President George H. W. Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev declared an end to the Cold War on December 3, 1989.  Two years later the USSR would dissolve!

Dear Commons Community,

The Associated Press has a retrospective article (see below) on the USSR and the anniversary of its demise thirty years ago under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev.  While here in America, we rejoiced at this development, in the USSR, it was received with mixed feelings especially in Russia.   The article recalls a major historical moment that we should not forget!  It also provides important context in understanding the current conflict between Russia and the Ukraine.

Tony

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Associated Press

Gorbachev’s resignation 30 years ago marked the end of USSR

By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV

December 25, 2001

People strolling across Moscow’s snowy Red Square on the evening of Dec. 25, 1991 were surprised to witness one of the 20th century’s most pivotal moments — the Soviet red flag over the Kremlin pulled down and replaced with the Russian Federation’s tricolor.

Just minutes earlier, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev announced his resignation in a live televised address to the nation, concluding 74 years of Soviet history.

In his memoirs, Gorbachev, now 90, bitterly lamented his failure to prevent the USSR’s demise, an event that upset the world’s balance of power and sowed the seeds of an ongoing tug-of-war between Russia and neighboring Ukraine.

“I still regret that I failed to bring the ship under my command to calm waters, failed to complete reforming the country,” Gorbachev wrote.

Political experts argue to this day whether he could have held onto his position and saved the USSR. Some charge that Gorbachev, who came to power in 1985, could have prevented the Soviet breakup if he had moved more resolutely to modernize the anemic state-controlled economy while keeping tighter controls on the political system.

“The collapse of the Soviet Union was one of those occasions in history that are believed to be unthinkable until they become inevitable,” Dmitri Trenin, the director of the Moscow Carnegie Center, told The Associated Press. “The Soviet Union, whatever its long-term chances were, was not destined to go down when it did.”

By the fall of 1991, however, deepening economic woes and secessionist bids by Soviet republics had made the collapse all but certain. A failed August 1991 coup by the Communist old guard provided a major catalyst, dramatically eroding Gorbachev’s authority and encouraging more Soviet republics to seek independence.

While Gorbachev desperately tried to negotiate a new “union treaty” between the republics to preserve the USSR, he faced stiff resistance from his arch-rival, Russian Federation leader Boris Yeltsin, who was eager to take over the Kremlin and had backing from other independent-minded heads of Soviet republics.

On Dec. 8, the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus met in a hunting lodge, declaring the USSR dead and announcing the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States. Two weeks later, eight other Soviet republics joined the newly formed alliance, handing Gorbachev a stark choice: step down or try to avert the country’s breakup by force.

The Soviet leader analyzed the tough dilemma in his memoirs, noting that an attempt to order the arrest of the republics’ leaders could have resulted in a bloodbath amid split loyalties in the military and law enforcement agencies.

“If I had decided to rely on some part of the armed structures, it would have inevitably triggered an acute political conflict fraught with blood and far-reaching negative consequences,” Gorbachev wrote. “I couldn’t do that: I would have stopped being myself.”

What would have happened had Gorbachev resorted to force is hard to imagine in retrospect, the Carnegie Center’s Trenin observed..

“It might have unleashed bloody events in Moscow and across Russia, maybe across the Soviet Union, or it might have consolidated some things,” he said. “Had he decided to go down that route…there would have been blood on his hands. He would have had to turn into a sort of a dictator, because that would have…done away with his most important element of legacy; that is, not using force in a massive way.”

When the leaders of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine declared the Soviet Union defunct, they didn’t pay much attention to what would happen to the 4-million-strong Soviet military and its massive nuclear arsenals.

After the Soviet collapse, it took years of U.S.-led diplomatic efforts to persuade Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan to hand over to Russia the Soviet nuclear weapons left on their territories — a process finally completed in 1996.

“The leaders of the republics that announced the end of the Soviet Union in December 1991 did not think through all the consequences of what they were doing,” Gorbachev’s aide, Pavel Palazhchenko, told the AP.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose two decades at the helm is longer than Gorbachev and Yeltsin’s tenures combined, has famously described the Soviet collapse as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.”

“The breakup of the Soviet Union was the collapse of a historic Russia,” Putin said in a documentary that aired this month on Russian state television. “We lost 40% of the territory, production capacities and population. We became a different country. What had been built over a millennium was lost to a large extent.”

The Kremlin moved to redraw the post-Soviet borders in 2014, responding to the ouster of Ukraine’s former Moscow-friendly leader by annexing the Ukrainian Crimean Peninsula and throwing its weight behind separatist rebels in its neighbor’s east.

More than seven years of fighting in Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland has killed over 14,000 people. Tensions flared up in recent weeks over a Russian troop buildup near Ukraine that fueled Western fears of an invasion.

Moscow has denied plans for an offensive and sternly urged the U.S. and its allies to provide a binding pledge that NATO wouldn’t expand to Ukraine or deploy weapons there — a demand rejected by the West.

Putin and his officials countered the Western argument that Russia doesn’t have a say in the alliance’s expansion by emphasizing the country’s right to protect its core security interests.

“Russia has never pretended to have the right of vote to make decisions for other countries,” Konstantin Kosachev, a deputy speaker of the upper house of Russian parliament, told the AP. “But we have an absolute right of vote to ensure our own interests and security, and to offer our vision of a security environment in the nearby regions.”

While Putin has repeatedly denied intentions to rebuild the USSR, he has described Russians and Ukrainians as “one people” over angry protests from Kyiv and charged that Ukraine unfairly inherited historic parts of Russia in the Soviet demise.

The Russian leader further toughened his rhetoric Thursday amid spiraling tensions with the West, blaming Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin for handing Russian lands to Ukraine to “create a country that had never existed before.”

Merry Christmas and God Bless Us, Everyone!

Dear Commons Community,

We awoke this morning to a white Christmas Eve.  Above is the view from our deck. It was a beautiful way to start the holiday.

God Bless Us, Everyone!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

A Minneapolis jury yesterday convicted former police officer Kim Potter on all charges she faced for fatally shooting Black motorist Daunte Wright.

Potter, a former Brooklyn Center officer, showed no emotion as the Hennepin County jury found her guilty of first-degree manslaughter, meaning she improperly used “such force and violence that death of or great bodily harm to any person was reasonably foreseeable.”

She said she accidentally killed Wright by shooting him with her Glock when she meant to fire her Taser.

Jurors also found Potter guilty of second-degree manslaughter, which required a finding of only “culpable negligence” that created “unreasonable risk, and consciously takes chances of causing death or great bodily harm to another.”

The jury — one Black person, two Asian American people and nine white people — convicted her of the lesser charge at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, according to jury forms read in court. It reached its verdict on the more serious charge at 11:40 a.m. Thursday, jurors said on their verdict form.

It took the sequestered panel more than 27 hours of talks since Monday afternoon to arrive at the verdicts.

Potter, 49, who faces a maximum of 15 years in prison, is scheduled for sentencing Feb. 18.

“We have a degree of accountability for Daunte’s death,” Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison told reporters outside court.

“Accountability is not justice. … Justice is beyond the reach that we have in this life for Daunte. But accountability is an important step, a critical, necessary step on the road to justice for us all,” he said.

Daunte Wright with his son.  NY Times

Wright’s mother, Katie Bryant, sobbed as the verdicts were read, and Assistant Attorney General Erin Eldridge, the lead prosecutor, cast a quick smile at Wright’s parents.

Bryant thanked prosecutors and community supporters during the “long fight for accountability.”

“The moment that we heard ‘guilty’ on manslaughter one, emotions — every single emotion that you could imagine — just running through your body at that moment,” Bryant said.

“I kind of let out a yelp because it was built up in the anticipation of what was to come while we were waiting for the last few days,” she said.

Judge Regina Chu ordered Potter to be taken into custody with her bail revoked, over the objections of defense attorneys.

Chu said Potter is looking at serious time behind bars, “and I am going to require that she be taken into custody and held without bail.”

“I cannot treat this case any differently than any other case,” she said.

Potter was not demonstrative as the verdicts were read and in the moments of courtroom argument immediately afterward, other than when she crossed herself for a brief moment.

Potter was handcuffed, and both of her attorneys put their hands on her shoulders before she was taken away.

The prosecution played video from Potter’s body camera for jurors, showing how she had the Glock in her hand for at least five seconds before she fired the deadly round.

The Glock used to kill Wright weighed 2.11 pounds, compared to the 0.94-pound Taser, which emanates light and needed a safety switch to be pulled before it could be used, prosecutors said.

While it will not bring Daunte Wright back, justice was served!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Republican strategist Steve Smith had an interview on MSNBC on Wednesday and was asked about the 2024 election.  He gave an insightful answer (see video above) stating that contrary to popular opinion, it will not be about Donald Trump should he decide to run.  Instead,  the election will be about us, the American people in determining what kind of country we want.  It can be about destructive divisive politics or a democracy that values compromise and diversity of opinions.

Excellent commentary!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Christmas came early — or really late, depending how you look at it, when, Vinod Menon, a physics professor at City College here in New York, discovered a box mailed to him and postmarked in 2020 in the school’s mailroom, holding $180,000.

He said he opened the box after returning to campus this semester and found a letter and $180,000 in cash wrapped in paper bands in $50 and $100 bundles. As reported by The New York Times.

The letter stated that the cash was a donation meant to help physics and math students in need at City College. It also explained that the donor was a former City College alum who received their bachelor’s and master’s degrees in physics at the school, ushering them into a successful scientific career.

City College and other  CUNY officials said they could not remember a similar donation this large in cash and sent anonymously.

Chief Pat Morena, the leader of the Department of Public Safety at City College, said the return address used a fake name that traced back to Florida but did not lead to the anonymous donor’s identity.

Happy Holidays to CCNY’s Physics Department.

Tony

Matthew Greene

Dear Commons Community,

A New York man, Matthew Greene, is the first Proud Boys member to publicly plead guilty to conspiring with other members to stop Congress from certifying the Electoral College vote. Under the terms of his plea agreement, he will also cooperate with authorities .  Greene’s plea to storming the U.S. Capitol with fellow members of the far-right Proud Boys, is a milestone in the Justice Department’s prosecution of extremists who joined the Jan. 6 insurrection.  As reported by the Associated Press.

Greene was arrested in April after a grand jury indicted him in the same case as two other alleged Proud Boys, Dominic Pezzola and William Pepe. They have pleaded not guilty.

Greene traveled from Syracuse, New York, to Washington, D.C., with Pezzola and other Proud Boys on Jan. 5. Prosecutors allege Greene advanced past toppled police barricades and was at the front of a mob when police began using pepper spray and other crowd-control measures.. But prosecutors have said they don’t have any evidence that Greene entered the Capitol building that day.

“After the riot, (Greene) engaged in conversations (on) encrypted messaging platforms admitting to his role in the riot, encouraging others not to give up in a fight to take back their country, and comparing the situation as it existed in the weeks following January 6 to a fourth-generation war,” prosecutors wrote in a June court filing.

More than three dozen people charged in the Capitol siege have been identified by federal authorities as Proud Boys leaders, members or associates, including at least 16 defendants charged with conspiracy. In a key case, four group leaders were charged in March with conspiring to impede Congress’ certification of President Joe Biden’s electoral victory. 

Greene is expected to face a maximum of just over four years in prison at a sentencing set for March, and pay a fine of $15,000 to $150,000, along with about $2,000 in restitution. He pleaded guilty to federal charges of conspiracy and obstruction of an official proceeding. 

Other extremist group members have been charged with conspiring to carry out a coordinated attack on the Capitol, including more than 20 people linked to the anti-government Oath Keepers.

Graydon Young, 55, of Englewood, Florida, was the first defendant to plead guilty in the Justice Department’s major conspiracy case against Oath Keepers members. At least four others linked to the Oath Keepers also have pleaded guilty to riot-related charges.

Proud Boys members describe themselves as a politically incorrect men’s club for “Western chauvinists.” Its members frequently have engaged in street fights with antifascist activists at rallies and protests. Vice Media co-founder Gavin McInnes, who founded the Proud Boys in 2016, sued the Southern Poverty Law Center for labeling it as a hate group.

Police arrested the Proud Boys’ top leader, Enrique Tarrio, in Washington two days before the Capitol riot and charged him with vandalizing a Black Lives Matter banner at a historic Black church during a protest in December 2020. Tarrio, who is serving his jail sentence for that case in the District of Columbia, hasn’t been charged in connection with the Capitol siege.

On the morning of Jan. 6, Proud Boys members met at the Washington Monument and marched to the Capitol before President Donald Trump finished addressing thousands of supporters near the White House.

Around two hours later, just before Congress convened a joint session to certify the election results, a group of Proud Boys followed a crowd of people who breached barriers at a pedestrian entrance to the Capitol grounds, according to one of the indictments. Several Proud Boys also entered the Capitol itself after the mob smashed windows and forced open doors, the indictment says.

Greene was wearing an earpiece connected to a handheld radio, according to prosecutors. They said the Proud Boys arranged for members to communicate using specific frequencies on Baofeng radios. The Chinese-made devices can be programmed for use on hundreds of frequencies, making them difficult for outsiders to eavesdrop.

In August, U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly ordered Greene held in pretrial detention.

Prosecutors said in June that Greene, who served in the Army National Guard, “was willing to put lessons learned in that military service to use” against the U.S. They noted that Greene had a pistol and an unregistered AR-15 rifle in his home and that he had ordered over 2,000 rounds of ammunition and a gas mask after Jan. 6.

“He encouraged an associate to read up on guerrilla warfare and to use the tactics used by the Taliban and to ‘be prepared to do uncomfortable things,’” prosecutors wrote.

Defense attorney Michael Kasmarek said in June that Greene, then 34, was a partner in a multimillion-dollar digital graphic design company. Greene had a “very limited” association with the Proud Boys before Jan. 6 and didn’t have a leadership role in the group, Kasmarek said.

Greene “has concluded that his personal beliefs and ethics do not align with those of the Proud Boys,” and he is “anxious to publicly disavow his brief membership in this group,” his lawyer wrote.

More than 700 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the riot. Over 150 of them have pleaded guilty, including at least two other defendants with Proud Boys ties.

Congratulations to the Justice Department for working out this plea deal!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

President Joe Biden said last night  in an exclusive interview (see video above) with ABC “World News Tonight” anchor David Muir that, “yes,” he planned to run again in 2024 — and if his predecessor, Donald Trump, runs, then it would “increase the prospect” even more.

“Do you plan to run for reelection?” Muir asked Biden during a sit-down interview at the White House.

“Yes,” the president replied. “But look, I’m a great respecter of fate. Fate has intervened in my life many many times. If I’m in the health I’m in now — from a good health. And, in fact, I would run again.”

“And if that means a rematch against Donald Trump?” Muir asked. Trump, who served only one term, is eligible to run again in 2024.

“You’re trying to tempt me now,” Biden said, laughing. “Sure. Why would I not run against Donald Trump for the nominee? That’ll increase the prospect of running.”

Biden, at age 78, became the oldest person sworn in as president when he took office earlier this year, and questions about whether he would seek a second term have followed him throughout his presidency.

With Biden’s popularity sagging, White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters last month that Biden did intend to run again.

Last year before the election, Biden had told Muir he “absolutely” planned on being president for eight years if elected.

Run, Joe, Run!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Atlantic has just published an essay entitled, “China’s big new idea: Why Xi Jinping won’t stop talking about “common prosperity,” by Michael Schuman.  As the essay comments, common prosperity has mostly been a concept for domestic consumption in China (see video above), but it might soon be heading overseas. The idea could become a central feature in the ever-expanding lexicon of language Xi is trying to use to increase Beijing’s influence in international affairs and reshape the world order to favor China’s authoritarian interests. 

Common prosperity might be just the sort of hook Xi is seeking. After all, who doesn’t like the thought of a just economic policy that spreads riches to the little guy? It allows Xi to more sharply distinguish China’s “socialism with Chinese characteristics” from American-style freewheeling capitalism, helping him to promote China’s development model as a superior form of economic management for the rest of the world. Neil Thomas and Michael Hirson, analysts at the consulting firm Eurasia Group, commented in a recent report that “common prosperity could occupy a key position in Beijing’s public diplomacy and in its competition with the West for ideological influence in global governance and international affairs.”

As an idea and a goal, common prosperity has been evolving for some time within China, if backed up by extensive foreign aid, it will become a very attractive alternative to the United States for many countries needing economic assistance.

An excerpt of the essay is below.

Tony

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“A common refrain among Americans when faced with China’s export machine—which pumps out 5G telecoms gear, plastic Christmas trees, and just about everything in between—is the complaint that the United States “doesn’t make anything anymore.” Yet the U.S. retains a commanding advantage in one, especially critical export: ideas. From inalienable rights to Iron Man, Americans churn out the concepts and culture that make the modern world tick, more and better than anyone else. China has long strived to close the deficit, tossing out notions like “community of shared destiny” or “win-win cooperation,” but so far, nothing has caught on.

Now China’s leader, Xi Jinping, might be onto something. His latest catchphrase, “common prosperity,” has been adopted by journalists, scholars, and corporate executives in China with a fervor only a dictator can ignite. State newspapers are routinely plastered with commentary on the topic. On November 11, a shopping holiday known as “Singles Day,” the usual conspicuous excess took a back seat to the common-prosperity spirit. The e-commerce company Alibaba, the holiday’s primary purveyor, focused its marketing on eco-friendly initiatives and charitable programs instead of sales figures. Its management, eager to get into Xi’s good graces, had already pledged billions of dollars in charitable donations to support the leader’s cause, rather than its own shareholders.

Until now, common prosperity has mostly been a concept for domestic consumption in China, but it might soon be heading overseas. The idea could become a central node in the ever-expanding lexicon of language Xi is trying to use to increase Beijing’s influence in international affairs and reshape the world order to favor China’s authoritarian interests.

One of the great achievements of the American world order, crafted in the wake of World War II, was to anoint democracy as the ultimate form of political organization, the standard by which every country is judged. Xi is challenging that primacy of liberal ideals, which automatically casts a dark shadow of illegitimacy over his oppressive regime. The war of words he is engaging in is part of a broader battle over ideals and ideas which could be as important for America’s future global power as other aspects of the U.S.-China confrontation—whether economic, technological, or even military. The outcome will influence how the world thinks about democracy, human rights, and open societies, and will determine if liberal political principles can maintain their stature against the growing authoritarian onslaught.

Common prosperity might be just the sort of hook Xi is seeking. After all, who doesn’t like the thought of a just economic policy that spreads riches to the little guy? It allows Xi to more sharply distinguish China’s “socialism with Chinese characteristics” from American-style freewheeling capitalism, helping him to promote China’s development model as a superior form of economic management for the rest of the world. Neil Thomas and Michael Hirson, analysts at the consulting firm Eurasia Group, commented in a recent report that “common prosperity could occupy a key position in Beijing’s public diplomacy and in its competition with the West for ideological influence in global governance and international affairs.”

In that sense, Xi’s “common prosperity” is somewhat the opposite of President Joe Biden’s “foreign policy for the middle class.” While Biden’s plan is to reorient American foreign-policy priorities to better protect workers and families at home, Xi might instead intend to alter his foreign policy to project new and supposedly fairer economic principles at home to the outside world.

The term itself is not new. Chinese Communists have been using it since the 1950s. Yet the new focus on common prosperity in state propaganda and official discourse marks a significant policy shift. Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese leader who launched free-market reforms in the late 1970s, famously broke with Communist egalitarianism and acknowledged that some individuals and sections of the country would have to get rich ahead of others if the nation was to prosper overall. In the decades since, though the Chinese government has promoted programs to alleviate poverty and develop poorer provinces, it has largely let the billions fall where they may.

Now, Xi, as he is in many aspects of his rule, is returning to more socialist principles. He began to emphasize common prosperity in August at a meeting of top cadres, and it has since risen to the top of his government’s economic agenda. In a sign of how important the concept is, Xi published an essay on the subject under his own name in Qiushi, the Chinese Communist Party’s main theoretical journal. In it, he described common prosperity as “an essential requirement of socialism and an important feature of Chinese-style modernization.”

For Xi, this new approach might be a political winner. The Communist Party always has its antennae finely tuned to catch potential sources of social unrest, and widening income disparity could be an especially destabilizing one. In his Qiushi essay, Xi noted that the division between rich and poor in other countries “has led to social disintegration, political polarization, and rampant populism” and that “our country must resolutely guard against polarization, drive common prosperity, and maintain social harmony and stability.” For Xi personally, the concept allows him to act like a man of the people (rather than the privileged princeling—or son of a Communist dignitary—that he actually is) to bolster his chances of extending his reign into a third, five-year term next year, still a contentious issue in Chinese politics.”

Dear Commons Community,

I have just finished reading The New York Times No. 1 Bestseller, The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story edited by Nicole Hannah-Jones.  It is a book-length expansion of the New York Times Magazine issue devoted to the history of slavery in America and its consequences.  Hannah-Jones and colleagues (there are nineteen essays that serve to introduce each chapter and written by scholars in the field and journalists) consider a nation still wrestling with the outcomes of slavery, an incomplete Reconstruction, and a subsequent history of Jim Crow laws and current legal efforts to disenfranchise Black voters.  As Hannah-Jones notes, the accompanying backlash has been vigorous, including attempted laws by the likes of Sen. Tom Cotton to strip federal funds from schools that teach the 1619 Project or critical race theory. As reviewed in Kirkus,  “among other topics, the narrative examines: the thought that the American independence movement was fueled at least in part by the insistence on maintaining slavery as the British moved to abolition; the use of slavery to tamp down resistance among poor Whites whose functions were essentially the same as the enslaved but who, unlike Black people, were not considered property.  Readers open to fresh and startling interpretations of history will find this book a comprehensive education.”

I found it an interesting read that has a great deal of merit as well as some questionable assertions.  I agree with  a review by Adam Hochschild that appeared in The New York Times.  Here is an excerpt:

“I picked up “The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story” with some apprehension. Not because I disagree with the project’s basic aim, but because I had been troubled by some overstatements and factual errors in the newspaper version, such as the claim that there were “growing calls to abolish the slave trade” in Britain in 1776. (That country’s abolitionist movement didn’t come to life until a decade later.) A group of respected American history scholars later criticized The Times for these. As the controversy continued, a historian who had been consulted by a fact-checker on the project went public to complain that corrections she had urged were ignored. It was disappointing to see work whose intention I admired marred by missteps.

As I read the new book, however, my worries largely melted away. It is not without flaws, which I will come back to, but on the whole it is a wide-ranging, landmark summary of the Black experience in America: searing, rich in unfamiliar detail, exploring every aspect of slavery and its continuing legacy, in which being white or Black affects everything from how you fare in courts and hospitals and schools to the odds that your neighborhood will be bulldozed for a freeway. The book’s editors, knowing that they were heading into a minefield, clearly trod with extraordinary care. They added more than 1,000 endnotes, and in their acknowledgments thank a roster of peer reviewers so long and distinguished as to make any writer of history envious.”

I think it is worth a read and I will be assigning it as required in one of my doctoral courses in the coming spring.

Tony

P.S.:  After making this posting, I was made aware of a new book entitled, Debunking the 1619 Project: Exposing the Plan to Divide America, by Mary Grabar and published by Regnery Publishing, a leading publisher of conservative books.