Was there any chance for Russia to become a liberal democracy after the dissolution of the USSR?
No. Russians were devastatingly mind-broken by the Mongol invasions and conquest. Since then, they only value strength from their leaders. Wisdom, justice, equality? There's no room for those. Just strength. That's why so many Russian soldiers currently and historically rape each other to place themselves higher in their AIDS-ridden hierarchy.
>>18458316maybe if Yeltsin wasn't a drunk retard
>>18458322I’ve heard the same golden horde cuck story ad nauseum on the internet. Sounds like historical determinism to me. There were liberal elements emerging in Russia in the aftermath of the breakup of the ussr. It’s just that they didn’t know how to run an economy after having a retarded economic system and the security services (FSB) had way too much power and influence.
yeltsin fucked it all up
>>18458332It's just trolling, unless it's delusional cope from southerners who actually got buckbroken harder by the Mongols, and then by the Lithuanians, the Poles, the Turks, the Muscovites, the Austrians, the Germans, etc, and then suddenly decided that their slavic shithole is genetically and culturally different because they say h instead of g and i instead of oafter the fall of the USSR it was too large to integrate into the western bloc under mutually acceptable terms, the post-Soviet elites wanted to inherit the USSR's geopolitical clout instead of calling it quits.Plus Russia is already a liberal democracy in form. It's just that in practice Putin and his clique have a chokehold on politics, if they can't find a successor then power might fracture enough for Russia to actually be democratic Also it was just in constant foreign crisis from the 90s, Chechnya, NATO expansion, Georgia, Syria, Ukraine. That constant conflict favors autocracy is a well-known fact
The dissolution of the USSR was just the transfer of power from the former government to the Military Industrial Complex. There was never any chance of Russia becoming a Democracy, it's an Oligarchy by design. The current Russian government is literally ran and controlled by members of the former Soviet Intelligence Community. The Soviet MIC profited the most from the Cold War, and the disillusionment of the USSR was just them maintaining their own status quo and protecting their own interests by taking control of the government.
>>18458316>It’s just that they didn’t know how to run an economyYeah. We know.
>>18458316very unlikely, even when they had a functioning democratic system people voted for individual leaders not parties or platforms. There was no democratic traditions or stability and this enabled the rise of a strong man.I think the most telling thing about the rise of Putin is the fact that if Russia had free and fair elections he would probably still win. He is what Russians want, for better or worse.
>>18458316It wasn't likely but technically there was. The odds were very against it, though. From the way the USSR attempted to liberalize, to the way it fell apart, to the way post-soviet Russia carried on. It all made that transition very unlikely. Though in fairness you could say the same for literally every Eastern bloc state bar maybe Hungary and Czechoslovakia. The main difference there being that those were actually assimilatable into the E.U. and for obvious reason Russia is not.
>>18458389But of course, the actual track records of said Eastern European countries are very spotty. Romania and its suspended elections cough cough.
>>18458371>The dissolution of the USSR was just the transfer of power from the former government to the Military Industrial ComplexThe USSR spent the most on defense. This is the most retarded post in the thread.
>>18458370After Putin dies, Russia will probably settle on a rotation of his former cronies, until the next the next strongman is able to purge the competition
>>18458316no. i think russian politics is dumb. they created bolshevism. then they created stalin. then they created gorbachevism. then they created putinism. very dumb people, the russian politicians. idiots.they have no capacity for liberalism. they are just like the imperial chinese.
>>18458407>The USSR spent the most on defense.Yes, I know, it went into the pockets of top military brass. They took advantage of Cold War paranoia to line their pockets which made them uniquely powerful within the Soviet Government. It was difficult to oppose them because they controlled the Red Army and because the government felt that defense was justified. The Soviet Military Industrial Complex had more sway over the government than Civilian Agencies did. Take the Soviet Space program for example, since it was a military agency and not a civilian one it meant most of its projects focused on military application, funding was being diverted from civilian science programs and into military projects like the Almaz program. The KGB and military ran the country. When the USSR fell, they simply took full authority over it.
>>18458496He’s so dreamy. Like imagine you’re Assad and he gives you that exact look like dude, come on now. I ain’t going to bat for you all the time even though I love you n what we have is special.
>>18458332>Sounds like historical determinism to me.just so happens everything is determined by something else, nothing happens without a reasonjust like anon crudely points out lib democracy couldn't take place in russia because of power structure which is derived from the russian social contract which is derived from inherent nature of the russian raceso while in theory sure russia could have become a western-type democracy but in practice it would have had to be a very different russia
No. Democracy is incompatible with Russians.
No.The idea of liberal democracy is that you give the proles nominal concessions, like legal equality, in exchange for ending feudalism, while the bourgeoisie takes real power from the nobility.You can't do that in a post-socialist state, because proles have seen what socialism means, have too much power, and will just vote you out if you try to go counter-revolutionary (as Russians did in 1996, for all the good it did them) so the bourgeoisie can't assume power without combining it with some form of authoritarian rule.
NoRussians have this Spartan mindset that poverty makes them stronger than their wealthier rivals, so the First World is theirs for the taking and that war is ultimately a test of national willpower. The Russians also take pride in finding moments of joy in otherwise miserable situations. When combined with alcohol, prostitutes, and music; they find themselves elated and persisting in their aggressive expansion. Death is ultimately martyrdom for a greater cause and each Russian believes in being immortalized as a form of saint/hero if they simply keep up the commitment with public zeal
>>18458668then why did over 1 million russians flee the country when they started doing mobilizations for the ukraine war?
>>18458668This. Russian mentality is a death cult and thinking being a slave is ok.>>184587211 million out of 140.
Theoretically yes, but in practice they fucked up so many things that it was extremely unlikely.>bungle up the privatization>create a class of extremely politically powerful oligarchs>while leaving most people so concerned about daily survival that they don’t have time or energy to ponder about democratic ideals>after all the political saber-rattling, end up in a presidential system with weak parliament, at that point it was truly ogre>this all would have made it all difficult enough already, but then on top of that, we’re talking about Russians who have strongman cult embedded in their culture, have strong revanchical tendencies, and NEVER lesrn from their historical mistakes
>>18458332The Mongol theory is overblown I think. They didn't really venture or settle into Russia proper.In general Russians are not that ideological, enthusiastic, or nationalist but they support Putin (even if they don't have a great opinion about Russia as a state) because if what he's doing starts to slide, it will just destroy any legitimacy of anything in a really nasty manner very fast. The entire discourse around mobilization during the war is incredible in this regard, like Russians talking about how the army is sending them in without training or supplies and getting them murdered, "but Vladimir Vladimirovich... you promised us that everything will be fine, that we will not be deployed to frontlines..." and people even presenting parts of Putin's speeches to military recruitment officers as their argument even though no formal documents on the topics exist.
>>18458392>Romania and its suspended elections cough cough.What about them?The candidate's campaign was illegal electorally, and that was visible from space.
>>18458764The russian people should and could have done something when FSB insiders led by Litvinenko outed the FSB in 1998 for corruption, extortion, and murder. Do Russians just not know how to protest?
>>18459175People at the 90s cared mostly about having something to eat and not get mugged or starve on the streets
>>18459290Yeah, it can’t be overstated how fatal is was for democracy development that living conditions in 90s were absolute shit, it conditioned Russians to a mentality of ”as long as country becomes more stable, I don’t give a shit about anything else”. Hence, because economy stabilized in the esrly years of Putin’s reign, people were too happy with that to care about their civil liberties.If the 90s weren’t so fucky, it’s possible that Russians could have evolved into higher tier of Maslow’s hierarchy by having more room to think about things like democracy and liberties. And don’t get me wrong, I fucking loathe the Vatnik mentality of Russians and it’s possible and even likely that they could have fucked up it all even if conditions were better, but now the circumstances absolutely helped the slide back to authoritarian rule.
>>18458721>why are there exceptions to the rule
>>18458764Shock therapy economics is just as retarded as communist revolution. Economies require steady slow change so people can gradually adapt, not sudden massive changes that leave millions without work and no means to pay rent and buy food for their children
