I think you would be much improved if you went and fucked yourself repeatedly.

Couldn't say without context. Can you describe the mistake you had made?

The collapse of the communism in Eastern Europe and the Collapse of the Soviet Union was caused by Gorbachav. He instituted Prerestroika and Glasnost. As he admitted himself, he loosened the bonds a little and the whole thing fell apart. Why did he institute his reforms? According to him the massive military build up by the US left him (and the politburo) with no options. In order to match the US expenditures and maintain the Soviet standard of living he needed a stronger economy so that is why he came up with Prerastroika. In order to counter the Reagan Administrations constant and unrelentless criticism of his regime in the eyes of the world he had to institute Glasnost. Glasnost and Prerastroika were also supposed to create synergy. He insituted these reforms to save Socialism and the Soviet Union and it had just the opposite effect. For once can't liberals just give credit where credit is due. What more evidence do you need?

Um I thought you people all were pro Reagan on this. I am more likely to credit Gorby and his cute birthmark than the Pope or Reagan.

It is good to see that your lecture mode personality is back at the helm.

More Good News
 

I don't think Wolfie is going to schwelch anything. Once he is away from the straight jacket of the administration I think the World Banks criticisms of US Fiscal Policy will increase. The World Bank shines its light on the cockroaches no matter what country they are in. That is why you have to love the world bank and why most world leaders loathe it. I think Wolfie's biggest problem is his mouth, and that is why he will fit in so well with the World Bank culture.

More Good News
 

squelch. it is not a yiddish word.

Not to be all lawyerly and shit, but you haven't identified any evidence yet. I'm happy to take a look at whatever you've got.

The stuff I was quoting from earlier today was from U.S. government sources, and it turns out that you can write a fairly complete account of what happened in Eastern Europe in the 1980s without mentioning U.S. military spending. Solidarity predated glasnost and perestroika.

And there is no doubt that Soviet communism was in trouble by the mid-1980s, even if few in the West could perceive it. Gorbachev did. He came to power because it was clear that the approach of the prior generation (Yuri Andropov, anyone? Konstantin Chernenko?) wasn't going to cut it. Attributing this to the marginal additional expenditures that Reagan backed -- remember that the build-up started under Carter -- seems to me to be trying just a little too hard to take credit. Hey, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan all by themselves.

eta:

My Google Fu is not strong enough to find whatever it is you think Gorby said. Instead, CNN's profile of him says that he was trying to opt out of the arms race, not to keep up:

• Gorbachev finally rose to the top party spot in March 1985. Almost from the start, he strove for significant reforms, so that the system would work more efficiently and more democratically. Hence the two key phrases of the Gorbachev era: "glasnost" (openness) and "perestroika" (reform). Hoping to shift resources to the civilian sector of the Soviet economy, Gorbachev also began to argue in favor of an end to the arms race with the West.

There was a Frontline series called. "Commanding Heights" on PBS. It is also a book. In it they interviewed Gorbachav, Weinberger, Schultz, Regan etc. In Gorbachave's interview he explains why he instituted Prerastroika and Glasnost. In it Schultz and Weinberger also claim that they new that massive US military buildup would undermine the Soviet Economy. The series also traces economic policy in various countrys (including Britain, the US, Chile, France etc) and shows the results of those economic policies. It goes into intense detial about how Pinochet hired a bunch of Economists from the University of Chicago (who were all Friedman clones) what they did to Chile and how it worked out. Many people would benefit greatly from watching thise series. You can order directly from PBS's website.

I have seen perestroika and glasnost explained many times in ways that do not refer to Ronald Reagan or his defense budgets. But if Schultz and Weinberger both took credit for the collapse of the USSR after the fact, then it must be true.

Damn liberal media.

For Hank
 

Picture of the Day on the elevator was an Iraqi soldier dancing to celebrate the election of Talabani as Iraqi President. Just to let you know our elevators seem to be bias-free. Oh, and while it's not a Pulitzer, I'm sure it is a significant honor to be Picture of the Day in our elevators.

Them taking credit was butressed just a little when they showed Gorbachav saying that the US military Buildup forced him into Prerastroika. They also gave the credit to Casey who told them to do it. They just followed his advice.

I believe this is the second post in which you've misused "new". Maybe it shouldn't, but this affects my ability to take your points very seriously. FYI. FWIW. NTTAWWT. and etc.


(how's that for constructive criticism, Hank?)

earlier you quoted this:

• In 1985, the assumption of power in the Soviet Union by a reformer, Mikhail Gorbachev, paved the way for political and economic reforms in east central Europe. Gorbachev abandoned the "Brezhnev Doctrine"--the Soviet Union's policy of intervening with military force, if necessary, to preserve communist rule in the region.

Are you asserting that the USSR's change to this doctrine was wholly independent of US military spending and, more specifically the reality that their resources were being directed towards nuclear arms and technology rather than ground forces (to the extent they still had resources to spend combined with the specter that, were they to have continued this doctrine, they likely would have revealed their military for the shell of its former self that it had become (whether by its own incompetence or NATO reaction)?

And even if you don't go that far, empty stomachs make for unhappy comrades. Do you think that USSR's diversion of resources to the military perhaps had an effect on what else it was (or really was not) able to provide its citizens?

I respectfully submit that PBS's transcript of that interview does not reflect your recollection of it:

• The Impetus for Change in the Soviet Union
  
  INTERVIEWER: What was your diagnosis of what was wrong with the Soviet economy, and what did you hope to do about it?
  
  MIKHAIL GORBACHEV (via interpreter): Well, perestroika -- that is to say, restructuring of the Soviet system -- was not an idea born from scratch. It was not some revelation of mine or a dozen other people. It came about because our country, our society, which was a very well-educated society, one of the best educated societies, already rejected the system of total control, of suppressing dissidents and such like. The lack of freedoms was being rejected at the cultural level. The people had outgrown the system; that was quite clear. We knew what kind of country we had. It was the most militarized, the most centralized, the most rigidly disciplined; it was stuffed with nuclear weapons and other weapons. It was possible to do things in a way that could have led to civil war and to the destruction of the world. In a chaotic situation, one nuclear submarine could have caused havoc. So we had to act very seriously. So the domestic reasons for reform were very important, but just as important were personal and private reasons, because people felt unfree. They felt that they could not take the initiative, and that was extremely constraining for the individual.
  
  There were two other important aspects. The first was the structural changes in foreign countries. In the Soviet Union, those structural changes were being postponed or deferred indefinitely. And that was because our system was so cumbersome that it was not capable of reacting to the challenges of the science and technology revolution. Therefore it was clear that we needed to change. We needed to move toward new ways of management and decentralization. We needed to have plans only in major strategic areas to achieve certain major goals, but all the rest should be decentralized and done in accordance with the needs of the people and society. It was a shame, and I continue to say that it was a shame, that during the final years under Brezhnev, we were planning to create a commission headed by the secretary of the Central Committee, [Ivan V.] Kapitonov to solve the problem of women's pantyhose. Imagine a country that flies into space, launches Sputniks, creates such a defense system, and it can't resolve the problem of women's pantyhose. There's no toothpaste, no soap powder, not the basic necessities of life. It was incredible and humiliating to work in such a government. And so our people were already worked up, and that is why the dissident movement occurred.
  
  And in addition to open dissidence, people who protested openly, who demanded democracy, and demanded that the monopoly of the Communist Party be ended -- people who paid with their lives, who sometimes were imprisoned or had to spend time in mental hospitals -- in addition to that, there was a lot of similar sentiment among our scholars, scientists, and inventors who had many discoveries that were not used. And that kind of protest was also very important, because it affected all spheres of life at various levels. So their pressure, their memoranda played an important role. I remember under Andropov [Yuri; general secretary, 1982-84] we started to really consider those proposals. I still have a 110 memoranda from our outstanding scientists and others. They called for immediate reform.
  
  So our society was pregnant with the idea of reform. But there was also the international aspect of our problems. We could only solve our problems by cooperating with other countries. It would have been paradoxical not to cooperate. And therefore we needed to put an end to the Iron Curtain, to change the nature of international relations, to rid them of ideological confrontation and particularly to end the arms race.
  
  And another imperative, the number one question for the survival of mankind, something that we knew very well, if our arsenal and the American arsenal were to be used, we could destroy mankind 1,000 times over. You mentioned my first meeting with Margaret Thatcher in December 1984, when Chernenko [Konstantin; Gorbachev's immediate predecessor as general secretary] was still alive. I went to Britain and talked with Mrs. Thatcher for several hours. We had a very open dialogue and discussed this problem as well. I showed her a kind of diagram with 1,000 little squares, and every little square represented 1,000th of the nuclear weapons accumulated in the world by that time. And every square contained enough to destroy life on earth. So life on earth could be destroyed 1,000 times over, and the arms race continued. What could we destroy? We could destroy ourselves. So it took a new generation, a generation that was free of dogma; people of the postwar generation, men and women of the 1960s who were fired up by the 20th Congress of the Communist Party, Khrushchev's secret report, and the criticism of Stalin. The Soviet thaw, as you remember, [began] when people were leaving universities and starting active life. So those various movements and trends combined and resulted in a peaceful revolution, a peaceful change of leadership, and then the policy of perestroika.
  
  So that's how I would sum it up, sum it up briefly, because this was the most important analysis on the basis of which we decided whether we should start reforms, whether we should start perestroika. Starting reforms in the Soviet Union was only possible from above, only from above. Any attempt to go from below was suppressed, suppressed in a most resolute way. And therefore a reformist leadership was necessary, and that leadership came in 1985 when we started to lay down our plans for our country, perestroika and new thinking for the International Community. The new thinking postulated [that] we are one planet regardless of confrontations, ideological and physiological struggles; we are one planet, one human civilization. There are others living in the world, so why should we act in a way that could blow up our planet, our spaceship Earth? Writers, intellectuals, and others as a result of glasnost could speak out freely and openly, could call a spade a spade. This entire mechanism was set in motion, and as a result, in February 1986, less than a year after my coming to power in our country, at the 27th Congress of the Communist Party, we said as a result of summing up our thinking, our analysis, our conclusions, we stated that the world, even though there were many conflicts and contradictions, is interrelated, interdependent, and that the world is becoming increasingly a single whole. And if we are one, if we're all a single whole, if we are all mutually interdependent, then we must act differently. That was one of the most important points of departure in thinking about the future. It was very important for developing our plans, for developing domestic policies and particularly foreign policy.

Actually, he seems to have identified quite a few things apart from Reagan's defense budgets that prompted perestroika.