In other news: Zaluzhny just got fired for “failing the 2023 counteroffensive”. New guy running UA army is Syrsky.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/02/08/valery-zaluzhny-commander-ukraine-removed/

This post was edited by Malopox on Feb 8 2024 11:16am

A lot of the soviet-era infrastructure they inherited was decades-old and dilapidated. Not all of it, but a lot. Also keep in mind that the USSR had exploited its periphery for decades in favor of its Russian heartland. And that the decades of forced communism hampered their economic development.



This is absolutely what happened to a lot of East Germans. The run-down economy of the former GDR was shut down, the few competitive factories and companies were taken over by West Germans or sold to foreign investors (e.g. Japanese businessmen) for cheap. Many of the workers of now-defunct factories saw their qualifications devalued overnight and never found their footing again, job-wise. Property prices also cratered, so even those who had been privileged in the GDR society now found themselves on the lower rungs of the unified German hierarchy. These post-unification woes created an entire generation of bitter, resentful people. The only saving grace for many affected East Germans was the much better social safety net of Germany compared with Russia's.



It's still tone-deaf to call the collapse of the USSR the "greatest tragedy of the 20th century" while 23 million of their citizens died during ww2 and the country was devastated even worse than during the 90s.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Feb 8 2024 11:45am

In truth, the formation of the USSR was the greatest tragedy of the 20th century - it was a critical root cause of the rise of Hitler & the Deutches Reich, antisemitism, the Holocaust, and the mass slaughter and starvation of Eastern Europeans.

This post was edited by El1te on Feb 8 2024 11:59am

Titanic deck chairs.

Who?

“Soviet-era dilapidated infrastructure” still works and keeps the light on in eg Ukraine. While Soviets were not the best at producing consumer goods - complex infrastructure like ports, dams, power plants were high tech and still chug along just fine.

What exploitation of periphery are we talking about? Baltic states were the Potemkin villages of the USSR, with money from crude oil exported of Siberia, dumped at the expense of developing the same Siberia just so that Soviets can point to Riga and Tallinn and show them as posterior children of how good a Soviet European can live.

I’m sure GDR and FRG reunification was not all smooth sailing and to this day you can observe a stark difference in income. Having said that “Soviet dilapidated infrastructure” of refineries and power plants still chugs along just fine. They even dismantled a windmill park near Cotbus to feed some of that old Soviet coal plants with freshly mined lignite.

Thanks for pointing out ww2 losses. Do you think losing 23m was the fault of the average Russian from Samara suffering the yoke of bueracratic kleptocrats and not the work of one failed Austrian painter?

No Zaluzhny, no Ukraine

I'll take that bet.

Scapegoated? At least, not sent to prison for treason. A very democratic way to get rid of someone who became "too influential".

Was it a bet? The pathetic clown went too far. Removing the one who successfully defended Kyev, Kharkiv and regained territories of Kherson oblast is just okay for a comedian.