Economic growth and development becomes much more cooler and awe inspiring when you think of it less as "line goes up" and more as "increasing productive power of the species".
China is currently unleashing a massive purge against its corrupt Military officers, likely in a bid for thorough military reforms.
The Party has the power to do these things, even against the Military. They can just do that. The Party commands the guns.
The Indian government should build a giant statue of Igor Irodov.
He did more to build human capital base of engineering in the country than most Indians.
Vladislav Zubok may have single handedly destroyed what remained of Gorbachev's reputation with this book.
I have seen the consensus slowly shift from "the Soviet collapse was a product of long term complex structural trends" to "it was down to Gorbachev being a retard".
Iโm halfway through now and this book is getting seriously upsetting. Iโve never seen someone fumble with such catastrophic consequences before. He led his whole country off a cliff for Bush to repeatedly embarrass him. Like stomach churning awfully embarrassing
This is a great demonstration of what is wrong with lot of Indian political spaces which is especially strong in geopolitical ones - declaring victory when the race has not even started and the contender has a wide lead and self-deceiving by overdosing on ones own propaganda.