An interesting post by a bloger made me……

Unless you believe the conspiracy theory that Ronald Reagan helped fund Al Qaeda which in turn cost the Soviets dearly in Afghanistan, Reagan had very little to do with the fall of the Soviet Union. There is no reliable source, as far as I know, for the claim that the Soviet Union spent much money trying to protect Eastern Europe from the American military buildup. If the Soviets did have such a significant military buildup in the area that funding it threatened its very existance, don’t you think they would have used it to squash the various revelutions that followed the disaster at Chernobyl ?

IT IS ALL ABOUT MONEY. Stamp it on your brain. Don’t. Ever. Forget. It.

Jennifer?

And my post was not a challenge to the proposition that the Soviet Union was a totalitarian dictatorship and a human rights disaster. My point, clearly stated, is that the Western conviction that the Soviet Union had *global* expansionist ambitions and would have launched a first strike if given half a chance, was incorrect.

And by the way, an understanding of the wrongheadedness of the Cold War is not incompatible with an understanding of the tyrannical nature of the Soviet system with regard to its own people and its orbit of influence in Eastern Europe. In fact, the two are related. By putting the Soviets’ backs against the wall, constantly threatening them with the fear of annihilation and forcing them to keep up with a ruinously expensive arms race — plus, for added measure, publicly demonizing them for 40 years — the U.S. contributed to the hardening of the Soviet Union’s domestic policies.

Gorbachev’s historic achievement consisted in part of creating real democratic reform in the Soviet Union, even while the saber-rattling and arms buildup was still going on.

Good points, Chief. And Max, I too “lived through that history.” I am 57 years old — 58 in July. I was born in 1950, a bit over a week after the Korean War began. I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis — vividly — I was 12 at the time. I remember all of it.

Perhaps your belief, “The Soviet Union was a monstrously murderous threat.” was because you listened to only that which the U.S. government fed to the media. Maybe the Soviet Union was reacting to it’s belief that the U.S would invade them AGAIN. In case you were not aware of it (and most Americans are not aware of) the United States invaded Russia in 1919. Check out the book “On A Field Of Red.”

Leo Strauss was fascinated by the Peloponnesian war and so are modern wingnuts like Slots Bennett and Victor Davis Hanson.

My understanding of the history of the Soviet Union sincw WWII comes from being old enough to have lived through that history. The Soviet Union was a monstrously murderous threat.