Attended his lectures on poverty in the early 2000s. His great work as a reconstructionist in Poland was such a hope. Then there was idea of a new prosperity for the Poles and they had their insecurities, there were Russian mob infiltrates, but they eventually recovered. But Putin’s only will
…from the start was to incorporate wealth for his oligarchs and to throw cake into the black market. Sachs has gotten caught up in their misery, blaming NATO, etc. for inaction since the 1994 agreement, but he hasn’t realized that Putin cannot and will not govern a free republic.
He's been one of the main proponents that enforced "shock therapy" to reboot the Sovjet economy after the fall of the Berlin wall, Perestroika and Glasnost... This fed into the mafia-led shadow economy and caused the rise of the oligarchs, which led to Putin. Smug idiocy.
Sad that the US didn’t help Russia with the transition- we were too busy thumping our chests and feeling as if we won a competition- could have made a better - safer world
That too. For more nuance, there's a highly disturbing, sobering, documentary (also on YouTube) about Russia's failure to transition to a real democracy... TraumaZone Russia 1985-1999 by Adam Curtis. Seven one hour episodes, without his typical voice-over, because the archival footage is so strong.
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Was he always a shill or did he get radicalized at some point?