[Ossi]

Well, one way or the other the damage is done.

[Richthofen]

Quote:

I blame Gorbacev, he allowed Yelzin to rise in the first place. Remember that humiliating act in the duma? Gorbacev should have
thrown those sheets of paper back at Yelzin and give him a good beating. But he was to much of a p***y or on the payrole of Langley, Virginia.

You mean the picture where they are arguiing with each other?

I put the blame more on Yeltsin because he delivered the final blow. Another point of view is that if a regular coup were crushed by a person other than the country's leader, than the country's leader is screwed most of the time, no matter what the country's leader policies were. Gorbachev simply set the stage for Yeltsin to gain power.

[Misuzu]

Quote:

Who was Wang Jingwai?

Wang Jingwei was a Chinese member of the Kuomintang who collaberated with the Imperial Japanese.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Jingwei

[Ossi]

Richthofen,

The duma scene were Yelzin walks up to Gorbacev and gives him those sheets of paper to sign the dissolution of the USSR.

[Richthofen]

Is there a video of that somewhere? I want to see it to get a good laugh.

[Trentski]

they all contributed to it in some way shape or form.
With over industrializiation
Cults of personality
economic reforms
lack of economic reforms
failure to act at key times


Hell I could go on but nobody on that list has a clean slate in the fall of the USSR. They were all nails in the coffin somehow, some way.

[Ossi]

Richthofen, I will try to find it on the net.

In the mean time here is some other Duma action:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZGaaqH2o6I

[Richthofen]

Wow, that was as bad as a meeting in the Taiwanese Parliament(food fights anyone)?

But generally speaking, Eastern Europeans scare me with their shouting.

[Ossi]

Are you referring to Red_Walker?

[Richthofen]

No, I'm referring to a few I've met in real life and seen on TV. It's really scary. Eastern Europeans are generally intimidating if they're big. And they shout at times. It's scary and intimidating.

[Ossi]

Can't say that about the women they are certainly one of the most beautiful. But you right some lack the manners! I once went to Moscow and used the metro over there. People just ran into me, hit me with their elbows and stepped on my foot a thousand times and none apologised once.

[Richthofen]

You should try going to busy parts of China. It's a good thing they're generally short. Because you have to push to go anywhere in a lineup.

[Ossi]

My brother was in Tokyo recently and told me about the metro over there. There are guys employed on the stations that push the people into the trains with some kind of shovel before the door closes.

[Jacob Peters]

Yeltsin's counter-coup. Those that cite Gorbachev are rather ignorant because in the end he worked to try and preserve the USSR. 76% of the Soviet people approved of his desires in the March 1991 referendum. It was Yeltsin who deposed the State Emergency Committee and proceeded to unconstitiounally dissolve the USSR with his cronies in December 1991.

[Ossi]

Trying to excuse Gorbacev? All this Perstroika and Glasnost non-sense was designed to end up with Yelsin.

[Jacob Peters]

Quote:

Trying to excuse Gorbacev?

Not at all. It was not his intention to destroy the USSR whereas that was the intention Yeltsin had all along. Still, it were Gorbachev's atrocious economic policies which caused a severe crisis which paved way for Yeltsin to seize power:

1990 Collier's Yearbook:
For months the government seemed unable or unwilling to deal with the economic crisis that was the main concern of every Soviet citizen. Some essential consumer goods, such as sugar, were rationed; others, such as bread and potatoes—staples of the Soviet diet— suffered shortages. There were spot shortages, too, of many manufactured products, not least among them cigarettes, to the open disgruntlement of Soviet smokers, who staged several demonstrations in Moscow. With the approach of winter, food shortage approached proportions not seen since World War II, and hoarding became commonplace. The government had dismantled the central planning system that had managed the economy for some 60 years but had provided nothing to replace it.

But as a whole, the dissolution of the USSR was a coup d'tat pulled off by Yeltsin and his cronies when they illegally signed the CIS agreements.

[Besoshvili]

Nikita Khrushchev was ultimately responsible. If not for his policies of de-Stalinization, liberalization of both the state apparatus and the economy, then the problems of the 80's never would've existed-- paving the way for Gorbachev and Yeltsin. The moment of truth lied with Khrushchev, Gorbachev's just happened to be at the top when the entire thing finally crumbled. It had been a long, drawn out, arduous process, not an instantaneous result of one man's (Gorbachev) desire to liberalize, it had to start somewhere.

[Richthofen]

Though it ca be viewed as starting with Khrushchev, on what basis would it be to blame everything on one man?

[Ossi]

Alles Klar! Keep blaming Nikita for it.

[Besoshvili]

I don't blame any one man, but the realm of this poll dealt with pinning the responsibility on one of the aforementioned choices, and its on that basis that I posited my response.

The trend started with Khrushchev, therefore, I hold him the most responsible. Had Khrushchev been ousted by Molotov, Malenkov, Kaganovich, and Bulganin, it would've at least postponed any source of revisionism for at least another 30 years, thus there would probably still be a Soviet Union.