Putin has crossed over to complete insanity. He is now saying that Ukraine’s proclamation of independence in 1991 was not legitimate. He says it was not done according to the law. Please don’t ask which law because this guy is obviously a law unto himself.
How could it come to this? And how could anybody have been stupid enough to believe that the Cold War was over and the USSR was really done with?
This is one issue where I would have loved to be wrong.
It is actually one of your very most intersting insights, and the most original seeming to me since I had not heard an interpretation at all like it before.
It is like the time I came back to US right after the Reagan inauguration, looked around at the privatizations already starting, and saying wow — they are going to underdevelop us, put public cash into private pockets, just as they have been doing in Latin America! I was right, although nobody else I knew got it, and look at us now.
This USSR insight is similar.
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Even back in 1991-93 it seemed very strange to me that we kept hearing about all this change that was supposedly happening but the same people held all the positions of power and all the money. The same people who were yelling the Communist slogans and persecuting dissidents and religious people were now all suddenly religious and yelling pro-democracy slogans. And when Russia openly acquired a KGB agent as it’s president, it all started to make sense.
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—don’t ask which law
The laws of USSR, of course. Politburo did not approve. And it is still the legitimate government!
(brief summary: concert in honor of the State Security Day, 2008?)
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The Russians celebrate the Independence Day with great pomp. I always hoped this meant they were happy to be free of us and our horrible oppression of them. But now they seem to want some more of it.
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Is there ever a law by which one may safely proclaim independence?
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Russia signed the papers recognizing the dissolution of the USSR, so this was a case where nobody seemed to have objections, all the papers were signed.
Putin seems to be into referendums these days but he seems to forget that over 90% of all Ukrainians (including in the Crimea) voted for Ukraine’s independence. But he seems to believe only in the referendums that he personally falsified.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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