Quizzes & Puzzles12 mins ago
Nelson Mandela Dies.
RIP.
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its not unknown, and it wasn't just the whites who had much to fear of reprisals for the wretched apartheid system but other party members.
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is it point scoring or perhaps a bit of balance, all the ho ha on party leaders, world despots, some very unsavoury facts come out and not just when they are dead. Some on AB were almost dancing on Mrs T grave when she died, that was pretty unsavoury, but you have to let it go as that was, is people's opinions. she was not a saint or a sinner either.
AOG
Forgive late response - I was getting a train.
From your third link:
"And while Thatcher did give moral support to the opponents of Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe, to credit her as one of the architect’s of Communism’s fall is exaggerated."
Which is pretty much what I'm saying.
Your first link details Thatcher's decision to allow Cruise missiles to be stationed in the UK during the early '80s as a counter to Soviet deployment. Fair enough. It also implies that Thatcher was a decisive factor in Reagan being elected, with no backing evidence, which I think is rather spurious.
All your second and third articles say is that she maintained a united front with Reagan. The one from the Economist asserts that she 'promoted new thinking' in Moscow, whereas your last one says that she leant moral support but was not a major influence on the fall of communism.
I find it very hard to see how exactly Thatcher 'promoted new thinking' in the Kremlin - Gorbachev was largely chosen because the class of people from which his predecessors had been chosen were so aged that they could only rule from hospital beds. The UK and its leaders were not a particularly big priority for Soviet leaders.
I'm really not trying to score political points or be "anti-Thatcher", I just find the constant trope that she somehow destroyed the Soviet Union that got brought up earlier a bit silly and unconvincing.
The massive distortion of the Soviet economy towards military spending had been well entrenched long before Thatcher ever came to power, and neither did the endemic corruption which infected the entire system to the point of making it unworkable have anything to do with her. People had been smuggling in Western texts and exchanging Western ideas in secret long before Thatcher came to power (Samizdat, for example, had been going since the '60s.)
The Soviet Union would still have collapsed if Thatcher had never been elected. She was just an effective galvaniser on the Western side.
Forgive late response - I was getting a train.
From your third link:
"And while Thatcher did give moral support to the opponents of Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe, to credit her as one of the architect’s of Communism’s fall is exaggerated."
Which is pretty much what I'm saying.
Your first link details Thatcher's decision to allow Cruise missiles to be stationed in the UK during the early '80s as a counter to Soviet deployment. Fair enough. It also implies that Thatcher was a decisive factor in Reagan being elected, with no backing evidence, which I think is rather spurious.
All your second and third articles say is that she maintained a united front with Reagan. The one from the Economist asserts that she 'promoted new thinking' in Moscow, whereas your last one says that she leant moral support but was not a major influence on the fall of communism.
I find it very hard to see how exactly Thatcher 'promoted new thinking' in the Kremlin - Gorbachev was largely chosen because the class of people from which his predecessors had been chosen were so aged that they could only rule from hospital beds. The UK and its leaders were not a particularly big priority for Soviet leaders.
I'm really not trying to score political points or be "anti-Thatcher", I just find the constant trope that she somehow destroyed the Soviet Union that got brought up earlier a bit silly and unconvincing.
The massive distortion of the Soviet economy towards military spending had been well entrenched long before Thatcher ever came to power, and neither did the endemic corruption which infected the entire system to the point of making it unworkable have anything to do with her. People had been smuggling in Western texts and exchanging Western ideas in secret long before Thatcher came to power (Samizdat, for example, had been going since the '60s.)
The Soviet Union would still have collapsed if Thatcher had never been elected. She was just an effective galvaniser on the Western side.
A presenter this morning referred to Mandela as equal to Jesus - what a laugh - He was a terrorist and murderer along with his then wife winnie. If you tell the world enough times he was a great man (in our own schools this is the mantra ) without them hearing the pro side of his life they begin to believe it - same as Mother Theresa - cult figures.
but it wasn't only the whites this was directed at.
as to my precious post.
http://
as to my precious post.
http://
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