>>18432783
What if he really wanted them to be free, tankie?

>>18432784
I'm not a tankie at all. I don't have any attachment to the USSR or hatred for Gorbachev. Communism was finished but the USSR probably could have reformed into something resembling China.

Gorbachev did not see himself as a liberal and he never intended to break up the union. He genuinely believed he could rapidly reform the economy while also decentralizing power and allowing competitive elections and was then shocked and confused when the entire system crumbled.

Undoubtedly. At the moment there is hesitation to comprehend just how retarded Gorbachev was because the prevailing western narrative at the time was that he was a liberal and he intentionally opened up the USSR and let it collapse naturally, but make no mistake the evidence shows this is a complete falsity. Gorbachev believed himself a Leninist and though he was bringing about a new "democratic" era of the USSR even as all of his advisors said "hey it kind of looks like you are collapsing the economy and empowering all of the republics nationalist movements to secede". One needs look no further than his "economic reforms" which allowed beznal and nal to be converted freely to realize that Gorbachev and his advisors largely had no fucking clue what they were doing. The fault cannot fully be placed on Gorbachev, as Brezhnev and Stalin had largely purged anyone who knew what the fuck was going on, but at least Andropov had the humility to procede with economic reform slowly, whereas Gorbachev immediately tried to radically change a system he did not even understand.

>>18432783
The USSR was 51% ethnic Russian. The PRC is 91% ethnic Han. It's a retarded comparison.
The USSR was blown up by ethnic Russians electing Yeltsin as President of the RSFR because they were tired of the rest of the union leeching off them anyway.

>>18432967
No one is comparing USSR directly to China. Of course China had an easier time reforming to capitalism having been only 15% industrialized in 1978 compared to 80%+ industrialized USSR in 1985 but the Chinese had the fucking foresight to reform economically over a period of 12 years while maintaining the authoritarian party while Gorbachev (retard) undermind the authority of the party which simultaneously implementing failed economic reforms in the span of 5-7 years because he was in fact retarded.

>>18432783
At the end of the day Slavs have shown that they're spiritually more European than Asiatic when they couldn't stomach spilling blood like China did at Tianamen.

>>18432978
Tiannenmen was babyshit compared to historical European atrocities. USSR probably killed more during the Prague spring than China did in 1989. If Gorbachev had been willing to put down a few hundred or thousand Estonians then the USSR would probably still be together today.

>>18432972
That's why gorbachev tried to decentralise power to the republics, it was his way of attempting to outmanoeuvre the centralised industrial enterprises that were blocking his economic reforms

>>18432988
Yeah but he was fucking dumbass if he just reformed more slowly like Andropov had already begun back in 82 he may have actually succeeded. In giving power to this whole new Supreme Soviet and the Congress of 2500 seats he just fucked the entire party apparatus and handed power over to nationalists

>>18432987
By that point the USSR was taking in billions in western loans to pay for imports of consumer goods to alleviate worker unrest. If they kill Estonians then the loans and imports stop and gorbachev gets ousted himself
>In the face of growing dissatisfaction over consumer goods shortages and spreading labor unrest, though, the Soviet government embarked in 1989 on a crash program of imports, financed largely by foreign borrowing. Net Soviet hard-currency borrowing in 1989 alone probably reached $10 billion. By the end of 1990, the gross hard-currency debt of the Soviet Union was some $55 billion.
The fundamental problem was the economic model didn't work and nationalities wanted out. You can't solve that with infinite repression.
It worked in China because 90% of the population were ethnically homogenous peasants, not middle income industrial workers with no national loyalty.

>>18432783
No one but russia wanted to be in the USSR which is why they all left
Any country building walls to keep people in wont stand the test if time.

>>18433012
Russia didn't even want to be in USSR lmao they voted 90% to leave

>>18432978
Is the implication here that Europeans have never violently put down dissenting movements and revolutionaries?

>>18433023
Past historical vanguards were open and brazen about their intentions to overthrow the governments. It's the recent camouflage behind "student protests" that threw sand in the west's eyes. For example when a bunch of students threw rocks at national guardsmen at Kent state and were rightfully shot for it, it's considered to this day a historically shameful event of state violence, and these were just a few dozen people involved. They don't have the stomach to do what Deng did.

>>18433047
>Past historical vanguards were open and brazen about their intentions to overthrow the governments
Ah okay, so you're just a shitposter.

>>18433012

Wrong, the last country in it was Kazakhstan. Many expected CIS to be a successor.

>>18432783
Gorbachev was a power hungry, narcissistic, naive westaboo, who was being puppeted by literal actual traitors in Yakovlev and Shevardnadze who were actively trying to tear down the USSR and basically had their hands up Gorby's ass doing it.
Make no mistake, Yakovlev was most likely a US asset who was recruited when he went to college in the United States, Yakovlev admits he planned on destroying the USSR since the 1950s, everything Yakovlev did especially in regards to cherry picking information out of the archive to anti-communist historians like conquest and block historians from seeing the archives completely to discredit the USSR, was done to ideologically destroy the nation. This is the guy that wrote the opening to the Black Book of Communism ffs. He openly proudly admits everything he did was to destroy the USSR and his loyalty was to the US.
Shevardnadze was just another self-interested red director nationalist who wanted to be dictator of Georgia.
Gorbachev might have been naive when it came to the west (he literally had the most retarded rose tinted glasses that you can read even Western diplomats going "holy fuck this guy is retarded, he believes everything we say lmao") but not internally, he was extremely caluclating, engaged in purges larger than Stalin and until Yeltsin who outflanked him from his own shitlib wing, was able to knock out basically most Communists from the CPSU.

And then the fucked it up again doing the market reforms to the max after Soviet Union collapsed.

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Gorbachev wanted to be friends with the west no matter what and they knew it
They literally approved the soviet union intervening in Romania to aid the revolution and remove Ceausescu

>>18432783
Top 10 historical retards, for sure. Up there with Fernando VII

>>18432783
The system collapsing because of Gorby's attempted reforms is just a testament to how impractical the system was.

>>18432783
the stereotype of eastern europeans being these severe casually cruel authoritarians is bs, they're actually bigger naive true believer libtards than proper westerners are

>>18432783
>>18432789
Mike was born and raised in the USSR. An entire lifetime of indoctrination. Nigga probably thought communism actually worked and things would be fine on their own without all the convoluted structures they had to make up to keep shit somewheat stable.