--- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>>
> The breakup of the USSR threw scores of millions
> into poverty,
> resulted in a sharp increase in mortality rates, and
> gave the US free
> reign to do whatever the hell it wants. I'm with
> Putin.
>
> Doug
FWIW here's what he said in his interview with German TV:
QUESTION: In your address to the Federal Assembly you talked about the break-up of the Soviet Union as a major geopolitical catastrophe. This surprises us, because the break-up of the Soviet Union brought freedom to its peoples, and gave them chance for liberation. And this process took place without violence, without bloodshed.
MR PUTIN: Germany reunites, and the Soviet Union breaks up, and this surprises you. That’s strange.
I think you’ve thrown the baby out with the bathwater – that’s the problem. Liberation from dictatorship should not necessarily be accompanied by the collapse of the state.
As for the tragedy that I talked about, it is obvious. Imagine that one morning people woke up and discovered that from now on they did not live in a common nation, but outside the borders of the Russian Federation, although they always identified themselves as a part of the Russian people. And there are not five, ten or even a thousand of these people, and not just a million. There are 25 million of them. Just think about this figure! This is the obvious tragedy, which was accompanied with the severance of family and economic ties, with the loss of all the money people had saved in the bank accounts their entire lives, along with other difficult consequences. Is this not a tragedy for individual people? Of course it’s a tragedy!
People in Russia say that those who do not regret the collapse of the Soviet Union have no heart, and those that do regret it have no brain. We do not regret this, we simply state the fact and know that we need to look ahead, not backwards. We will not allow the past to drag us down and stop us from moving ahead. We understand where we should move. But we must act based on a clear understanding of what happened.
QUESTION: For us the collapse of the Soviet Union is also the collapse of a values system. Where is Russia today in the new world, after the break-up of the Soviet Union. What is its place?
MR PUTIN: Undoubtedly, there is enormous importance in this and the previous questions. The changes at the beginning of the 1990s did liberate the country from the monopolistic power of one political force. Essentially, this is the first step to freedom, to democracy. And of course, this gives us the chance to build relations as a normal civilised European nation with all our neighbours in Europe and the world. And the most important outcome of these changes is the change to the internal quality of Russian society.
http://www.kremlin.ru/eng/speeches/2005/05/05/2355_type82916_87597.shtml
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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