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Comment by mytailorisrich | Hacker News Reader

"Putin thinks the collapse of the Soviet Union was the single biggest disaster of the 20th century – not World War I or World War II, but the collapse of the Soviet empire."

This is often repeated and might sound strange from a Western perspective. However, from a Russian perspective it makes perfect sense.

The Russian Empire suffered losses during WWI but survived as the Soviet Union.

The Soviet Union suffered heavy human losses during WWII but emerged as a superpower with greatly increased status and influence.

When the Soviet Union collapsed Russia lost pretty much everything and this was clearly a low point over hundreds of years for them.

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> Soviet Union collapsed Russia lost pretty much everything

Present-day Russia is still an empire, with ethnic Russians ruling over a host of minorities [1]. Those minorities feature prominently in Russia’s mineral-rich corridors. They are far more scarce at, say, the KGB or Kremlin.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_groups_in_Russia

Not sure they are that scarce, take for example the minister of defense. Also many of the high ranking officers in the military. The army is often the only way out of shitty social and economic situation and the situation is shitty in the various republics and oblasts

It was not just a territorial and population loss, Russia also "lost pretty much everything" economically during the 90s. Ordinary Russians suffered a lot as oligarchs enriched themselves by looting the old Soviet SOEs

They also feature richly in the canon-fodder department.

I’m pretty sure ~ 1922 was the low point using any reasonable metric. Collapse in agricultural production, widespread famine and the red terror (following years of both white and red terror..) The 1990’s were nothing compared to the Russian Civil war and it’s aftermath.

Using logic like this the collapse of the Tsarist Empire was clearly a much bigger disaster.

They did not lose all territories outside of Russia proper (so to speak) at that time. Things wobbled dangerously but they made it through.

To take a current example, in 1922 Ukraine was a Soviet Republic. They lost it in 1991. Hence the situation today.

"Russia lost pretty much everything"

It's worth looking at the map, the Russian Federation as it is today is huge.

A lot of the territory and it's peoples are underdeveloped and economically depressed. So much could be done there.

I spent a few hours watching Girkin's (aka Strelkov) channel on VK. The man is the unofficial mouthpiece of the hawks faction in the government. It is pure nationalistic empire building.

You are sort-of both half right, both half wrong.

Russia kept a lot of territory, including important sites where natural resources are mined. But they lost a lot of industrial capability. Not just in the former USSR, but in the former client states east of the Iron Curtain when they went their own way.

Places like the GDR and Czechoslovakia punched well above their weight when it came to economic functionality of the Soviet sphere. So did the Baltic states and Ukraine in USSR proper. For example, the only dock suitable for building really big warships like aircraft carriers is located in Mikolayiv, Ukraine. Needless to say that it won't be accepting Russian orders anytime soon.

They had 30 years to compensate, apparently that was not a priority.

> "Russia lost pretty much everything"

This is not just about territorial loss. In the aftermath of the Soviet Union's fall, during the transition to a market economy, the oligarchs basically looted all of Russia's wealth by taking control of the old Soviet SOEs. It was a truly terrible time for a lot of ordinary people.

And Putin is the one who brought the oligarchs under control. So it's natural that he and much of the Russian people see him as the strong man who can pull Russia out of the 90s disaster and restore Russia to the glory it deserves. That's part of the mindset driving the present war, I think

They are still looting and I'd say it's not so clear cut who is controlling whom nowdays.

Glory is off course in the eye of beholder and the desire to be glorious is definitely at the root of this war.

Nah, Putin's hold over the oligarchs is stronger than ever, now that they can't invest abroad anymore due to sanctions. Putin loves to bring this up in his speeches, arguing that getting burned by sanctions was the predictable consequense of engaging with those traitorous Westerners and that clearly the oligarchs should have invested in the Glorious Fatherland instead

That is just PR. The thing with oligarchs is that the loot and power they hold is considered to be some sort of escrow to be used by the power structure as it sees fit.

Those who forget it, die or go to prison.

Exactly. Putin and his power structure are the ones with all the power, if they can kill or imprison any oligarch who steps out of line. They control the relationship

> The Russian Empire suffered losses during WWI but survived as the Soviet Union.

I think you would find it interesting to read about the peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk, where the Russians lost about as much as they've "lost" now. Hadn't it been for the other Entente powers after the war, it would have been a done deal already then.

Outcome was that they in fact did not lose as much as with the fall of the Soviet Union...

However, from a Russian perspective it makes perfect sense.

No, it's just a meme. Which is now speedily propelling them to yet another collapse.

Russia lost pretty much everything.

It was never theirs to begin with.

Even in the worst of the 90s they were still categorically better than any point in their history prior to 1955 or so.

"categorically better off than at any point", that should have read

WW1 and the famines after the revolution were more of a humanitarian low point for them than 1991. Even after considering the dip in life expectancy and the financial crises and the kleptocratic corruption, the 1990s doesn't compare to what Russians (not to mention the minorities like the Tartars) went through in the early years of Bolshevik rule.

I would only agree that the 1990s were an unprecedented low point from the viewpoint of national pride via the prism of nationalism, given the losses in territory and influence that Russia had. Which explains why Putin thinks it's the single biggest disaster - he's a fascist and ultranationalist. Such people care about national pride and empire above all else.

It is also a massive landmass that only had small amounts of territory in any of the war theatres (despite large populations involved)

There is always potential for that landmass and its vast resources to be stewarded well

The Soviet Union was the closest attempt of that, being able to create similar but parallel advances as the non-communist regime, but ultimately was not able to continue for predictable reasons

I can see how that perspective is worth while to consider

> *Putin thinks the collapse of the Soviet Union was the single biggest disaster of the 20th century..."

This is usually quoted in relation to one of Putin's speeches, and is generally interpreted out of context. What Putin was referring to in that speech was the humanitarian problem of millions of Russians finding themselves residing outside "their country" when the USSR dissolved. That said, I think most people would consider certain holocausts to be greater disasters.

Neil MacFarlane had an article on the Ukraine situation in 2014.[1] He seems to agree with John Mearsheimer about bungled diplomacy.

[1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00396338.2014.92...

That's the price of moving your population forcibly outside of its borders as a part of an occupation strategy. It wasn't really 'their' country to begin with.

By "their country," I meant the state of Russia. Millions of Russians suddenly found themselves, not by choice, disconnected from Russia.

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