Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2001 17:46:25 -0400 From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> Subject: Fwd: 5201-Stephen Holmes Reviews Stephen Cohen's Failed Crusade
<http://www.lrb.co.uk/v23/n08/holm2308.htm>
>London Review of Books - April 19, 2001
>
>Stephen Cohen, Failed Crusade: America and the Tragedy of Post-Communist
>Russia (New York: Norton, 2000)
>
>reviewed by Stephen Holmes (sholmes at ceip.org)
>Stephen Holmes is a professor at NYU School of Law and is currently a
>visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in
>Washington, DC.
>
I recommend also Market Bolshevism vs. Democracy, just out. Don't remember the authors names -- one Russian and one, I think, American. Points out the deeply undemocratic nature of the "reforms," the ideology of the people that implemented them and Western complicity, inc. lote of material on the role of the IMF.
[...]
>During the 1990s, Cohen explains, Russian civilization itself came close to
>melting down. In some ways, the country -- outside its Potemkin capital --
>no longer belongs to the modern world. To conceive the decade as a second
>Great Depression is to understate the extent of the calamity. Cohen favors
>more arresting comparisons such as the holocaust, World War 2 and
>thermonuclear devastation, almost implying that Yeltsin inflicted deeper
>wounds on Russia than did Stalin.
Under Stalin, the population grew and GDP rose 300%. Under Yeltsin, the population plummeted and GDP dropped by about 60%. Need I say more?
It is a great, great credit to ordinary Russian people that they have kept their society functioning at all. The teachers, doctors and scientists who choose to stay in Russia, where they earn $50 a month, should get medals.
Chris Doss The Russia Journal