In a message dated 98-04-16 15:30:55 EDT, you write:
<< All
the left anti-communists, local and foreign, who were blowing hard during
the cold war didn't have a clue what to do when the USSR fell either,
leaving a perfectly clear field for the IMF. So I think it's pretty
important to compare the experiences of Latin America and Southeast Asia - >>
A nice little rhetorical flourish but rhetorical none-the-less. Come on,
I heard plenty of proposals for ways to help democratize a de-Stalinizing
economy. Unfortunately, none of the people who had much say
in the process, either in the SU or anywhere else, had very little
interest in "democracy", either economic or democratic in the emerging Russia.
(I mean if you are really interested in democracy, you don't use
a bastardized version of the American governmnet as your model,
a model which, as I have suggested before, resembles Wiemar Germany
with its weak parliament and strong executive).
