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this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2023
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Well...
For the equal partner bit they'd probably have had to respect election results and stop murdering political rivals.
And that would just be a step too far.
Barely. They were in the G8. Even after being kicked out trade kept going as normal, new pipelines were being built, nuclear power plants were being shut down because who needs a fallback?
Saudi Arabia gets full honors on the international stage, despite publicly executing people for criticizing the government or having independent thought, and cutting up a journalist in a consulate abroad.
Blood money is still money!
Tee shirt worthy statement
"Blood money's still green!"
Unless it's red...
~~I assume they'd just launder it at some point.~~
Not too sure about that. We're pals-y with plenty of authoritarian states. Even in the late 2000s and early 2010s we were so desperate to include Russia, corruption and authoritarianism and all, in the international order.
Above everything, you can get in good with the current international order simply by not making trouble for other countries. Russia, apparently, couldn't abide by even that minor restriction.
Honestly if Russia didn't do a full scale invasion and just annexed the lands they were originally aiming for I think the west would have probably ignored it like all their other activities in the region.
I suspect the irritation over the previous annexation of Crimea and Ukraine's increasingly pro-Western orientation would have led to a Western response even if the invasion wasn't full scale, but it's certainly not impossible that the West would've prioritized keeping things 'calm' over protecting Ukraine's sovereignty in such a scenario.
This is not historically accurate
As long as they kept it to murdering political rivals within the country they would have been fine.
Everybody still does business with PRC, Saudi Arabia, etc
Outside the country was fine too.
Absolutely was not fine...
And what Britain did? Brexit is not a valid answer.
Eh. Through the history of the 90s, it looked like they might have a shot at establishing a free and stable democracy.
Then privatization and mishandled foreign aid created their oligarchs, quality of life fell through the floor in basically all the post-Soviet states, people got mad, tired, and scared, Putin stepped in to "stabilize the situation"— Then the politicians and journalists started dying, crazy siloviks and vatniks fully captured what was left of their political institutions I guess, and now they're doing a lot of evil murder and various interesting atrocities.
There might have been/probably were underlying cultural factors that made it impossible for Russia to ever stabilize as a "normal" country at that point. But those are hard to see from an outside perspective, and I guess they're probably pretty hard to see from inside as well.
Also 2000-2011 was time of "I'm outside of politics" and "let serious people handle situation" propaganda. Kinda also why war happened.
Also a lot of human rights violation that was done with help of "democratic" states, like DPI systems from Israel, theater of security from US and general surveliance from around the world(mostly US, Turkey and Israel).
It got even worse than during Soviet time, because back then there were no option for nomenclature to send kids abroad for better quality of life while enshittify quality of life domestically.
I think first thing after baning "remote digital voting" should be calling FSB criminal organization, lustrations and publishing of everything in archives without exception.
Yeah. Vlad Vexler (and Perun too) talks a lot about the engineered depoliticization of the Russian people, post-truth paralysis I guess, and the "Let serious people handle it" type of thinking. Pretty alien to me in a Western country, at that scale... But at the same time feels so familiar too, because you meet people in personal life too who do awful things or let awful things happen because it's more comfortable for them to stick their head in the sand.
Nothing makes what Russia is doing to Ukraine and to Ukrainian people today okay. But at the same time, when I read of the history of the 90s and early 2000s, I get the sense that that was probably our best chance for a better world, and "we" really dropped the ball there— "We" meaning "the West", I suppose, simply because the West was in a massive position of power at that point— Not our responsibility to fix Russia, but a missed opportunity for everyone. Doing nothing might have been a better option than accidentally propping up the Chubais Clique, shock therapy and oligarchs and undermining democracy. …Poor Albania, too (and Ukraine too, of course).
…"Remote digital voting". Wow. I had no idea that was even a thing. It looks like there's barely any English-speaking news about it, and not even an English Wikipedia page. Scary— Should be scary, but also utterly unsurprising on some level… Almost feels inconsequential next to everything else, tiring.
Maybe I'm just jaded by the situation in the US where they/we have (mostly) public archives and data, but people just ignore that information because it's boring and so they latch on to politically and emotionally convenient narratives instead, but part of me thinks "publishing of everything in archives without exception" would just be ignored, or even weaponized for new types of autocratizing propaganda, especially in the looming global-cultural trust-apocalypse of LLMs— You sound politically and morally engaged and passionate, and I guess I think/have been learning it's an easy mistake for people like that to make to imagine that if everyone had access to the same information, then surely we would mostly be in agreement, when in reality I guess a lot of people just don't care, or have different values that they're starting from, even if you give them access to full information— But I suppose the truth being available, even if it still ends up ignored, is still a qualitatively and transformatively morally and practically better state of being than the truth being hidden.
You sound like you're personally familiar with this stuff. Sorry about it, I guess. Oh, and I'm curious what do you think about "Vlad Vexler Chat" channel on Youtube? What he says seems to line up and resonate with reality, causality, and empathy to my view, but I don't actually know and can't actually say. Would you say he's usually on point in assessing and explaining the state of the Russian government, people, and political climate?
I forgot to mention three-days voting! When city falls asleep mafia wakes up. Nobody knows what happens to baloots during night.
Story time. It was introduced in few districts of Moscow during elections in local parlament. During voting everything seemd fine(as in everyone knew that administrative resource - teachers, public sector workers - were heavily "recommended" to vote remotely), but when voting ended there were no results. Hour passed - no results. Day ended, every physical station uploaded final protocols - no results. Results came only next day at 14 or 16 MSK. In most districts ДЭГ turned results from opposition win, to UR win. I still remember refreshing CEC website and then after dinner seeing as Yuneman(opposition, strong campaign) hundreds of votes ahead of Rusetskaya(UR, expensive campaign) and communist(weak campaign, but on par with Rusetskaya) was turned into Rusetskaya 18 votes ahead. Not surprising, considering system was managed by city hall(mayor). Oh, and mental alysium voted 100% UR.
During 2021 federal parlament voting two systems worked at same time: Moscow and federal. Moscow(one of most protest voting city) same as before, except result was overturned in every single district. In federal a lot of "dead souls" and Donbass refugees. New feature of 2021 was hard voting during Sunday with launch break(it seems voting was someone's day job).
2022 elections were boring in Moscow, but few opposition candidates were so good at voting stations, that even ДЭГ couldn't overturn results. At least without going full Chechnya or Kemerovo.
In 2023 Sobyanin and Pamfilova just can pull any number they want, Moscow is officially electoral sultanat. I think record this year was 108 or more years old dead voter. In Omsk Yabloko won on party list voting and lost on FPTP voting AFAIK UR got majority. On Omsk governor UR candidate was painted to have over 70%, but in trenches(I'm not kidding, there was voting in occupied Ukraine) he got below 50%. Around 30 as I remember. It is scary to paint protocol and ignore men with rifles. In Hakasia communist with strong anti-war position won for governor, UR won parlament. In Yakutia local communists were banned on elections, so UR won governor and 22/35.
Double correct.
Documents from 50-ies are still classified. If not everything, then until 2010 sounds reasonable. After ГКЧП there was declassification comittie, it indeed declassified few documebts and helped to reabilitate many people after death, but after Putin came to power comittie was dissolved and documents were reclassified. It came to the point where for Russian it is easier to ask Ukraine for document than russian archive.
You personally did nothing wrong.
Didn't watch, don't have opinion, maybe will watch. I think Ekaterina Shulman has few lectures in English.