Was the fall of the USSR the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century?

Was the fall of the USSR a major geopolitical catastrophe?

  • Yes

    Votes: 1 4.0%
  • No

    Votes: 19 76.0%
  • I have mixed feelings

    Votes: 5 20.0%

  • Total voters
    25
Status
Not open for further replies.
Ostalgie and Yugostalgie says otherwise.
Nostalgia for the Soviet era is rarely something built upon real difference between the two periods, it mostly comes from the fact that the people feeling that nostalgia were young during the Soviet era and have thus started associate that youth with the Soviet period.

Not all of it, there's plenty of reasons for Soviet era nostalgia and some are actually valid (for example, if you were a member of the nomenklatura, of course you'll see those times more positively), but a significant portion of it is.
 
Disagree, Sino-japanese war led to a geopolitical enviroment where Russia was percieved as a much more valid military target than it otherwise would have been. Much worse political consequence than anything russia faces now.

First world war saw the collapse of Russian influence and civil war and foreign occupation during the interwar years having it effectively ceasing to exist as a coherrent nation for a few years after the war where nations like poland could extract military victories.

Second world war for Russia was a result of the winter war which proved disastrous for the soviet union as it again resulted in being percieved as a valid target for a german invasion with a resulting 27 million dead Russians, again nothing today compares to it even remotely.

Again, the criteria in these isn't geopolitical as in Putin's statement but rather is much more general and not at all filtered through the lense of the Russian state. Geopolitically, the Russo-Japanese War only saw the loss of territory on the extreme eastern fringes of the Russian Empire, of no significance to her core regions, and brought about significant impact as to Russia's alliance structure, which remained anchored on France. WW1 reaches the closest in being a geopolitical catastrophe on the scale of WW1, but by the time all was said and done, Russia had itself together and retained almost all of it's borders, although it's alliance structure fell. WW2 saw Russia's borders do what they were supposed to, wear down the enemy in-concert with Russia's vast armies and stop them before they overran the vital Russian cores, and ended with Russia in as secure a position as it would ever be, with her effective borders on the Elbe, guarded by the most powerful ground army in the world which itself was supported by a military-industrial complex to rival the United States. Not a bad position to be in, security wise, if you are Stalin.

No nation today percieves Russia as a valid military target for conquest. There are no real external military threats, and its internal dealings are far more stable than the vast majority of the 20th century, no mass deportations, no rebellions claiming thousands of lives and no real danger of them being percieved as a valid military target.

The Russian perspective of geopolitics has less to do with how others view them then it does on the cold facts of the matter: correlation of forces, where the borders are located in relation to the core regions, who can be counted on militarily. From the Russian perspective, they do have a external military threat (NATO) and that threat is practically on St Peterburg's doorstep instead of on the other side of Berlin. One of the reasons the Russians acted the way they did back in 2014 in Ukraine was because they believed if they didn't, Ukraine would join NATO, and that would place Moscow just one operational cycle from being in NATO's hands.

Putin just by incompetence.

I'd argue Putin's issue is less competence vs incompetence and more that he's straitjacketed by his worldview. It's a rather common failing in history.
 
How do you define geopolitical catastrophe? I imagine that what's a catastrophe for some people is a blessing for others.
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
I typed a long specific lock message for this, somehow it didn't post.

Less specific explanation:

The subject is about 99% likely to get quite political. That makes it a Chat subject. Unfortunately I could not move the thread to Chat because there is an ebbed poll and polls are not allowed in Chat.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top