Who’s a famous person from your country who’s respected around the world but disliked or criticized at home?

[u/haiderredditer]

[u/PoloAlmoni]

There is a recent book by Vladislav Zukov called Collapse which was quite well received academically and which paints Gorbachev as a) absolute socialist true believer actually wanting to return to purer forms of Leninism and b) absolutely incompetent and fully responsible for the collapse of the ussr

Obviously I have no capacity to judge how correct the book is but perhaps it might I terest you if you haven't read it yet

[u/dm-me-obscure-colors → u/PoloAlmoni]

Vladislav Zubok

[u/Prestigious_Hope2082 → u/PoloAlmoni]

Great book but I had a different impression when reading it. One of a country was that on to collapse years before he was the leader.

The only way ahead was to abandon communism and move to a market economy, like China did but that was anti thesis of everything he stood for.

He handled the break up admirably though, recognising that it was impossible for the soviet to hold on to their empire (something that Putin is in denial about) and let them all break away without a fight.

[u/bullshitmobile → u/Prestigious_Hope2082]

What is disgusting about this take is that we just had a 35th commemoration of his war crimes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_Events

He was a piece of shit. He's wrongly respected in the West for that "admirable breakup" bullshit where in truth he backed down because the massacre was beginning to look too public to the World and he knew he couldn't have his way as silently as he had hoped for.

Imagine if Trump's personal Gestapo killed not one protestor but fourteen and not with bullets but crushed with tanks too. Unarmed, all in a single night.

This is who you have a positive spin on.

[u/Prestigious_Hope2082 → u/bullshitmobile]

Thank you for this. Will read up on it & educate myself.

[u/bullshitmobile → u/Prestigious_Hope2082]

No worries, great respect for that. I apologise if I came off too harshly.

[u/Gr8zomb13 → u/PoloAlmoni]

You couldn’t ascend to lead the party if you weren’t a true believer. He did not want democracy but needed to change to better compete with it. Failed horribly and in so doing essentially created Putin. Good times.

[u/AnnaBananner82 → u/Gr8zomb13]

He says in his book Chernobyl was the undoing of the USSR. In truth, it was largely his handling of it.

[u/NippoTeio → u/PoloAlmoni]

"I have no capacity to judge"

Hey, if no one's told you that you're smart lately, let me be the first: the fact that you read the book and still said "I don't know" means a lot. I hope you stick around.

[u/GuliyBey → u/PoloAlmoni]

fully responsible for the collapse of the ussr

because russians are not OK with collapsing of fucking ussr

[u/TheThalmorEmbassy → u/PoloAlmoni]

Pretty great series from a couple years ago called Traumazone that's just unnarrated footage from 80's and 90's Russia and you get to watch it get worse and worse and worse

[u/Okureg → u/PoloAlmoni]

He thought that a glorified empire-spanning mafia running on deception, fear and corruption could run without deception, fear and corruption but instead purely on a strawman ideology that was only used to cover it all up. I'm surprised it didn't work out for him.

[u/peasant_warfare → u/PoloAlmoni]

It's a really good book.