• Happy 30th Anniversary

    From Lee Lofaso@2:203/2 to ALL on Monday, December 27, 2021 04:49:28
    Hello Everybody,

    To all my Russian friends in Fidonet -

    HAPPY 30TH ANNIVERSARY since the end of the Soviet Union.

    That's right. The evening of December 25, 1991 the Soviet
    flag over the Kremlin was pulled down and replaced by the
    Russian Federation's tricolor flag.

    Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev had announced his
    resignation minutes earlier in a live televised address
    to the nation. And that was the end of 74 years of what
    had once been known as the USSR.

    "I still regret that I failed to bring the ship under
    my command to calm waters, failed to complete reforming
    the country."
    ~ Mikhail Gorbachev, in his memoirs

    It really wasn't all his fault. The leaders of Russia,
    Ukraine, and Belarus had met in a hunting lodge on December
    8 and declared the USSR dead. Other Soviet republics soon
    joined in, and the obvious soon could not be denied by
    Gorbachev himself.

    So that was that.

    Of course, when the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus
    declared the USSR defunct, they had absolutely no earthly idea
    of what would happen next.

    What were those four million Soviet soldiers going to do
    without a job? And what to do with all those nuclear missiles?
    Somebody had to keep track of where they were, and what to do
    with them.

    "The breakup of the Soviet Union was the collapse of a
    historic Russia. 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."
    ~ Vladimir Putin, in a documentary that aired on Russian
    television in December 2021

    That is what happens when 15 republics each decide to go
    their own way.

    Why does the population of Russia continue to decline, even
    after the other republics split away? Could it be that Russian
    women are getting too old to make babies?

    Maybe that question would best remain unanswered ...

    --Lee

    --
    Probably the best beer in the world

    --- MesNews/1.08.05.00-gb
    * Origin: news://eljaco.se (2:203/2)