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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: glenn_a who wrote (38857)	8/17/2008 3:11:40 AM
From: dybdahl	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 217860

Each nation has its view on history, and Denmark's is like this: <--- begin of Danish history lesson ---> Denmark was a kingdom engaged in a lot of wars. Finally we lost hugely in the 1860s, few years after getting a semi-democratic constitution. A clever guy then said: What we lose to the outside, we should win to the inside. In other words, instead of making the rulers gain by acquiring land, we should improve what we have, for the benefit of the people. Many things happened, but the most important was probably that we started to educate the farmers. Many things came out of this, including en.wikipedia.org and a sense for helping out the poor. Russia was also about agriculture, but the people were largely uneducated and there was no social help. The people was very responsive to socialism. Socialism has brought improvements in the standards of living, literacy, social awareness and made it unnecessary to know any other languages than Russian. Via the nuclear bomb, this socialist country became a superpower. Suddenly, everything falls apart, and they perceived that there was nothing meaningful to substitute it. <--- end of Danish history lesson ---> I think the problems started in the 1800s. Many things in Russia and surrounding states today are very similar to west Europe in year 1900 (seriously!). I cannot blame the west for anything with regard to Russia, and I cannot blame the Russians either. It seems that their rulers improve a bit for every new president. Putin wasn't drunk and Medvedev doesn't seem to want a war for years, like in Chechnya. They will need decades to realize what we needed to realize in order to build our nations, and we're currently helping them in that process.

To: glenn_a who wrote (38857)	8/17/2008 4:13:02 AM
From: Haim R. Branisteanu	Respond to of 217860

>>>>>Do you feel the West and Russia are equally complicit in what happened to Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union?<<<< Yes in retro-respect no one knew what is really going on in Russia at the time of collapse. All intelligence gathering agencies in the West where concentrating on the wrong issues. Some time I wonder why those guys get paid and what they generate in return. Would have the West acted differently would they saved Russia from falling back into chaos? I do not know - possible but this is pure speculation