#soviet collapse

[gregor-samsung]

Маяк [The Lighthouse] (Mariya Saakyan, 2006)  

[gregor-samsung]

Маяк [The Lighthouse] (Mariya Saakyan, 2006)

[readingrage]

The Soviet reversal and later the Soviet collapse would have a powerful impact on North Korea. Strategically, it left Pyongyang more vulnerable and more isolated than before. Economically, the loss of North Korea's most generous and most important trading partner began a steady decline that would increasingly sap the strength of the Kim regime.

The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History (Revised and Updated Edition) by Don Oberdorfer

[fpif]

The Ukraine Crisis: Rebooting Russia?

The crisis in Ukraine continues. Russian soldiers are in Crimea, and there are suggestions from Moscow that Eastern Ukraine might be next. Russian lawmakers are rushing to draft legislation that will legalize the expropriation of assets from American and European companies doing business in Russia. Pundits are warning that a new Cold War is upon us. And I keep thinking about a crazy conspiracy theory I once heard.

Over the eighteen years that I have been studying East Europe, I’ve heard many wild conjectures about how things are not what they seem in the post-communist second world. Instead, there are secret plots by dark suited men in shadowy rooms. Back in 2008, a Bulgarian friend laid out the biggest conspiracy theory of them all.  

Like many theories in this genre, his started with a seeming mystery: why had no one ― neither in the East nor the West ― foreseen the end of communism? As an anthropologist, this always bothered me. The United States spent millions of dollars training generations of academic Sovietologists. But none of them saw the collapse coming.

Even within the USSR, ordinary people never considered that their country could cease to exist.  Russia was a superpower with a massive military and veto power on the UN Security Council.  Whatever the shortcomings of the Russian economy, they had world-class scientists, a space program, and a nuclear arsenal large enough to wipe the globe clean of the human race.  And then it just ended. As my colleague Alexei Yurchak observed, “Everything was forever until it was no more.”

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[afronaut]

Peak Liberal

Claude: Has the collapse of the Soviet Union brought a positive change to Russia today? Why is Russia governed by fascism? Has “crony capitalism” benefited the people of Russia? Has poverty been eliminated? Why has there been an increase in neo-nazi and right wing extremist groups? To what extent has Russia post 1991 benefited the people?

Brutus: Fascism is just another form of collectivism/socialism. The problems in Russia extend from a lack of protected individual liberties and restraint of government.

[atraria]

In the postwar drive to harness the atom, the Soviet government built little towns charged with various scientific tasks. About 60 of these towns were created between the late 1940s and early 1980s. Some of them, towns where new weapons were designed, were not even on the map. Other towns worked on what the Soviets called "the peaceful atom" and were considered "open," which meant that access to them was highly restricted for foreigners and that the residents themselves were closely monitored by the secret police.

In 1990 science funding suddenly dropped about 90 percent. With the country on the brink of collapse, international prestige finally had to take a back seat to economic emergencies. Construction in the science towns froze and the trickle of young science graduates dried up. By 1993, many institutes could not afford to keep their electricity turned on, and the life in most labs had ground to a halt. While the economic disaster of the early '90s hit the entire country, the science towns were arguably in the worst position to adjust. Unlike military-factory towns, which also lost their funding overnight, the science towns had no industry to convert to civilian production. Unlike their colleagues living in other cities, the scientists in science towns could not switch to careers in finance or the service industries: most of them lived hours away from anything that wasn't a research institute, and they had no money to move. [wired feature, dec 1997]