The state of Russian "democracy"

[red_elk]

Compare anything you want. USSR 1970-1980 and Brazil the same period.
Life expectancy, GDP per capita, crime rate, education level.
What else? Child mortality?

Just look at numbers. Come back with GULAG and Ivan the Terrible.

GDP per capita is quite difficult to calculate in a socialist country, adjusted to PPP. And I have not seen the figure for 1970 Brazil, I don't think that properly adjusted it would be worse than that of Soviet Russia.

Properly adjusted? Increased 5 times? Then, probably it would be not worse

And how about this figure: number of political prisioners?

Don't forget to mention Stalin who devoured billion people. What about life expectancy and crimes?

See, over here we value the fact individuals are not and were not the property of state and could not be treated as such. And we would not sell ourselves for bread or an education system that teaches everyone to read but forbids people from reading what they want.

Sure!
We will not learn reading, despite evil totalitarian regime built schools and libraries for us! We'd rather sit without bread and any education!
You have not too much to reply, but this is funny anyway.

 

[Orange Seeds]

1. Czech republic has never been part of USSR
2. For modern Russia I've already told here - most of regions have awful living standards. Much worse than 25-30 years before.

woops i never meant to say that the C.R. was part of the USSR but that it was under the same economic/political structure--Warsaw Pact concomitants. That's what we call a brain fart.

Well that reasoning might be worth something if the things people are living in were a reflection of modern policy. The reason the living standards suck is that they all live in Soviet era concrete apartment blocks and cottage farming communities. All of Moscow was built 50-60 years ago it seems.

If we can agree that the Putin era is undemocratic and then agree that modern living standards suck, then why are you so adamant in saying that democratic reform is the problem? Your argument is so confused, it keeps swinging back and forth.

We will not learn reading, despite evil totalitarian regime built schools and libraries for us! We'd rather sit without bread and any education!
You have not too much to reply, but this is funny anyway.

Why do you assume that these things would not be present under a liberal model?

 

[luiz]

Properly adjusted? Increased 5 times? Then, probably it would be not worse

Eh, you didn't post number fos the 70's, but rather for 1989 which was kind of a "rock bottom" for Brazil. And indeed, when you adjust nominal GDP to PPP, in developing countries it is quite common to see at an increase of 2 times, 3 times, or more.

Don't forget to mention Stalin who devoured billion people. What about life expectancy and crimes?

Are you denying the existence of many political prisioners in the USSR of the 70's?

As for crimes, you can compare Brazil of 2006 to Russia of 2006, or Brazil of 1970 to Russia of 1970. I don't see the point in using brazilian numbers of 2006 to compare with the soviet times. As I said, the high murder rate is a phenomena of the late 80's onwards.

Sure!
We will not learn reading, despite evil totalitarian regime built schools and libraries for us! We'd rather sit without bread and any education!
You have not too much to reply, but this is funny anyway.

Personally I would rather live in a country with a literacy rate of 88% where everybody can read and say what they please than in one of 98% where the state tells you what you can read and you can go to jail for expressing yourself.

And free men don't sell their freedom for free bread.

 

[red_elk]

Well that reasoning might be worth something if the things people are living in were a reflection of modern policy. The reason the living standards suck is that they all live in Soviet era concrete apartment blocks and cottage farming communities. All of Moscow was built 50-60 years ago it seems.

This reasoning is exactly what I meant. The fact that people continue to use Soviet infrastructure means only that since Soviet times it has never been renewed. As I said, since then, living standards dropped dramatically. Does it mean Soviet regime responsible for not building infrastructure for 20 years in advance?

As for Moscow, it looks like you was there last time in 90s. Today, after rain of oil money it looks much better.

If we can agree that the Putin era is undemocratic and then agree that modern living standards suck, then why are you so adamant in saying that democratic reform is the problem? Your argument is so confused, it keeps swinging back and forth.

The problem is there was no such thing as democratic reform in Russia. The process that you call democratic reform was started as destruction of totalitarian country, which granted people some basic freedom automatically. There was no "Yeltsin's era of democracy", it was anarchy. There is no "rolling back to authoritarianism" - we have virtually the same freedom that we got after collapse of totalitarism in ~1987-1988. People who saying that our problem is because we are not democratic enough simply don't understand what is the situation in modern Russia.
Now what we need is to stop further collapse of country, prevent war which is possible, and do not switch back to totalitarism, which is highly doubtful.
Do we need democratic reforms now? If as a result we became like Brazil or India, I'm not sure.

Why do you assume that these things would not be present under a liberal model?

I assume, all depends on country what you are talking about. Compare how liberal model works in India and Canada. Why totalitarian USSR could feed and give education to all children, whereas liberal India still cannot?

Eh, you didn't post number fos the 70's, but rather for 1989 which was kind of a "rock bottom" for Brazil. And indeed, when you adjust nominal GDP to PPP, in developing countries it is quite common to see at an increase of 2 times, 3 times, or more.

Are you denying the existence of many political prisioners in the USSR of the 70's?

As for crimes, you can compare Brazil of 2006 to Russia of 2006, or Brazil of 1970 to Russia of 1970. I don't see the point in using brazilian numbers of 2006 to compare with the soviet times. As I said, the high murder rate is a phenomena of the late 80's onwards.

Personally I would rather live in a country with a literacy rate of 88% where everybody can read and say what they please than in one of 98% where the state tells you what you can read and you can go to jail for expressing yourself.

And free men don't sell their freedom for free bread.

You can check numbers for 1970-1985 yourself, the whole picture will be the same. For example I saw criminal rate in Brazil about 2 times lower than today, but still 3-4 times higher than in the USSR.

Go to jail for expressing yourself? Neither me nor my parents didn't know people who had such problems. Despite political jokes were very popular. Or you mean some serious anti-governmental activities? Try to do something like this in Brazil, you will be surprised.

What did you have better?
Economics, Culture, Medicine, Science, Technology, Education, Sport?
Football and coffee - my respect.

 

[Winner]

I've been to both Russia and the Czech Republic, and i am certain that living standards in the Czech Republic(former USSR, now democratic) are substantially higher than in modern Russia.

That's true in terms of GDP per capita. What's much more important is that the Czech rep. has one of the lowest poverty rates and very high income equality, which means most of the people here belong to the middle class. In Russia, all the money are concentrated in the hands of few, the "new aristocracy" while most of the ordinary Russians live in conditions any Westerner would equate to poverty.

When you look at Russia Geographically; with its multitude of resources, trade opportunities, manufacturing base; i cannot fathom how it has been so mismanaged.

This is what their authoritarian tradition has brought them, but they're probably too poor or processed by the state propaganda, that they don't know that.

Russia could be just as rich as Canada, perhaps even more, if it used its wealth for the right things.

 

[Orange Seeds]

This reasoning is exactly what I meant. The fact that people continue to use Soviet infrastructure means only that since Soviet times it has never been renewed. As I said, since then, living standards dropped dramatically. Does it mean Soviet regime responsible for not building infrastructure for 20 years in advance?

The point is that soviet engineering sucked and there has been nothing to remedy it in recent years

As for Moscow, it looks like you was there last time in 90s. Today, after rain of oil money it looks much better.

Depends on where you go; the vast majority of Muscovites live in buildings that look far worse than Chicago's 'The Projects'

The problem is there was no such thing as democratic reform in Russia. The process that you call democratic reform was started as destruction of totalitarian country, which granted people some basic freedom automatically. There was no "Yeltsin's era of democracy", it was anarchy. There is no "rolling back to authoritarianism" - we have virtually the same freedom that we got after collapse of totalitarism in ~1987-1988. People who saying that our problem is because we are not democratic enough simply don't understand what is the situation in modern Russia.
Now what we need is to stop further collapse of country, prevent war which is possible, and do not switch back to totalitarism, which is highly doubtful.
Do we need democratic reforms now? If as a result we became like Brazil or India, I'm not sure.

I must be confused, because it seems to me that the previous 3-4 pages of this thread was debate about whether or not democracy is good for Russia, with certain people quoting things like GDP to show that democratic reform has worsened the situation. If Russia is admittedly undemocratic then why are we arguing?

I assume, all depends on country what you are talking about. Compare how liberal model works in India and Canada. Why totalitarian USSR could feed and give education to all children, whereas liberal India still cannot?

You can't really compare Russia to India. Russia is mostly urbanized, educated, industrial and has a plethora of natural resources at its disposal. Neither India nor Brazil can claim to posses those attributes and are what contribute to slow development in those regions. Russia has the majority of the economic factors that earmark a developed country, it has passed Rostow's 'take-off point.'

Before you manipulate that, the point is that culture and politics are not as relevant as you are suggesting. I'm not at all sure you can even call either of those countries 'liberal.'

You can check numbers for 1970-1985 yourself, the whole picture will be the same. For example I saw criminal rate in Brazil about 2 times lower than today, but still 3-4 times higher than in the USSR.

Look at murder rates in Iran and Saudi Arabia and compare them to the US. Can you see how crime statistics are not worth anything in regards to the health of a country?

 

[Ecofarm]

Look at murder rates in Iran and Saudi Arabia and compare them to the US. Can you see how crime statistics are not worth anything in regards to the health of a country?

When your govt commits 90% of the actual crimes, the stats get a bit skewed.

In Iraq under Saddam, for instance...

If a woman accused a man of rape and he was acquitted (by an all-male court, of course), she was sentenced to gang rape by government appointed punishers. No crime in this event, according to Iraq law at the time, has occured.

The really bizarre thing is that many people seem to think that allowing that to continue instead of invading was the right thing to do... you know... sovereignty and all that.

 

[Winner]

The really bizarre thing is that many people seem to think that allowing that to continue instead of invading was the right thing to do... you know... sovereignty and all that.

Like that was the excuse. Why don't you invade Saudi Arabia then? Meh

 

[Ecofarm]

Please tell me that you are mocking people who do not understand priority and opportunity. Saddam was far more cruel than the Saudis are and they don't kill their own people by the thousands with chemical weapons. They also do not provide a doorway for a ground invasion of Iran. Whether or not that happens, the threat now exists in a much more real sense than before the Iraq War. You think it is stupid to cut out the heart of darkness? I think it is proper priority. If nK, Saudi, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan or Burma had a boatload of natural resources to sustain the push and provided access to new fronts, I might go there first. If I thought China was possible, I'd go there first.

 

[Orange Seeds]

In Iraq under Saddam, for instance...

If a woman accused a man of rape and he was acquitted (by an all-male court, of course), she was sentenced to gang rape by government appointed punishers. No crime in this event, according to Iraq law at the time, has occured.

The really bizarre thing is that many people seem to think that allowing that to continue instead of invading was the right thing to do... you know... sovereignty and all that.

Please tell me that you are mocking people who do not understand priority and opportunity. Saddam was far more cruel than the Saudis are and they don't kill their own people by the thousands with chemical weapons.

You really spare no opportunity to express that eh?
your flash edits will not indoctrinate us!

 

[Winner]

Please tell me that you are mocking people who do not understand priority and opportunity. Saddam was far more cruel than the Saudis are and they don't kill their own people by the thousands with chemical weapons.

They have pretty crazy laws there, but they're your buddies, so everything's fine.

What about Mugabe, Kim Chong-il, all sorts of crackpot dictators all around the world, why don't you go after them? They're doing terrible things, often worse than Saddam.

Oh that's right, human rights and WMDs were just pretexts. You should finally admit it. Otherwise I don't care what you do in Iraq, it's just as lost a cause as Palestine.

 

[Ecofarm]

What about Mugabe, Kim Chong-il, all sorts of crackpot dictators all around the world, why don't you go after them? They're doing terrible things, often worse than Saddam.

Did you not see that stuff about opportunity, priority... cost/benefit...

No?

We can do everything at once? Ok.

Worse than Saddam? Kimmie might have him in total deaths caused (via famine) but Kimmie never gassed a town. He didn't turn entire villages into extermination camps. He let people starve, but Saddam intentionally did that to 400000 children after the oil-for-food program. Saddam also intentionally starved, via draining land, 50000 swamp arabs - in a couple of years! His own people! There is no worse than Saddam, in our lifetime. No atrocity that even slightly compares is nearly as orchestrated.

 

[Winner]

Did you not see that stuff about opportunity, priority... cost/benefit... No? We can do everything at once? Ok.

Bah, sane people deal with the worst danger first and then move on. North Korea was way more dangerous that Iraq, but it didn't quite fit into neocon schemes for the Middle East.

Worse than Saddam? Kimmie might have him in total deaths caused (via famine) but Kimmie never gassed a town.

No, he prefers to move the town inhabitants into a concentration camp first and gas them there. Usually after he tests his new chemical/biological weapons on them.

He didn't turn entire villages into extermination camps.

He already has plenty of gulags, there's no need to build more.

He let people starve, but Saddam intentionally did that to 400000 children after the oil-for-food program. Saddam also intentionally starved, via draining land, 50000 swamp arabs - in a couple of years! His own people! There is no worse than Saddam, in our lifetime. No atrocity that even slightly compares is nearly as orchestrated.

In North Korea, many more people starved or died of diseases caused by malnutrition in the 1990s. The number probably exceeds a million, there is no way to know the exact number. During this time, Kim has been building nuclear weapons, testing ballistic missiles and spending 1/4 of his country's miserable GDP on the military. This is no baseless claim as in the Iraq case (did you find your WMD finally?), everybody, even France, Russia and China, admit that.

But you chose to go after a dictator who was threatening nobody but his own people and who could have, btw, been dealt with during the first war.

If this isn't a crystal clear case of foreign policy frak up, I don't know what is.

 

[red_elk]

I must be confused, because it seems to me that the previous 3-4 pages of this thread was debate about whether or not democracy is good for Russia, with certain people quoting things like GDP to show that democratic reform has worsened the situation. If Russia is admittedly undemocratic then why are we arguing?

You can't really compare Russia to India. Russia is mostly urbanized, educated, industrial and has a plethora of natural resources at its disposal. Neither India nor Brazil can claim to posses those attributes and are what contribute to slow development in those regions. Russia has the majority of the economic factors that earmark a developed country, it has passed Rostow's 'take-off point.'

Before you manipulate that, the point is that culture and politics are not as relevant as you are suggesting. I'm not at all sure you can even call either of those countries 'liberal.'

You are mostly right about comparison of different countries. I was talking about nearly the same.

For your confusion:
I started quote things like GDP after I claimed that I would rather prefer to live in more developed and totalitarian USSR than democratic but less developed Brazil or India, which caused strong reaction from Luiz.

Situation has worsened undoubtedly, as a result of processes which called "democratic reforms" in West and "destruction of country" and "geopolitical disaster" in Russia. Political system changed from communistic totalitarian dictature to oligarchical wild capitalism, close to anarchy in 90s, and more authoritarian today. There were no democratic reforms. There are no rolling back to dictature or giving up freedom for bread.

Look at murder rates in Iran and Saudi Arabia and compare them to the US. Can you see how crime statistics are not worth anything in regards to the health of a country?

This means only that situation with crime is worse in the USA than in Iran or Saudi Arabia. This doesn't mean life in US is worse just because it's only one of parameters from may be dozen others, which are much better in US. In terms of personal safety - yes, it looks like Iran is better.

 

[Orange Seeds]

You are mostly right about comparison of different countries. I was talking about nearly the same.

but they aren't anywhere near the same.

In terms of personal safety - yes, it looks like Iran is better[than the U.S.].

you just reduced your argument to absurdity in order for it to fit your previous conclusion.

 

[luiz]

You can check numbers for 1970-1985 yourself, the whole picture will be the same. For example I saw criminal rate in Brazil about 2 times lower than today, but still 3-4 times higher than in the USSR.

Go to jail for expressing yourself? Neither me nor my parents didn't know people who had such problems. Despite political jokes were very popular. Or you mean some serious anti-governmental activities? Try to do something like this in Brazil, you will be surprised.

What did you have better?
Economics, Culture, Medicine, Science, Technology, Education, Sport?
Football and coffee - my respect.

You have to better define crime rate. You posted numbers for murder rate. Today the murder rate in Brazil is even bigger than the one you posted. In 1970 it was about 1/3rd of today's, that is, not much different from that of the USA.

As for your second point, you're just being silly. That there existed prisioners of conscience in post-Stalin USSR is not a controversial issue. The USSR was still very much a vastly authoritarian regime that persecuted dissent, forced its sattelites to walk the party (under the threat of invasion) and tried to prevent its own citizens from leaving the country. I also don't see how you can deny the rather obvious fact that censorship existed in the 70's, and would exist until Gobarchev, and that the fully literate russians could not read whatever they pleased, but only what the bureaucrats allowed them to.

That neither you nor your parents didn't know people with such problems is good, but anedoctal. Everyone in my family nowadays live in big and expensive homes, own several cars, speak several languages and so on and so forth. That doesn't mean that the same apply to every brazilian citizen.

Soviet Russia provided better education, on average, than Brazil, and a more comprehensive system of healthcare. OTOH, there was no freedom of expression, association and etc. The only way to advance was to become a bureaucrat; most people would live boring and uninteresting lives. People would ultimately get their basic needs satisfied but for that would have to wait hours and hours in line. Nope, I'd much rather live here and take my chances and be free. Crime rate is a rather absurd measure as well (it got worse as Brazil got richer); anyway, at least no brazilian was ever drafted to die in a pointless war in Afghanistan.

 

[red_elk]

but they aren't anywhere near the same.

May be something wrong with my English. I was telling that I agree with you at this point.

you just reduced your argument to absurdity in order for it to fit your previous conclusion.

Look. I didn't say that statistically less criminal country is equivalent to country with better quality of life. It's one of many parameters which should be taken into account if you want to compare. When I was talking about USSR and Brazil, except criminality, I also brought up several other important parameters.
So, I would prefer to live in USA rather than Iran despite Iran has less homicide rate, not because this parameter means nothing.

 

[red_elk]

People would ultimately get their basic needs satisfied but for that would have to wait hours and hours in line.

You need to know that it's true only for the last 3-4 years of SU, 1988-1991

Nope, I'd much rather live here and take my chances and be free.

It's your choice. I still mad enough to prefer USSR.