Link: Interesting analysis of the Putin government...

Tidewater

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That particular friend once told me that they shrug shoulders at each there as much as we wave to each other here. I thought that both funny and sad.
My Russian teacher (from Moscow) told me that everything was so scarce during Soviet times, that when people saw a line on the sidewalk, they just got in the line, not even knowing what the line was for. If it turned out it was something you did not want, you bought it anyway and bartered it later for whatever it was you did want.
 

TIDE-HSV

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This may be not very significant, but, on the other hand, it may be quite significant.
Russian farmers refuse to sell grain to the Russian government in exchange for rubles.
The article is in Russian, but the for curious, you can use google translate and get the gist. Rubles are simply not a good store of value.

This might be the beginning of something very bad.
Well, can you blame them. It fell 2% against the dollar today alone. If that keeps up, how long before 1930's Germany and doing your banking in wheelbarrows? The vast market they were counting on in China probably just went poof! I wouldn't sell my crop for rubles either...
 

Tidewater

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Well, can you blame them. It fell 2% against the dollar today alone. If that keeps up, how long before 1930's Germany and doing your banking in wheelbarrows? The vast market they were counting on in China probably just went poof! I wouldn't sell my crop for rubles either...
I don't blame the farmers a bit.
It is just that Putin is a good bit smarter than Tsar Nicholas II (which admittedly is not saying much), and a good bit more ruthless than Gorbachev.
 

TIDE-HSV

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I don't blame the farmers a bit.
It is just that Putin is a good bit smarter than Tsar Nicholas II (which admittedly is not saying much), and a good bit more ruthless than Gorbachev.
The latter part I'll grant you. The former part I think is still up for grabs. As I've said above, he's very good at thinking of short-term options and taking advantages of them. What does such a man do when all of the attractive short-term options are gone? That's the real present question...
 

Tidewater

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The latter part I'll grant you. The former part I think is still up for grabs. As I've said above, he's very good at thinking of short-term options and taking advantages of them. What does such a man do when all of the attractive short-term options are gone? That's the real present question...
Granted. It was not so much that Putin is a genius (he isn't) but that the Romanovs in general were not very bright, Nicholas II in particular.
You remember that moment in the Soviet Putsch in 1991, when the Soviet army turned around and returned to their bases and Yeltsin had his moment? I don't think Putin would allow his army to avoid crushing any unrest. The Russians are scared whitless of what they call "color revolutions" which, according to the current thinking, is a revolt whipped up by the US to overthrow a legitimate government through rioting and unrest. They consider Ukrainian Maidan revolution of February 2014 to be wholly created by the CIA/State Department. The also consider Libya and Syria to be much the same, and point to these as examples of the chaos the US color revolutions create.
For this reason, I think Putin would go down swinging if some form of popular unrest were to break out in Moscow. He would send in the army and tell the army commanders: "If you don't crush that mob, the FSB will kill your family."
 

GrayTide

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TW you are spot on with your comment about what is happening now bearing an historical resemblance to August 1914. It has been said, it is not a difficult task to drum up support for what can be described as a nationalistic endeavor to protect the Russian homeland whether it is entirely true or not.
 
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TIDE-HSV

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Granted. It was not so much that Putin is a genius (he isn't) but that the Romanovs in general were not very bright, Nicholas II in particular.
You remember that moment in the Soviet Putsch in 1991, when the Soviet army turned around and returned to their bases and Yeltsin had his moment? I don't think Putin would allow his army to avoid crushing any unrest. The Russians are scared whitless of what they call "color revolutions" which, according to the current thinking, is a revolt whipped up by the US to overthrow a legitimate government through rioting and unrest. They consider Ukrainian Maidan revolution of February 2014 to be wholly created by the CIA/State Department. The also consider Libya and Syria to be much the same, and point to these as examples of the chaos the US color revolutions create.
For this reason, I think Putin would go down swinging if some form of popular unrest were to break out in Moscow. He would send in the army and tell the army commanders: "If you don't crush that mob, the FSB will kill your family."
I agree. I think that he would turn the country into a completely totalitarian state before giving up (which would mean his death, if he couldn't bail out and leave the country). I do believe it would be a lot harder to convert Russia back into that these days. Be interesting to watch, in a morbid sort of way...
 

Tidewater

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Russians Question Putin's War on Cheese

In a strange example of Russian thinking, a homeless Russian man, Stepan Demtriev said as he queued for food at an outreach centre run by the Moscow government:

Demtriev said:
“I never respected Mr Putin until he brought back Crimea, and then I realized he is a genius. And you know what? Even we tramps are prepared to do our bit. I’d be happy to tighten my belt and go hungry if it means we have Crimea. But I really struggle to understand why he decided to do this,” he said. “I’ve thought about it and thought about it and I just cannot understand. We’re really hungry here. Maybe he just doesn’t understand.”
The economic pain is widespread.
The number of Russians living in poverty, defined as those earning less than 10,400 rubles, or £97 a month, hit 23 million (about 16 percent of the population) in the first quarter of this year. That was up from 16 million in 2014.
For what its worth, 10,400 rubles a month is about $150 a month.
 

mittman

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Which really makes me wonder why on earth those on the left want to change our own country into something similar to Russia or other Communist country.
I agree completely. Russia is not the communist country of the 50s, 60s and 70s, but the problems still persist.

To be fair. When that many people are saying "We're really hungry here." They don't care what form of government they have, or will have. Those people don't worry about social dynamics, whether they are utopian or dystopian, incentives or disincentives. They just worry about feeding themselves. That can happen under any system. When people know they need a change they don't tend to worry about the long term results of that change. Their goal in life is to find food for the next day, and they will accept (at least for a time) any system that makes that possible. If you don't think that there are a great deal of people living like that here you don't see what I do. Understanding that problem, understanding those that see injustice, understanding how they respond to the perceived injustice, and addressing it to some level of satisfaction is necessary to keep from going down the road you are afraid of.
 

TIDE-HSV

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The shame of it is that the country needn't have headed in this direction. There was some oligarchy forming even under then, but that's the way the country has always been, even under communism. I saw Putin's ascendancy with a lot of apprehension. Basically the country is being run by a bunch of KGB bandits, just like the author said...
 

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