Alexander Solzhenitsyn Set the Stage for Reagan and Walesa
“This is complete, fanciful bullshit, from beginning to end, yes, your memories are hazy, and wrong on every count. Yeah, I’ve heard the “rock-n-roll” conquered the Soviet Union many times–always from 1960’s idiots who were actively helping the Soviets wage proxy wars all over the globe. This is after-the-fact reasoning by people whose entire lives were devoted to undermining the US in the Cold War.”
Well, I _lived_ there (an in fact still live in Russia), and I talked a lot with people who experienced Communism themselves, so it’s not like I’m talking about a thing I have no direct knowledge about (as opposed, probably, to you).
My parents that distributed typewritten samizdat books of Solzhenitsyn, Sakharov and other dissidents, had nothing to do with proxy wars of 60ies, and yet they certainly saw themselves as part of the “Beatles generation”.
“As for the idea that something like Tienanmen square wouldn’t have been possible in the late period of the Soviet regime, you’re nuts.”
Well, I’m not. Things like (relatively minor) massacres in the Baltic states and in Georgia perpetrated by Gorbachev were done in the “colonial politics” mode, like British massacred Indians in 20th century.
But the coup of 1991 in Moscow, where army was turned against people they saw as their own, had _3_ civilian victims, and that was too much and led to the direct collapse of the Soviet Union.
“You don’t even know what a neo-con is, except as a catchy and largely misused catchphrase, and we do not live in a safe or sane world, never have.”
What makes you think so? Just in case, I’m not into crazy conspiracy theories about “Zionist evil neo-con cabal” etc. Neo-cons is a group that exists in reality, and they had particular ideas about the Cold War and a particular influence on Reagan.
You can either praise Reagan for the way he ended the Cold War or you can praise the neo-con positions on the Cold War. You can’t do both at the same time, because they were in total contradiction. That Perle, Cheney and Rumsfeld were saying that Reagan was dangerously naive when he engaged Gorbachev is a historical fact.
And the world is neither sane nor safe, but it’s much safer and saner than it could be thanks to the fact that Reagan listened to his inner Carter despite hard-right’s objections.
