A race of quasi criminals from the U.S. in 1991 started this.
Many were newly-minted M.B.A.s from the Ivy League. They joined with hedge funders, established banks, and the U.S. Department of State and went looking for all the former Soviet Union's nomenklatura -- to pour U.S. investment dollars into them.
A race of quasi criminals from the U.S. in 1991 started this.
Many were newly-minted M.B.A.s from the Ivy League. They joined with hedge funders, established banks, and the U.S. Department of State and went looking for all the former Soviet Union's nomenklatura -- to pour U.S. investment dollars into them.
So the most corrupt were able to seize all that country's most valuable assets. The new oligarch class arose. As they'd stolen all the public resources, they also defunded the once-proud health care system, and installed sycophant cronies atop all the universities. Epidemics of tuberculosis, alcoholism, and suicide among middle aged men swept the land.
It was the model of U.S. high finance chicanery that infected the new corrupt in Russia to its arrogance -- the same lickspittle allegiance to warmonger Putin as MAGA has for its Trump.
The same hate-filled nationalism tinged with idiot religious zealotry.
I think you are on-target about the pre-corporate rape of Russia. Reminds me of the questionable thinking I encountered in Iraq in setting up a government structure so culturally discordant that it was bound to fail. When other suggestions, more in line with Middle Eastern history (e.g., bringing the sixty largest tribes into a House of Lords proposed by a colleague) these highly educated dummasses laughed and said, "It's just not the way we do it." Unfortunately, the Russian culture of authoritarian belligerence dates back to three centuries of Mongol rule. That is hard to fathom and nullify.
David Halberstam recorded some of its chapters in "The Best and the Brightest."
Mark Twain got more in "Innocents Abroad."
Is it a side-show of democracy -- that we have to accept that rubes, ridge-runners, barbarians, yahoos, flim-flam artists, and fictional families Amberson, Snopes, Hubbard, Kane, Stark and more will also run with their freedom?
A race of quasi criminals from the U.S. in 1991 started this.
Many were newly-minted M.B.A.s from the Ivy League. They joined with hedge funders, established banks, and the U.S. Department of State and went looking for all the former Soviet Union's nomenklatura -- to pour U.S. investment dollars into them.
So the most corrupt were able to seize all that country's most valuable assets. The new oligarch class arose. As they'd stolen all the public resources, they also defunded the once-proud health care system, and installed sycophant cronies atop all the universities. Epidemics of tuberculosis, alcoholism, and suicide among middle aged men swept the land.
It was the model of U.S. high finance chicanery that infected the new corrupt in Russia to its arrogance -- the same lickspittle allegiance to warmonger Putin as MAGA has for its Trump.
The same hate-filled nationalism tinged with idiot religious zealotry.
I think you are on-target about the pre-corporate rape of Russia. Reminds me of the questionable thinking I encountered in Iraq in setting up a government structure so culturally discordant that it was bound to fail. When other suggestions, more in line with Middle Eastern history (e.g., bringing the sixty largest tribes into a House of Lords proposed by a colleague) these highly educated dummasses laughed and said, "It's just not the way we do it." Unfortunately, the Russian culture of authoritarian belligerence dates back to three centuries of Mongol rule. That is hard to fathom and nullify.
It's an old history, Ned.
David Halberstam recorded some of its chapters in "The Best and the Brightest."
Mark Twain got more in "Innocents Abroad."
Is it a side-show of democracy -- that we have to accept that rubes, ridge-runners, barbarians, yahoos, flim-flam artists, and fictional families Amberson, Snopes, Hubbard, Kane, Stark and more will also run with their freedom?