Famous writer and critic Vladimir Nabokov founded Wellesley College Russian Department in the 1940s. Since that time, the Department has dedicated itself to excellence in literary scholarship and undergraduate teaching. Welcome to our RU-vid channel! We hope you enjoy what you find here.
I'm sorry Duntsova and her following is not mentioed by either speaker. Actually her style, though seemingly modest, is low profile but not without strength.
If you go to NATO's 2021 communique, it's clearly written that NATO reinvigorates its decision in 2008 to add Ukraine to the alliance. So NATO membership is definitely one of the causes of the war
And putin did it, then and now. It looks like their knowledge and understanding of this person and history is not full enough to see the whole picture of this war and putin manipulation. I check this only because her interview in Bloomberg as of 03.29.2024 has changed under new circumstances. As I'm Ukrainian, she is an intelligent woman with deep knowledge but not enough to teach and write a book that does not represent reality and truth.
Great talk and Q&As but the number one immediate reason for the break-up of the Soviet Union is missed. The state overly depended on the fear of state violence to keep the edifice in tact. And this is linked the first theory posited - that communism runs against human nature. It was Gorbachev's unwillingness to use violence which allowed the state to disintegrate.
Romald Reagan played a key role in the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Also, Gorbachev was no angel - he ordered the murderous repression of protesters in the Baltic states.
What a joke, next to no material analysis, and he calls himself a historian. Not to mention going along with the idea that the break up of the USSR in the 90s was relatively bloodless.. ig over 3 million deaths from shock therapy capitalism is bloodless. He’s ignorant at best and a revisionist at worst. It’s utterly repulsive to not push back on that point in particular, but overall this was a biography of Gorbachev not an analysis of the fall of the USSR.
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics opened an era of a new type of development of culture and civilization, and its experience in crushing Nazism is invaluable today, in the context of a global conflict, the main front of which has been transferred to Ukraine, believes Professor of Philosophy at the Technical University of Crete Dimitrios Patelis, Candidate of Philosophy. "On December 30, 2022, all progressive humanity celebrates the centenary of the creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The USSR, the fruit of the first early victorious revolution, opened the era of a revolutionary transition to a new type of development of culture and civilization: to a united humanity. This was the triumph of the revolutionary creativity of the oppressed, proven by the example of the USSR "that they can take their destiny into their own hands, emancipate society, begin unprecedented revolutionary transformations, overcoming antagonisms and exploitation, towards a society of solidarity and humanity," Patelis said. In his opinion, the triumphal march of the USSR is associated with the world-historical achievements of man: the fight against illiteracy, the establishment of a number of social benefits, free education, healthcare, medical care, proper rest, the rapid development of the economy, society, science, technology, sports, art and culture . “A titanic feat was the crushing of the anti-Comintern axis by the Soviet Red Army thanks to the self-denial and self-sacrifice of the entire people of the USSR, ensuring the world with nuclear parity, internationalist assistance to the world anti-imperialist movement, as well as primacy in space exploration. A clear example of internationalism is providing access to education in USSR universities to students from different capitalist countries, thanks to which I personally received an excellent education,” the professor noted. What did the Soviet government of the USSR give to the people? 1.The right to an eight-hour working day. For the first time in the world in the history of mankind. 2. The right to annual paid leave. For the first time in human history. 3. The impossibility of dismissing an employee on the initiative of the administration or the owner without the consent of the trade union and party organization. 4. The right to work, to the opportunity to earn a living by one’s own labor. Moreover, graduates of vocational educational institutions had the right to compulsory employment in the labor field with the provision of housing in the form of a dormitory or apartment. 5. The right to free general and vocational education. Moreover, both secondary vocational education and higher education. For the first time in the world. 6. The right to free use of preschool institutions: nurseries, kindergartens, pioneer camps. For the first time in the world. 7. The right to free medical care. For the first time in the world. 8. The right to free sanatorium and resort treatment. For the first time in the world. 9. The right to free housing. For the first time in the world 10. The right to protect the state from the arbitrariness of local bosses and officials. For the first time in the world. 11. The right to free travel to the place of work or study using an individual travel document paid for by the state. For the first time in the world. In addition, women had the right to a number of additional benefits: 1. The right to three years of maternity leave with job retention. (56 days - fully paid, 1.5 years - benefits, 3 years - without interruption of service and a ban on dismissal from the administration.). 2. The right to free foster care for a child for up to one year. 3. The right to a free dairy kitchen for newborns up to three years of age. 4. The right to free medical and sanatorium-resort treatment for any childhood diseases. There was nothing like this in any country in the world and there could not even be a trace of it. Some social benefits in foreign countries began to appear only after the Second World War as a result of a powerful labor movement caused by the existence on the planet of the Soviet state, the State of Workers and Peasants. Citizens of the USSR had much more rights than Americans or Germans! But those don’t have them today, and don’t expect them to. In addition, in the USSR cross-subsidization made payments for utility services symbolic. When setting prices for certain goods in the USSR, they were primarily based on their social significance. Therefore, meat and meat products, milk and dairy products, and many varieties of fish and fish products were sold below cost and at constant prices. Children's clothing and shoes, textbooks for schools and universities, toys, notebooks and other writing materials, medicines, cotton fabrics and many other goods were sold at a loss. State subsidies for these purposes amounted to tens of billions of rubles annually. The state partially covered its losses through high prices for jewelry, natural furs and other luxury goods, and alcoholic beverages. But the main source of subsidies is the profits of state-owned enterprises. By spending a significant portion of the profits of its enterprises on subsidies, the state covered its losses. Losses in favor of the consumer!
Sure yea right. Gorbachev I’m sorry was a murderous thug who threatened the life of Baltic SSR Republic leaders and their families if they ever tried to break away. And the Soviet system financially collapsed from unsustainable free healthcare for too many people, the collapse beginning already by 1979, then the Soviet war in Afghanistan drove it into a ditch. Adding that the USSR secret police only spent 15% for international espionage, 85% waa spent on spying on their very own citizens. Today in Russia it’s even worse. Back then 1 in 650 were Kremlin informants while today it is 1 in ever 400.
Just another college professor attempting to spin Gorby into something he was not. I keep having flashbacks to UC Irvine and my professors trying to explain that the collapse of Communism was not really a collapse. Yeah, right. What’s worse, as of October 2023, his asides about Ukraine have not aged well.
I reviewed many opinions on this subject. The most reasonable version is that soviet bureaucracy decided to divide and privatize state properties and integrate in western elites. So Eltsin, Kravchuk, Shushkevich were the frontmans of this process while Gorbachev was just the silly naive puppet. So the main cause of this tragic process was moral degradation of soviet elite.
What a good showing! Though being a Russian, the apologia and lack of Russian outreach is just appalling and abhorrent. You can love your people and your nation, and still detest the government in a full capacity. This sort of mentality is just shameful.
You have listed all the policies that the West espouses and that Putin is against. It is now crystal clear in my mind that I'm on Russia's side, 100%. Thank you, honestly, thank you.
UssR collapsed not by itself but bt treasonable acts by antisocialists Russians headed by Yeltsin and other traitors including Gorbachev who let them take over State institutions such as mass media to influence and lie to the people that they would be better off in a capitalist private system. The Russian people found it was a set up for the private enrichment of new Russian oligarch class . Yeltsin, Gorbachev, Yakovlev, Chubais (father of privatization) and others became filthy rich while tge working people became filthy poor. No more free education, no more free health care, no more free housing, no more free transportation. Private banks would rule o er people's lives just as they do in AmeriKKKa a paradise for the rich and a hell for the working poor. UsSR did not collapse, it was and an overthrow, a coup de etat with U.S. help. Read the original Dulles Plan to overthrow the Soviet Union. There is a reason why the capitalist class hate socialism. They hate to see their wage slave workers live without their capitalist oppressors. How else can capitalists produce profits without their wage slave workers?
Soviet "union" collapsed because it was not a union it was an empyre lead by people much worse than the people they led in many ways, both social and work related.
I enjoyed your talk again, maybe add a one line timeline of how the USSR collapsed. Another book you could write is the story of the US building the USSR by shipping over 1500 factories and machinery from the US and our men to assemble on site in USSR. Also they were sent on liberty ships and then they moved all of them again to the Urals right before Hitler attacked them. With your contacts you could show where they were and where they went and what factories are left from that but there is a huge tank factory in the Urals, maybe some pictures because there is little or no info on that. If it wasn't for those factories the war world war 2 and the cold war might not have turned out quite different.
Um the first Liberty ship was launched , SS Ocean Vanguard, on 16 August 1941. Built those factories so fast the clock turned backwards. Use better AI, bud.
The whole economy was based on having millions of slave workers at all times, just like the Roman empire. When Stalin died and the amount of prisoners started to decline, the economy was doomed to start it`s decline too. After that it was just the matter of time: arms race, afganisthan and Tshernobyl were details in pacing up the inevitable.
I learned many years ago that Russia/The Soviet Union has been a mess throughout history. The "former Soviet Republics" despise Russia and Putin. It's too big, too many ethnicities, they don't make anything that anybody needs or wants, it's an autocratic-mafia run state by a select minority of inner-circle men, there's no freedom of speech, no freedom of the press, no freedom of expression, the corruption is massive, the divorce rate is the highest in the world, the alcoholism is out of control, etc ... But, ignorant, uninformed Americans will elect a candidate who desperately wishes he was Putin. They don't know history. If you explained the Cold War to them they wouldn't get it.
The USSR collapsed in 1981 after the Americans had supported the so called Russian Revolution and USSR since at their creation with hundreds of western companies who build the USSR. When the West could no longer afford to support the USSR, it collapsed. Read Antony Sutton who has written six books on the hundreds of companies that secretly did business with the USSR for seventy years. The so called cold war was a farce.
In March of 1991, at a reception in Moscow, Ian Shapiro, Sterling Professor of Political Science at Yale, spoke with Professor Vadim Zagladin, first deputy director international department of the Soviet Communist Party's Central Committee & asked, “When did you (the ruling elite) conclude that the Soviet Union was unsustainable? Zagladin replied, “1978”. Did you ever meet and/or communicate with Zagladin.
