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[Guardian G.I.]

Is the West responsible for every dumb thing every Russian emigrant says? Khodorkovsky talking shit doesn't mean anything.
And GI, you're ignoring the rather good image Putin had before this current crisis. We liked him, you know?

The image of Putin and Russia in general in the Western media has been constantly negative since the 1990s.

[scriver]

Putin? Yes. Russia? No.

[Erkki]

Is the West responsible for every dumb thing every Russian emigrant says? Khodorkovsky talking shit doesn't mean anything.
And GI, you're ignoring the rather good image Putin had before this current crisis. We liked him, you know?

The image of Putin and Russia in general in the Western media has been constantly negative since the 1990s.

Not at all. There used to be plenty of PR campaigns looking to improve relations, initiated from both sides of the borders, promoting trade and investments at least. Media focused a lot(and still does) on how the relations and business and stuff is good no matter what is happening. This was 2 years ago:

[Helgoland]

My dear (Bela-)Russians, who's spent the past decades constantly consuming Western media - the guys living in the West, or the guys not living in the West? It was well-known that he was a crook and an authoritarian president and that he didn't treat the opposition too well, and of course our media pointed out all these things, but it was generally agreed that this was just Russia being Russia. Criticism does not mean negativity! Putin was seen as the guy who put Russia back on track, the guy who would modernize Russia's economy and, we dared hope, maybe, maybe even her political system once he'd be too old to stay in power. And even if he didn't, we were confident political modernization would follow the industrial modernization like it did in Europe, in Japan, in Korea - just like we currently are hoping regarding China. We didn't really mind Putin's authoritarianism because we believed that he was generally going in the right direction - why do you think did so many companies invest in Russia?
But that belief is gone now. Putin has chosen to reject this path and instead insists on being our enemy. And his image has changed accordingly.

[Sheb]

Yeah, or the famous "reset" of 2010. I don't remember any similar attempt coming from the Russian side.

[Sergarr]

That's because that "reset" was nothing but a pretentious lie. You cannot simply "reset" relationships between large countries.
We cannot simply forget about the terror of the nineties.

[Sheb]

Yeah, because the 90's were totally the US's fault.

[XXSockXX]

-snip-

This.
Putin was seen relatively positive initially, especially in his first term as president (despite Chechnya). Things started to go downhill later.
Like Helgo said, many were willing to accept his authoritan rule because it was thought that a "strong hand" was needed to move Russia toward modernization, as opposed to the chaotic transition in the 90s. Just it turns out Putin does not care about modernizing the political system, he is just happy being an autocrat.

[Guardian G.I.]

Yeah, because the 90's were totally the US's fault.

The American contribution to the disaster of the 1990s was significant - who constantly plopped up Yeltsin and his liberal friends and backed their devastating economic reforms in spite of their harmful results? The USA.
I'd even say they did that intentionally, but you would probably regard that as a conspiracy theory.

[Sheb]

And yet, Poland and all the other Eastern European countries had the same US support, for the same general policy orientation, some of them had even more US meddling (like Bulgaria), and they don't hold the US responsible for it, and they didn't went through the same level of shit.

Also, the 'reset' was two years after the invasion of a US ally, Georgia. To me it seems like it's the US that were bending over backward to be forgiving.

[XXSockXX]

Yeah, because the 90's were totally the US's fault.

The American contribution to the disaster of the 1990s was significant - who constantly plopped up Yeltsin and his liberal friends and backed their devastating economic reforms in spite of their visible results? The USA.

Though the people that got rich during that time are the same people who rule the country now.

These kinds of reforms did work out relatively well for other former Eastern bloc countries, just Russia got the worst kind of capitalism out of it and nothing of the political reforms. That seems a structural problem to me, not something that resulted from any support Yeltsin might have gotten from the West. Yeltsin was a weird guy who probably made a lot of mistakes, but he was the one who saved Russia from a military coup, and he seemed like the best hope for a transition towards democracy at the time.

[Sergarr]

"the best hope for a transition towards democracy at the time."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygywjtf2jYA


Well this evaluation was wrong. As was the evaluation of Putin. As was the evaluation of Russia. As was the evaluation of "reset" having any real ground in Russian minds (I don't know anyone who believed in that).

You people keep making mistakes about Russia. Means you don't really understand Russians.

[Guardian G.I.]

"the best hope for a transition towards democracy at the time."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygywjtf2jYA

Also this.

[XXSockXX]

"the best hope for a transition towards democracy at the time."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygywjtf2jYA

Hey, I'm always glad when a fellow drunkard accomplishes something. 

And yeah, he wasn't much of a hope, but the best there was, since he was in power and seemed inclined to move towards democracy. In the 90s a lot of people here were terrified of Zhirinovsky-types and since there was no strong democratic movement in Russia like there had been for example in Poland or Czechoslovakia, Yeltsin was the next best thing.

[Sergarr]

>Yeltzin
>democracy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnz9lOXQP3w