Senate announces new bipartisan sanctions against Russia

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

I assure you, I have little interest in making the case that Iran should have been an SSR. Moreover, my snide, trolling comment takes place in the context of a much larger system of capital distribution--one that saw Ukraine robbed during that same time of 20% of its GDP to fund development projects in Russia, and yes, Kazakhstan. I actually enjoy bringing up the Central Asia example specifically because it is a region that has at least some history of benefitting from the USSR, unlike the aforementioned Ukraine. On a related note, when you refer to resource heavy regions and bring up Iran as an example, I would state that (according to my knowledge) resources were rather famously hard to extract in Central Asia. Any story of their experience under pre-Soviet Russian domination will be one of mines and wells being sh**t down, or simply being seriously hampered by geography. Central Asia, as unique an experience as this may be compared to other Soviet "colonies", appears to have received disproportionate development. While some of this was useless from the standpoint of a rationalized system, it at least may have provided some alternative to the cotton monoculture that the region's previous imperial Russian rulers enforced.

I suppose you would prefer the world do without Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

[Vosem]

Suggesting that Russia is inherently evil and oppressive is a little whoa, but it has to be made clear that there are consequences both for violating the international order as they have and (in an ideal world) for actual fascism, so I would get behind these. Certainly sanctions are an imperfect method but there's not much you can do against a nation with 5000 nuclear weapons.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

I suppose you would prefer the world do without Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

Most Americans would, if they were honest with themselves, and I'm not talking about his post-Soviet years.

I'm unsure if most Americans have ever heard of him, but I still don't entirely follow.

[Brittain33]

Not to put too fine a point on it, but those improvements in literacy came along with massive famines and deportations that killed a substantial number of people in Central Asia. You can't just look at the first out of context.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

I suppose you would prefer the world do without Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

Most Americans would, if they were honest with themselves, and I'm not talking about his post-Soviet years.

I'm unsure if most Americans have ever heard of him, but I still don't entirely follow.

His Harvard Address should make it clear enough.

Seems rather poignant.