9/30/97, Andrew Wayne Austin wrote:
>If freedom is only a state of mind, and if physical position completely
>incapacitates judgment, then I suppose Korotayev and Schell have even less
>to say than I.
What I find structurally interesting about the post-Soviet experience is
the variety and intensity of destabilization tactics (from devolution to
mafia infiltration, from political funding to economic pressure) that have
been employed, and the success of the media in attributing each episode to
this and that sundry cause.
What we are seeing is the systematic accomplishment by other means of what
Napolean and Hitler both failed to achieve - the subjugation of the once
Soviet realms to Western interests.
Andrew's charming prose can perhaps make a case for decreased personal
freedom being part of this picture, but why focus our attention on this
most-difficult-to-settle minor aspect of the situation?
Even if Russians and others _are_ experiencing increased freedom, in some
meaningful sense, that doesn't change the fact that one-third of the
world's people are having their societies destroyed, their economies put
into chaos, and their assets robbed. All is being reduced, so to speak, to
rubble so that tried-and-proven Third-World exploitive practices can be
deployed in this vast new de-developed realm.
rkm