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Comment by bojan | Hacker News Reader

The USSR held back a huge part of the world. The Baltics, the whole of Eastern Europe, East Germany, all suffered immensely under their influence, and are still feeling the consequences.

The USSR created ruthless regimes all over the world, some of which are still standing: Cuba, North Korea. Even after the partial collapse of that Empire, Russia degraded to openly being a terrorist state, sending Wagnerites all over the world, attacking its neighbours, destroying marvels of technology like An-225, bringing nuclear power plants to jeopardy.

From the perspective of this Eastern European, the collapse of the USSR was a huge improvement for the world. I can only hope the collapse continues.

I'm not a fan of the world being lead by the US, I'd prefer it very much if the EU could take that role, but even so, the US-lead world is infinitely better than the one where the USSR has any influence.

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It’s sad how many people have forgotten what the USSR was and how it subjugated and terrorised millions (even some Hungarians amazingly). Especially so when people defend Russia now saying the USSR shouldn’t have been dismantled. Why not? They were ruling people by force not consent.

They're still ruling by force not consent. Unrest in the "ethnic" Russian federation states has been on the rise since late last year when Russia exposed her weakness in Ukraine. Countries that previously leaned towards Moscow are now distancing themselves and asserting their independence. Even Kazakhstan is now openly bypassing Russian oil and diversifying its foreign relations. The younger generation see Russia as a colonizer and are pushing for a Kazakh ethnic identity.

This latest invasion is the push these groups needed to finally throw off their yoke.

Putin is the chosen successor of Yeltsin, who was backed by the USA. I wouldn't pin the current state of Russia on the USSR - the Orthodox Church, etc. have far more influence.

Your point is definitely true for the psuedo-occupied countries like Romania, Poland, the DDR, etc. though. My point wasn't to defend the USSR but that we need competition to drive progress.

For example now the EU has almost none of its own industry - Concorde failed, ARM was sold (and the UK left), there is no equivalent to Big Tech. There is almost no competition (literally the only major examples I can think of are AirBus and Volvo/VW/Renault, and then some industrial ones like ASML and Nordvolt).

China poses more competition because it's chosen to actively protect its own developing industries. So they do have Baidu, WeChat, Bytedance, Huawei, Xiaomi, etc.

I'm also not sure about an EU-led world - the EU isn't even democratic in its current form (the Commission makes most of the decisions, and there are no EU-wide elections). I think it's best if we don't have any leading nation at all but true competition.

>Yeltsin, who was backed by the USA

Russian victimhood is so tiring. You forget the part where they blame Bill Clinton for causing child prostitution in 1990s Russia.

The "US caused 1990s Russian chaos" narrative is based on an 1996 IMF loan and Yeltsin hiring American political marketers for his 1996 reelection campaign. But by 1996 Russia was already in utter chaos.

In 1996 Russia asked for a peanut $10 billion IMF loan and the US (being the biggest IMF contributor) were among the countries that approved the loan. Yeltsin was also impressed by big US-style political campaigns that he hired American political marketers.

I fail to see how either of that means the US backed Yeltsin or that the US caused the 1990s chaos in Russia.

Not exactly caused, but the voucher privatisation was under western influence.

However, the stage was set for total chaos already in the 80s when the komsomol money laundering loophole opened.

It feels like USSR / Russia took so many bad turns in the late 80s early 90s.

You can’t blame western yuppies for creating chaos when you explicitly import them to administer “shock therapy”.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatization_in_Russia

> the EU has almost none of its own industry

This is just wrong.

> there are no EU-wide elections

This is also wrong.

It's the Council that takes most of the decisions, and it's made up of the leaders of the national governments. They don't want it to be different, as that would mean giving up national power. The Commission is rather toothless in comparison, they can only carry out existing policy.

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