake]

I demand PKMs with hatchet bayonets chained into Nunchucks of Cosmic Awesomeness.

[Stuart Galbraith]

No hoop of fire, no grenade juggling, no Chihuahua throwing, is clear Western fake.

[BansheeOne]

Cut those guys some slack, they're just peace troops celebrating one year of cease-fire in Azerbaijan, not super-hardened spetsnaz squirrels. 😁

[Stuart Galbraith]

They are letting the side down, Im expecting 20 foot tall soviet stronkmen, not superghey MC Hammer Fans.

[BansheeOne]

[Stuart Galbraith]

 

[bd1]

at local mil. board a soviet airborne vet remembered how they used to prepare the bricks for obligatory headsmashing/fist punch-brick-pulverizing public events - brick-to-water-deep-freezer-heat-up-water-deep-freezer-heat-up , till ´´toddlers fart will blow it up´´ as he put it🙂

[Roman Alymov]

2 hours ago, bd1 said:

at local mil. board a soviet airborne vet remembered how they used to prepare the bricks for obligatory headsmashing/fist punch-brick-pulverizing public events - brick-to-water-deep-freezer-heat-up-water-deep-freezer-heat-up , till ´´toddlers fart will blow it up´´ as he put it🙂

That is indication of paratroopers are actually not as dumb as other branches of Russian Army usually believe them )

[bd1]

hehe, if that would be true, they would use movie prop vodka bottles for VDV day. or are they already?

😃

Edited November 19, 2021 by bd1

[Stuart Galbraith]

If they want to look Stronk and manly Soviet Stronk, they should do what Western Soldiers do, go into the pub and drink everyone else under the table.

But I like the hoops of fire, they should probably do that in the pub as well.

[MiloMorai]

Russia blows up a satellite, creating a dangerous debris cloud in space - The Verge

This morning, Russia destroyed one of its own satellites with a ground-based missile, creating thousands of pieces of debris that have spread out into Earth orbit, according to the US State Department. The US has identified more than 1,500 trackable pieces of debris from the event, and many thousands of smaller ones that cannot be traced, Ned Price, a spokesperson for the State Department, said during a briefing.

The news comes amid reports from Russia’s space agency Roscosmos that the astronauts living on board the International Space Station had to shelter in place this morning due to a cloud of space debris that seems to be passing by the station every 90 minutes, the time it takes for the ISS to orbit the Earth.

[Roman Alymov]

Not only Kalashnikov drills....

 

[sunday]

So, Girls und Panzer was a documentary...

[Roman Alymov]

1 hour ago, sunday said:

So, Girls und Panzer was a documentary...

It is spinoff, Girls and Locomotives

[sunday]

Oh, an automatic coupler, my bad! 😄

[bd1]

8 hours ago, Roman Alymov said:

Not only Kalashnikov drills....

 

this would be a good one for caption contest 

 

- mine  - ´´you may of course just serve tea in Transsiberian Railway, but its a good idea to know how trains work if you happen to be the train crew´s lone  survivor after attack of pack of wild bears´, da´´

Edited November 26, 2021 by bd1

[Roman Alymov]

MiG-31 rolled out of runway near Nozny Novgorod, crew survived. Initial report was "minor damage" but i'm affraid it is too optimistic.....

[Roman Alymov]

 

[Roman Alymov]

Unfortunatelly we do not have "Because, USSR" so i would put it here

Who and how did the USSR collapse? About V. Zubok's book "Collapse"

Review

Now it seems that the Soviet Union has collapsed rapidly - it has rotted from top to bottom for a long time, so when they touched it a little, everything immediately crumbled. But when you read a detailed analysis of 1990-1991, you realize that a huge amount of time has passed between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Belovezhskaya Agreements, during which nothing has been done to somehow fix the situation.

More than 30 years have passed since the collapse of the USSR, and our ideas about this event – or rather, the process – remain surprisingly vague. In Russia, explanations of what happened are still reduced to two legends with slight variations. To the white legend about how the good Gorbachev gave people freedom, and the country itself collapsed because it was doomed to collapse. And the black legend about how the evil Gorbachev, either through stupidity or greed, turned into a puppet in the hands of the Americans, with which they destroyed the Soviet Union in order to win the Cold War.

It would seem that the collapse of the USSR is not God knows what antiquity, many have witnessed it themselves, and it should not be particularly difficult to find out the real picture. But it is precisely this proximity that prevents us from perceiving it as history. The attitude towards perestroika, democratization, Gorbachev and Yeltsin turns into an object of faith, an obligatory element of political beliefs and even a criterion for assessing moral character, which is poorly compatible with an unbiased analysis.

In the introduction to his book "Collapse. The collapse of the Soviet Union" Vladislav Zubok admits that he found the turn of the 1980s and 1990s already at a conscious age and closely followed what was happening, but his research of those times was published quite recently - at the end of 2021. Only now the ideological attitudes and emotions around what happened have begun to fade into the background, allowing an objective look at the causes and consequences of the decisions taken at that time and to assess their impact on the course of history.

 

Oil and Doom

"Collapse" cannot be called a polemical book. Rather, on the contrary, the author tries to describe and analyze what is happening from the most non-partisan positions, simply based on common sense. But the controversy about the last years of the USSR sits so deeply in the head of any Russian reader that the most impartial description is still perceived as a debunking of popular myths - and myths both apologetic and demonizing.

Debunking does not happen in a passionate argument, but by itself, as a by-product of a clear picture of events. The circumstances of x led to the decision of y, which gave rise to the consequences of z, and in these logical equations there is no place for world conspiracies or noble asceticism.

There are more than 400 pages in the book, and it would be pointless to retell even the most important things here – it is worth reading it in full, at least in order to understand where many of today's problems have grown from. But we can try to briefly list those myths about the collapse of the USSR that this study dispels.

Most of them are connected with the figure of Gorbachev, the man whose decisions most influenced the course of events. Actually, the description of the scale of this influence is already a challenge that the book throws at popular ideas that Mikhail Sergeyich got a doomed country from the very beginning. That the devastating legacy of stagnation and the collapse of world oil prices left him no room for maneuver, and he successfully managed to ensure that the imminent collapse at least did without a lot of blood.

Zubok carefully cites facts that paint a completely different picture. The USSR, headed by Gorbachev, was a country with a huge number of neglected problems, but the inept actions of the new Secretary General sharply aggravated these problems. Moreover, the issue of the Union's connectedness did not arise at all at the beginning of Gorbachev's rule and came to the fore only towards its end, primarily because of the ill-fated mixture of reforms and inaction of the Soviet leader.

It would seem that Gorbachev got into the Kremlin not from some closed greenhouse inside the Boulevard Ring, but honestly walked from the very bottom of numerous floors of the state machine. But paradoxically, he did not understand at all how the Soviet system works. This can be seen already by his first steps at the head of the country, like the idea of state acceptance. Specially created commissions of experts and workers had to control the products of state-owned enterprises in order to improve their quality. The new civil control, although it went back to Lenin's ideas, predictably began to reject everything left and right, because of which the deficit only intensified, and the undertaking had to be curtailed.

The failures of the first, so far cautious reforms did not confuse Gorbachev, and instead of analyzing the mistakes, he preferred to raise the stakes so that there would be no way back. If the state Acceptance could still be rewound, then subsequent economic reforms quickly became irreversible in their destructiveness.

The Soviet financial system was already monstrously inefficient, but Gorbachev made it unmanageable. He allowed the creation of commercial banks and cooperatives, removed the clear separation between non-cash subsidies and cash, but did not dare to at least simply raise Brezhnev's fixed prices even in wholesale trade between enterprises. All this very quickly led to the fact that cooperatives began to sell on the domestic and foreign markets what they bought for a song from state-owned enterprises, and the inflated money supply caused a deficit much more acute and total than in the worst years of stagnation.

Soviet statistics are rightly not trusted, but Zubok finds indicators in it that can reflect the results of Gorbachev's reforms. In 1986, 3.9 billion rubles were printed in the USSR, in 1987 - 5.9 billion, in 1988, when the reforms started, it was already 18.3 billion, in 1991 – 93.4 billion. And the official prices were not raised.

This dynamic - combined with the law on self-government of enterprises and other steps that destroyed state control over the economy - raises the question, was the fall in oil prices at the end of the 1980s so fatal? Of course, it added difficulties, but would high prices be of much use in a situation where the state itself has largely deprived itself of the opportunity to collect the oil revenues of self-governing enterprises to the central budget?

 

Alternatives to violence

The book deals an equally heavy blow to the image of Gorbachev as a ruler who never clung to power, putting democratic principles above. Gorbachev's sincere idealism, as well as his personal decency, are beyond doubt, but his relations with the government and democracy were more complicated.

In the political reform of the autumn of 1988, one can see a bold step towards freer elections, or one can see the largest party purge since Stalin, when more than 800,000 apparatchiks lost their posts in a year, and many departments were disbanded. This decision was made at a time when the failure of Gorbachev's reforms in the economy had already become obvious, and the dissatisfied party apparatus could think about changing the secretary general.

Gorbachev launched a preemptive strike against his opponents, while maintaining his own power turned out to be more important than the possible consequences of such a radical step. In the midst of a severe crisis, the Soviet leader, in fact, turned around the existing management system, giving power to collective demagogic bodies with a large proportion of random people – and all this in order to protect the ideals of perestroika, and at the same time his own post.

Despite the subsequent image of the giver of freedom, Gorbachev himself was in no hurry to take on the risks associated with it. Although he avoided even the most urgent unpopular decisions, such as price increases, he did not dare to take part in any free elections. In 1990-1991, this refusal proved fatal to the legitimacy of the central government in the eyes of Soviet society. While the republics were already ruled by democratically elected parliaments and presidents, Gorbachev was sitting in the Kremlin on bird rights, elected there by virtue of his previous position and by the vote of the semi-nomenklatura Supreme Council.

This unwillingness to play by his own rules leads us to another myth about Gorbachev's role in the collapse of the USSR. The myth that the only alternative was mass violence in the style of Yugoslavia. The falsity of this dichotomy becomes obvious if, following the author of the "Collapse", one takes a step back and thinks about how a situation could have developed when violence remained the only way to keep the republics in the USSR.

It can be said that Gorbachev saved the Soviet Union from the fate of Yugoslavia when he refused to use force against separatism. Or it could be that he dangerously brought the Soviet Union closer to repeating the fate of Yugoslavia, when he transferred many powers and democratic legitimacy to the level of the republics, and left the most unpopular, like economic reforms, to the center. Moreover, even the center could not exercise its remaining powers due to the indecision that seized Gorbachev in the last two years of the USSR's existence.

Back in 1988, even in the Baltic States, it was only about expanding autonomy, and in most republics there was no mass movement for independence in a matter of months before the collapse of the USSR. The general desire to break out of the Union was connected not so much with nationalism as with the inability of the Gorbachev center to stop the rapidly deepening economic crisis, and in general to do at least something intelligible.

The further away, the more the union center looked like a chaos generator, from which I wanted to be away and restore order at least in my corner. Nationalist slogans have become just a convenient form for this desire. Gorbachev himself drove the nomenclature into the field of nationalism when he decided to hold free elections precisely at the level of national autonomies, which were Soviet republics.

USA without illusions

In this ideal Soviet storm, the United States gains enormous influence, but does not really understand how to dispose of it. Leading Soviet politicians are ready to do almost anything for the sake of American favor, soft power in the USSR is off the scale, but the cautious Bush is afraid of sudden steps, stubbornly not believing his luck.

Zubok gives a detailed account of Washington's discussions on how the United States should better respond to the increasingly radical changes in the Soviet Union. And from these conversations it is clear that long before the collapse of the USSR, the changes in it surpassed the wildest dreams of Americans. It was not about Washington somehow directing or pushing the process, but on the contrary - managing to take control of the risks arising from the new events falling on it. To the point that at times it seems that Bush is most worried about the consequences of the collapse of the USSR.

The American leadership considered the collapse of the Union too dangerous and unpredictable an undertaking until the coup in August 1991. And paradoxically, it has made a lot of efforts to preserve the territorial integrity of its Cold War opponent. In the summer of 1991, Bush personally met with the leaders of the republics, persuading them to sign a new Union Treaty. It was far from a symbolic gesture – at that time, the word of the American president weighed much more in the eyes of the Soviet elite than the Soviet one.

There was a clear logic behind such support. Both Bush, Kohl, and other Western leaders were interested in Gorbachev remaining in power as long as possible, continuing his peaceful retreat, and too abrupt changes could provoke conservative revenge. And only after the GKChP, when it became clear that this revenge was an even more pitiful sight, the Americans began to seriously discuss what was more profitable for them - the preservation of a weak USSR or its collapse.

The episode with this discussion in early September 1991 is one of the most interesting in the book. Secretary Baker advocated the preservation of the Union out of fear that its rapid disintegration would turn into wars in the style of the Yugoslav wars that were then beginning. National Security adviser Scowcroft worried about the fate of nuclear weapons and that the Russians – the largest people of the USSR - would hate the United States for a long time if they contributed to the collapse of their country.

Defense Secretary Cheney reasoned differently: democratization in Russia is a reversible process, in just a few years the country may become authoritarian again and reconsider its enthusiastic attitude towards the United States, but the collapse of the USSR cannot be rewound. Therefore, it is better for the United States to be ready for any turns.

 

Part of this conversation is still classified, but we know without a transcript that both Baker and Scowcroft will go on a well-deserved rest after Bush Sr. loses the presidential election in the fall of 1992. And Cheney will be a vice president in the Bush administration in the 2000s.

Here the Americans can be accused of ingratitude: Gorbachev conceded everything to them and received nothing in return, and the Chinese Communists did not concede anything and received billions of American investments. But the state of affairs in the then USSR did not leave the United States with special opportunities for assistance, even if they had such a desire. Who exactly should I give money to in the chaos of the new Soviet institutions? Who will distribute them and according to what principles? Who should control the costs and ensure that American aid does not dissolve?

 

It was just another manifestation of Gorbachev's escapism – his idea that now he would come to an important compromise with the United States and the Americans would give him a lot of money in return, with which he would save the USSR. Another of his ways to convince himself that all is not lost and he will be able to steer. For several years, he poured out demands for tens of billions in front of Western leaders, but did not bother to specify to a minimum extent how exactly such an amount should pull the Soviet economy out of the crisis. Moreover, he could not clearly answer a simple question, and where did the several billions of aid already received from Germany for its unification go.

 

Problems of comprehension

The amazing intellectual helplessness and irresponsibility of the late Soviet elite is generally one of the most vivid impressions that the book leaves. It looks as if people who grew up in the provincial and closed world of the USSR have lost the ability to comprehend the surrounding reality. And this applies to everyone.

Gorbachev is seriously trying to find solutions to the problems of the 1980s in Lenin's writings. Here the heads of the power structures of the second superpower cannot figure out that it is impossible to leave soldiers in tanks on the streets of Moscow for several days without food, sleep and toilet. After the coup, Yeltsin joyfully signs the recognition of Estonia's independence without thinking about transit, military infrastructure, or the status of local Russians. Kravchuk listens to Bush's question about how Ukraine will be able to leave the USSR without settling economic relations with Russia, and seriously answers that there are no dangers here – the Ukrainian economy will flourish in any case on agricultural exports alone.

There is no alternative to this intellectual poverty - neither in the government nor in the opposition. The Politburo is afraid to object to Gorbachev's most reckless steps, because no one knows what to do. At the congresses, empty, detached from reality fantasies, reduced to self-admiration, pour for hours. No one has ever heard of feeling the limits of one's own competence. Specialists in the Italian Renaissance become presidential advisers, the heads of the Research Institute solve foreign policy issues, and the Russian delegation in the future of the OSCE offers such a dashing democratization of the world order that Americans are horrified.

How long the USSR existed in such an atmosphere leads us to the main myth that Zubok destroys in his book. Now it seems that the Soviet Union collapsed rapidly - it has long been rotten from top to bottom, so when they touched it a little, everything immediately crumbled. But when you read a detailed analysis of 1990-1991, you realize that a huge amount of time has passed between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Belovezhskaya Agreements, during which nothing has been done to somehow fix the situation. And it was this paralysis of will in the center that pushed the republics into independence.

Even in the last two years of its existence, the USSR most of the time does not look doomed to collapse, but, on the contrary, impresses with its vitality, although everything has already collapsed around and inside - the socialist camp, the economy, and the ability of the center to solve something. In 1990 and even in 1991, there are a huge number of points where events could have gone a little differently, and the collapse of the Union would have turned out to be much smoother, less painful, or even would not have happened at all for most republics.

When you finish reading "Collapse", you realize that it is no coincidence that American intelligence and analysts could not predict the collapse of the USSR. The event seemed so unthinkable that even Yeltsin, Kravchuk and Shushkevich in Belovezhskaya Pushcha did not quite believe that they would be able to dissolve the Union. A rare combination of circumstances had to be seasoned with a huge amount of narcissism, lack of will and ignorance, and then boiled in this form for several years to make it possible.

"Collapse" is written in English, although Vladislav Zubok was born and raised in Moscow, studied at Moscow State University. Such a choice can be understood. In principle, English is good for a systematic and detached description, and in the painful issue of the collapse of the USSR, it is doubly good. But I would like to hope that the Russian translation of the book will eventually appear – an event of such magnitude and such a force of influence today needs a clear explanation.

Yandex-translation from https://carnegie.ru/commentary/86339?fbclid=IwAR3WOTmVta6ApepOeGooTKOFYSKsxHAmP-WJHtGGKH8zABAxA_aezzSruWs

[sunday]

1 hour ago, Roman Alymov said:

It looks as if people who grew up in the provincial and closed world of the USSR have lost the ability to comprehend the surrounding reality.

There is a witty saying among theoretical scientists: "Never allow reality contradict a good theory". It could be the motto of the late USSRs' nomenklatura, apparently. In the 1980s people began referring to the USSR as the "empire of lies". The two things could be related, and if that same nomenklatura did really believe their own lies, downfall was going to happen, more sooner than later.

Faced with that a Christian can not do anything but remember that bit of the Gospel of St. John, 8:32:

Quote

You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free

Unfortunately for us Westerners, the same kind of self delusion is gaining ground among our ruling classes, and not only in social issues like LGBetc., wokeism, critical race theory..., but also in more scientific issues like global warming or the reaction to the covid pandemic.

More unfortunately for the Western World, and fortunately for the People Republic of China, Xi and his band of merry boys do not seem to be afflicted with that.

Neither is Putin.

[bd1]

 i will try to find this book , thanks for  posting

 

but this part 

Quote

It was just another manifestation of Gorbachev's escapism – his idea that now he would come to an important compromise with the United States and the Americans would give him a lot of money in return, with which he would save the USSR. Another of his ways to convince himself that all is not lost and he will be able to steer. For several years, he poured out demands for tens of billions in front of Western leaders, but did not bother to specify to a minimum extent how exactly such an amount should pull the Soviet economy out of the crisis. Moreover, he could not clearly answer a simple question, and where did the several billions of aid already received from Germany for its unification go.

is oddly similiar to putin´s current acting. 

[Roman Alymov]

56 minutes ago, bd1 said:

 i will try to find this book , thanks for  posting

 

but this part 

is oddly similiar to putin´s current acting. 

I'm affraid endless demands for help is typical for another country, not Russia  This country even pretend to be in war with Russia

[Roman Alymov]

1 hour ago, sunday said:

There is a witty saying among theoretical scientists: "Never allow reality contradict a good theory". It could be the motto of the late USSRs' nomenklatura, apparently. In the 1980s people began referring to the USSR as the "empire of lies". The two things could be related, and if that same nomenklatura did really believe their own lies, downfall was going to happen, more sooner than later.

I think the key is not believing or not believing, but false feeling of security. Unlike generations of Lenin and Stalin times, who fought through real troubles like revolution struggle, world wars, civil war etc. against real enemies who can’t be stopped by quotation from classics of Marxism-Leninism, people who were in charge of USSR in 1980th truly believed nothing bad could happen whatever they do – USSR was nuclear superpower nobody would attack without committing suicide, economy was massive, population way more educated than in 1940th not mentioning 1920th….. To some extent, they were living in “End of history” world, much resembling contemporary US politicians.