If Putin had been a good guy, what would have he done for Russia instead?
With all the money going into the Ukraine war and other ventures since Putin came to power, I imagine there's a lot of stuff he could've done to make the world a better place and Russia a formidable world power.
Watching For All Mankind makes me feel bad for present-day Russians because even those Soviet Russians have it better.
Watching For All Mankind makes me feel bad for present-day Russians because even those Soviet Russians have it better.
I just started watching the series and I'm in season 2. I'm loving it so far, and couldn't agree more.
Try to establish a proper western-style liberal democratic system and culture in Russia. They have a constitution that is nominally liberal democratic, but they are so used to authoritarian rule that they can't really manage to keep it that way.
Scary is that in a few years the USA could have that exact description
You see, the shape of the asiatic brainpan predisposes the slav to authoritarianism. Russians just have an authoritarian culture. They're taught to hate freedom and democracy from 2 years old.
You're trying to make them sound racist but that's really not it. Russia has never been a democracy. They don't have the culture build by more than a century of democratic rule like America, France or Britain. They don't have the culture that leads to more than a century of democratic rule. You make it seem comical by saying "they're taught to hate freedom", but cultures do vary in how predisposed they are to obeying authority or rebelling against it, among a variety of other things. I mean, just take a look at this. See this if you've never seen these terms before.
Anyway what I'm trying to say is that it takes a lot more work and good faith to keep a democracy going in a country like Russia and China than in Western Europe, where people are more used to and comfortable with fighting authority.
Retired after 2 terms in office
Use the vast resources to invest in the country such as building green energy, public transportation, plant agriculture, housing, manufacturing and education to try to outcompete the other European nations in metrics such as the democracy index, human happiness index, corruption index.
Allow the regions to leave any time they want and if that does happen take it as a lesson for his leadership.
Cracked down on corruption and entered russia into the eu
Joining the EU? Would that have even been possible?
I mean, I think it would've been awesome to be able travel to Russia without a VISA and just start working there...
Could be done, it's a country in Europe. It reaches into Asia, but then again France reaches into South America and nobody complains.
EU isn't only about open borders. It's open market and lots more.
The smartest thing any leader could do at this point is educate the next generation.
He could have opened a lot of colleges and invited scholars from all over the world to come and learn for free.
Push the US, Europe and China to invest in asteroid mining and space colonization.
Russia has the highest rate of college attainment in the world, free college is one of the few legacies of the USSR that didn't get privatized and destroyed during liberalization.
I don't like the question because Putin being a good guy is unthinkable to me. Good guys aren't in Russian politics, or at least not for long. But let's say Russia had a halfway decent leadership where smart guys don't fall out of windows. With their vast landmass, resources and workforce, they could easily be the third largest economy in the world again instead of not even making it into the top ten on their way to fall behind Mexico.
Abdicate years ago instead of bending the laws that prevented him from ruling indefinitely
He would have united the globe, and then been isekai'd to another world where his only goal is to ride every creature in said world.
Have a look at Gorbachev. A big loss, that.
Resigned.
He could've sold all the nuclear warheads in exchange for goods which could be used as a foundation to get the ball rolling for the economic situation.
If he was a good guy he probably wouldn't have come to power in the first place.
Good Putin was able to shoot himself in the head like 30 times.
Last time Russia was a formidable power, it was part of the USSR.
Modern Russia is a capitalist state. The interests of the capitalist class and the interests of the working class are opposed. The capitalists wouldn't permit Putin to remain in power if he made Russia a better place for people, by supporting the people instead of his fellow billionaires.
The USSR was a formidable power because of vassal states also known as good old imperialism, something Putin desperately tries to replicate. The mindset of Russia's leaders today isn't so different from Soviet times.
If that was the relationship, the USSR's constitution wouldn't have permitted SSRs to leave with a simple referendum, nor would they have suffered so much after breakup of the USSR. Instead we see their housing and public infrastructure has been left to rot without the cooperation and relative effectiveness of the USSR's economic system.
We know what imperialism looks like. When the UK built infrastructure in India and Africa, it consisted of railways from the mines to the ports. The literacy rate in India under Britain never got above 12%. The USSR built trains connecting even remote villages and subway systems in any city >1 million. Most of the former USSR countries still have some of the highest rates of educational attainment in the world.
Almost every single country with an extraction-based economy is either a dictatorship or a failed state. The single exception is Norway, which discovered oil after it was already an advanced democracy. A country with natural resources does not need to invest in its human capital, or worry about democracy.
Russia's natural resources are its curse.
There is actually a good video by CGP grey on why this is. https://youtu.be/rStL7niR7gs
The Netherlands is also wealthy because of their natural gas.
So it is definitely possible to not be a dictatorship, and a good Putin would make it so.
In America the corporate dictatorship was started when oil was discovered and the billionaire class created.
in addition to mineral deposits they also have natural gas and historically a good amount of people in the developed cities well trained in math, programming, and technical sciences.
They could have been an economic powerhouse in 21st century if they weren’t beholden to Putin and oligarchy.
I've been saying for years, China still wants Yongmingcheng (vladivostok) back. Why fight every country in the pacific aside from North Korea when there's more arable land and tremendous mineral wealth to the north, and the north will not be able to defend itself.
I'd love to see how well Russia does against a peer combatant.