[romanoderoma]

> and in fact, there are revolutions happening.

it would be interesting to know who's benefiting from these revolutions

it would also be interesting to understand if they really are revolutions or not

I am more inclined to call them riots and I am afraid that a number of them are steered by people with very bad intentions

Internet simply made propaganda easier and more effective, for the good but also for he bad

p.s: It's a good story, but Yeltsin went to Texas less than two months before the Berlin wall was taken down, people in USSR already knew about supermarkets at that time. Especially in East Germany. That's not the reason why they teared the wall down.

We in Italy knew about American malls and supermarkets, we had them but we usually didn't use them as much as we do today to buy groceries because our culture was based on local smaller shops selling fresh food.

[baybal2]

> p.s: It's a good story, but Yeltsin went to Texas less than two months before the Berlin wall was taken down, people in USSR already knew about supermarkets at that time. Especially in East Germany. That's not the reason why they teared the wall down.

I beg you thing otherwise. I spent my first 5 years of life, 1990-1995, with my mother shuttling in between a country which I would rather not name, and Russia, where my father lived until she was able to secure Russian citizenship, and a Russian birth certificate for me.

People in early nineties Russia were going crazy from all novelties they saw for the first time in their lives. Either in 1995, or in 1996, the first Western (actually South Korean) supermarket in the town was JAMPACKED with people for months after opening despite it being quite a huge warehouse store style supermarket, and very far away from the city. People were making reservations to get into it.

On the other hand, people previously in position of social prominence, affluence, and power were in a such deep shock for years on end, that some very literally died from starvation because they didn't know how the money are supposed to be earned from something that is not a government.

[romanoderoma]

I'm from Italy, my grandfather lived in Russia, during and soon after WWII.

I wasn't saying that Russia in the 90s was an happy place like the cocaine driven USA of the 90s.

Russia in the 90s was dealing with the ruins left by the regime.

I know of people that died because they poisoned themselves with home made vodka.

In Italy people were going crazy from all the novelties too, like any novelty people are attracted to them, you could see kids walking down the streets all dressed like Andre Agassi, all with the same haircut, even those that had no money to afford them, a friend of mine was caught many times stealing from the new mall that had recently opened in Rome.

It might surprise you, but the first mall in Rome was opened in 1989. Not so long ago.

It was fun at first, it soon became the most boring thing to do.

The first Mc Donald's in Italy was opened in Piazza di Spagna (Spanish steps) in 1987, 40 years after their first opening in the US.

The first Mc Donald's in Russia opened in 1990, not a lot of difference there.

Ironically, probably thanks to the strong US military presence, Germany had its first Mc Donald's in 1971.

There were people that saw one in Germany (probably agents from East Germany as well) 16 years before us.

Of course the difference is we could travel to US, there was no restriction for us to go there.

But on average people didn't know much about US culture up until the middle 80s.

We actually knew USSR a lot better than the US of A, just as an example see the story of Togliattigrad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tolyatti

They mainly knew stories about their grandfathers who went to America between the two wars.

Most of them never came back, the only read about it from letters.

But what brought USSR down wasn't the discovery of the supermarkets, it was the war in Afghanistan that left the once powerful Eastern Block with no money and forced them to declare bankruptcy.

[082349872349872]

The war in Afghanistan[1] was on the spending side, on the income side was the double whammy of oil price and (because oil is denominated in it) dollar decline. I think Fahd probably deserves a bit more credit for kneecapping the USSR than he commonly gets.

Bonus clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttzAsH1yM6E&t=60 (along the lines of: officers, you brought sons back to their mothers)

[1] I remember back when the Taliban were freedom fighters instead of terrorists. In the interim, I doubt their theology has changed significantly (but any outside weaponry is probably currently labelled in a different script).

[romanoderoma]

War in Afghanistan was a proxy for the cold war where primarily US and UK (but also China, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia) backed the mujahideen (including Taliban) to keep USSR spending a vast amount of money in the region while also cutting their income.

They succeeded in their intent and the fall of the USSR was so sudden that hundreds of soviet tanks were abandoned on the field

http://www.artificialowl.net/2008/08/ussr-red-army-tanks-gra...

A few years after the end of the war US left the region, refused to help with the reconstruction and handled control to Pakistan that in exchange for routes and security made pacts with local warlords and the Taliban.

With the consequences we know.

I wish I could understand what the Russian Walter White is singing in that YouTube video!

[082349872349872]

The russian is closer to Walter White than you may think. As I heard the story, he was a practicing MD for years before his mixtapes became popular, then switched to performing full time.

If you're really motivated try looking up офицеры текст песни ("officers text of-the-song") and use machine translation from there. Afghan war songs is a major genre.

[romanoderoma]

Fascinating

I will look it up

Thanks

[sergeykish]

Revolution is in the mind. What was in Ukraine, what's happening in Belarus is a decision to defeat fear, claim the rights and make a change,