Sarah Paine

People in Eastern Europe as a group were more well-educated and they were richer than Russians.

It was like a donut empire.

So that when the empire went to Eastern Europe,

Russians could no longer siphon off the wealth of these insurfed populations in Eastern Europe, which explains why they wanted to leave.

It also suggests why Putin wants them back.

Another false assumption has to do with the sentiments of the neighbors.

Gorbachev was convinced he was going to get credit for liberating Eastern Europe rather than blame as a Russian for having insurfed them in the first place.

For Gorbachev, the clock begs

began on his watch for other people.

No, no, Stalin's when it began, when he started shooting a lot of people.

So here you have Anatoly Chernyayev, foreign policy advisor to Gorbachev, saying that Gorbachev thought that bringing freedom to our Eastern European satellites would have them adopt socialism with the human face.

He made an enormous mistake because these countries brutally turned their back on us.

Really?

If that's brutal, then what, pray tell, was Stalin?

And then it gets better.

The politics in connection with our former friends were totally unexpected to us.

Really?

You occupy people, you never leave, you shoot a lot of people in their government, you put in a new government, you siphon off a lot of their wealth, and you impose a non-performing economic system, and you wonder why they don't like you.

Think about the United States.

Intervenes all around the world in other people's troubles, dumps billions in economic aid, and even leaves, and people don't like us.