Putin: collapse of Soviet Union "a catastrophe"

[dazzleman]

If I were Russian, I'd probably be bitter about going from being a superpower, however sclerotic, to a shrunken poor country.

A country that held much of the world in terror, and presided over a military occupation of hundreds of millions of foreign peoples, now can't even control its own borders.

From Putin's standpoint, there's good reason to be unhappy that the Soviet Union collapsed.  But that doesn't mean the rest of the world should be unhappy.

BRTD is one of those people who would have thought the Soviet Union far superior to the US, had he been old enough during the time before the Soviet collapse, so I find it odd that he's now so exorcised over Putin's statement.

[dazzleman]

My professor told me that Putin and his cronies hate Bush, despite all the public talk of a warm friendship. He said that their meeting in Slovakia earlier this year was quite unpleasant. Maybe the feeling is mutual.

I hate Putin too but what is the alternative to him? There is no effective opposition. His comment is terrible and shows how all he cares about is re-establishing Russia's former position as a Superpower.

I don't mean to put words in BRTD's mouth but Dazzleman we liberals did not like Soviet communism, we may have liked how it seemed theory but it obviously didn't work in practice. I am as happy as you are that the Berlin Wall came down.

Yes, but you're only happy in retrospect.  You would have cringed when President Reagan said "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall."  Liberal happiness at the collapse of the Soviet Union only developed subsequently.  Prior to the Soviet collapse, liberals were more likely to defend Soviet behavior, and oppose the policies that led to its collapse.  Many liberals only discovered that the system didn't work, as you say, until after its collapse.  Hindsight is always 20/20.