How The Soviet Union and Modern Day Russia Have Degraded Every Country They Influenced or Controlled

Executive Summary

• Russia scores very low as being a civilized country.
• We cover how bad it is for countries to be close to Russia.

Introduction

While rating the civilization score of various countries of the world, we noted how poorly we rated Russia, far below its Eastern and Central European neighbors.

This brought up why Russia has been such a poorly performing country, delivering such poor outcomes to Russians and countries that they have influenced. In this article, we will address the negative consequences of being close to Russia.

See our references for this article and related articles at this link.

Our Rankings

Our rankings are for what we considered degrees of civilization. You can hover over each country and view our score. One is the most civilized, and nine is the least. 

The Scoring

Our scoring looks like the following:

This categorizes countries by most civilized, being represented by a Western European standard, to the least civilized being Africa and African countries with over 20% of their population as Muslim.

Russia and Ukraine as More Like Latin American Countries than Eastern and Central European Countries

Russia is technically in Eastern Europe. However, Russia is so primitive and dysfunctional and has so many problems that it performs closer to the Latin American level country. This is due to the “consulting” that US elites offered the Soviet Union telling them to privatize public resources, creating the present-day oligarchs. However, Russia has a long history of dysfunction before this. Russia has many things to see, and St Petersburg is an excellent destination. However, it is rare to hear people talk about visiting Russia.

What is curious is that we wrote this and rated Russia this way, which is similar to a Latin American country, before we read the following quote.

Practically all analysts and observers of Russia today, regardless of their political leanings, tend to agree about the country’s poor quality of governance. According to the World Bank, the basic facets of good governance are respect for the rule of law, control over corruption, and effective state authorities operating with high-quality regulatory oversight. In the modern world, a high prevalence of all these factors is inherent in states with higher levels of socioeconomic development. In this regard, Russia systematically underperforms, with a quality of governance comparable to that of underdeveloped states in Africa and Latin America. (Emphasis Added)

In short, Russia’s quality of governance is far poorer than what would be expected from an urbanized, educated, and technologically advanced country. My new book, Bad Governance: Politics in Modern Russia, recently published by the European University Press in St. Petersburg, considers the reasons behind this state of affairs and the mechanisms that maintain it.

This is because the dominant economic and political order of modern Russia is based on rent-seeking and corruption, which depend on poor-quality state regulation and routine violations of the rule of law. This order is buttressed at all levels of the regime’s “power vertical,” which ensures that the “rules of the game” are implemented in such a way as to facilitate the ruling elites’ continued hold over the country. In lay terms, the shared goal of these elite groups is nothing less than the wholesale plundering of the country’s resources for as long as possible and on the largest scale possible—of course, without incurring any repercussions.

The reality of life in modern Russia is saturated with examples of this approach to state governance: a vivid depiction can be seen in Andrey Zvyagintsev’s 2014 film Leviathan. – Wilson Center

The poor state of governance in ex-Soviet countries is explained in the following quotation.

Furthermore, from Kazakhstan to Ukraine, many post-Soviet states are cursed with poor quality of governance not too different from, and in some cases much worse than, Russia’s. – Wilson Center

The Problem With Being Close to or Influenced by Russia

When Russia was the Soviet Union, they told the world they had all the answers to create the best societies. It turned out that Russia had nothing figured out. Not only was the Soviet Union such a basket case that it eventually fell apart, but the Soviet Union degraded the countries it influenced.

Any country that is influenced or controlled by Russia has major problems. Just talk to a Hungarian about their experiences under Russian rule. Talking to Russians is bizarre. Even when you talk to Russians with a high IQ, they are invariably in complete denial about how much Russia is hated by the countries surrounding Russia. Russians will actively complain about being discriminated against when in satellite countries as if the populations in these ex-satellite countries should not have hard feelings.

A Problematic Issue With a Lack of Introspection

For Russians, they will talk endlessly about how many bad things the Nazis did to them but don’t appear to realize what Russians did to every country they invaded or controlled. The “proud” Red Army (eventually) defeated the greatly outnumbered Nazis fighting a multifront war, engaged in mass rape after taking territory.

Even many young women soldiers and medical staff in the Red Army did not appear to disapprove. “Our soldiers’ behaviour towards Germans, particularly German women, is absolutely correct!” said a 21-year-old from Agranenko’s reconnaissance detachment. A number seemed to find it amusing. Several German women recorded how Soviet servicewomen watched and laughed when they were raped. But some women were deeply shaken by what they witnessed in Germany. Natalya Gesse, a close friend of the scientist Andrei Sakharov, had observed the Red Army in action in 1945 as a Soviet war correspondent. “The Russian soldiers were raping every German female from eight to eighty,” she recounted later. “It was an army of rapists.”

Drink of every variety, including dangerous chemicals seized from laboratories and workshops, was a major factor in the violence. It seems as if Soviet soldiers needed alcoholic courage to attack a woman. But then, all too often, they drank too much and, unable to complete the act, used the bottle instead with appalling effect. A number of victims were mutilated obscenely.

The subject of the Red Army’s mass rapes in Germany has been so repressed in Russia that even today veterans refuse to acknowledge what really happened. The handful prepared to speak openly, however, are totally unrepentant. “They all lifted their skirts for us and lay on the bed,” said the leader of one tank company. He even went on to boast that “two million of our children were born” in Germany.

The capacity of Soviet officers to convince themselves that most of the victims were either happy with their fate, or at least accepted that it was their turn to suffer after what the Wehrmacht had done in Russia, is striking. “Our fellows were so sex-starved,” a Soviet major told a British journalist at the time, “that they often raped old women of sixty, seventy or even eighty – much to these grandmothers’ surprise, if not downright delight.”

The novelist Vasily Grossman, a war correspondent attached to the invading Red Army, soon discovered that rape victims were not just Germans. Polish women also suffered. So did young Russian, Belorussian and Ukrainian women who had been sent back to Germany by the Wehrmacht for slave labour. “Liberated Soviet girls quite often complain that our soldiers rape them,” he noted. “One girl said to me in tears: ‘He was an old man, older than my father’.”

The rape of Soviet women and girls seriously undermines Russian attempts to justify Red Army behaviour on the grounds of revenge for German brutality in the Soviet Union. On March 29 1945 the central committee of the Komsomol (the youth organisation of the Soviet Union) informed Stalin’s associate Malenkov of a report from the 1st Ukrainian Front. “On the night of 24 February,” General Tsygankov recorded in the first of many examples, “a group of 35 provisional lieutenants on a course and their battalion commander entered the women’s dormitory in the village of Grutenberg and raped them.

Women soon learned to disappear during the “hunting hours” of the evening. Young daughters were hidden in storage lofts for days on end. Mothers emerged into the street to fetch water only in the early morning when Soviet soldiers were sleeping off the alcohol from the night before. Sometimes the greatest danger came from one mother giving away the hiding place of other girls in a desperate bid to save her own daughter. Older Berliners still remember the screams every night. It was impossible not to hear them because all the windows had been blown in.
Estimates of rape victims from the city’s two main hospitals ranged from 95,000 to 130,000. One doctor deduced that out of approximately 100,000 women raped in the city, some 10,000 died as a result, mostly from suicide. – The Guardian

Russia’s Invasion of Countries in WW2

WW2 is normally presented in the European theater as Germany invading countries, and far less so Russia invading countries. Russia has continued this fantasy, and the US and other Western countries have done less than they should to clarify Russia’s aggression in WW2.

Russia, conspired with Germany to agree which countries they would invade under the secret Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. Like Germany invaded Poland in agreement with Germany that they would split the country. However, they also invaded many other countries in addition to this. The number of countries they brutalized tends to be not to be cemented in the consciousness of those familiar with WW2.

Russia lied about needing to invade Poland to “protect Russians from Germany.”

Russia also annexed Estonia, as is covered in the following quotation.

In accordance with the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact Estonia was illegally annexed by the Soviet Union on 6 August 1940 and renamed the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic. The Estonian standing army was broken up, its officers executed or deported.

In 1941, some 34,000 Estonians were drafted into the Red Army, of whom less than 30% survived the war. No more than half of those men were used for military service. The rest were sent to labour battalions where around 12,000 died, mainly in the early months of the war. After it became clear that the German invasion of Estonia would be successful, political prisoners who could not be evacuated were executed by the NKVD, so that they would not be able to make contact with the Nazi government.

More than 300,000 citizens of Estonia, almost a third of the population at the time, were affected by deportations, arrests, execution and other acts of repression. As a result of the Soviet occupation, Estonia permanently lost at least 200,000 people or 20% of its population to repression, exodus and war.

In 1941, to implement Stalin’s scorched earth policy, destruction battalions were formed in the western regions of the Soviet Union. In Estonia, they killed thousands of people including a large proportion of women and children, while burning down dozens of villages, schools and public buildings. A school boy named Tullio Lindsaar had all of the bones in his hands broken then was bayoneted for hoisting the flag of Estonia. Mauricius Parts, son of the Estonian War of Independence veteran Karl Parts, was doused in acid. – Wikipedia

All of this and more and Russians don’t seem to realize why they might face discrimination in Eastern and Central Europe.

This is what Russia did to Latvia.

On 14 June 1941, thousands of people were taken from their homes, loaded onto freight trains and taken to Siberia. Whole families, women, children and old people were sent to labor camps in Siberia. The crime was perpetrated by the Soviet occupation regime on the orders of high authorities in Moscow. Prior the deportation, the Peoples Commissariat established operational groups who performed arrests, search and seizure of the property. Arrests took place in all parts in Latvia including rural areas. – Wikipedia

The list of countries brutalized by the Soviet Union goes on and on and can be found at the references’ Wikipedia link.

Russians offered completely incompetent management of the countries in the Soviet Block, and incompetence in every dimension, economic, political, environmental, and human rights.

The Soviet Union did nothing but degrade these countries and murdered many independent thinkers that opposed the Soviet Union, depriving those countries of their most contentious and innovative people.

Overall Performance of the Soviet Union in WW2

It made little difference to countries whether they were invaded by the Nazis or by the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union is often presented as better than the Nazis, but it is difficult to see how this is the case. And this is a point brought up in the following quotation.

In Poland, German Nazi atrocities ended by late 1944, but they were replaced by Soviet oppression with the advance of Red Army forces. Soviet soldiers often engaged in plunder, rape and other crimes against the Poles, causing the population to fear and hate the regime. – Wikipedia

The Soviet Union not only brought domination and brutality to the countries they conquered, but unlike the Nazis, the Soviet Union also brought incompetence. Russia has never been Germany’s equal and is a far more primitive society overall.

What About Russia’s Role in Creating the Modern Day Hellhole that is North Korea?

North Korea normally is not associated with Russia. However, Kim Il Sung was created by Russia, and North Korea was part of a land grab by the Soviet Union at the end of the WW2, and Kim Il Sung was the puppet installed by Russia. People consider North Korea closer with China because Russia gradually moved away from North Korea, although Soviet pilots fought American pilots in the Korean War. However, the incarnation of modern-day North Korea has its foundation in the Soviet Union.

The Question of Why

While the problems in Russia and the impact on countries influence by Russia is quite apparent, the question of why naturally arises. One problem with Russia is that Russian society never broke from its historical hierarchical orientation. A Russian explains this in the following quotation.

Throughout the history, Russians had a very special relationship with people who wield power. Tzars and emperors were referred to as “The Lord’s Anointed”, the one who reigns by the divine right, and their power was believed to be sacred. Much like in the ancient Egypt, except for the fact that it was happening 4500 years later. When the Soviets were formed, this sacred monarchy was replaced by the religious communist cult — instead of the Lord’s Anointed ones we got the Bearers of the Great Lenin and Marx Ideology — a change of decorations, but not the idea behind. After 1991, Russia was granted somewhat 10 years of a relatively free existence, before Putin has hurled the country back into the abyss. As a result of this unhealthy relationship with the government, the regular Russian person is born with a rare genetic malfunction: an inborn submission to any authority — a president, a senator, a mayor, a cop, a boss, a landlord, you name it. Most importantly, to G-men.

In Russia, the “government” is thought to be a separate, almost miraculous entity, something entirely different from the people. Ordinary citizens do not consider themselves as a part of the country, only as expendables. – James Sunderland

Conclusion

For a country, one of the worst things is to be close to Russia. Russia is either a threat to invade your country (as occurred at the end of WW2 to the Soviet Block and North Korea), but even being in the sphere of influence of Russia worsens the prospects for that country. Russia’s credibility as having answers has been horrendous in Eastern and Central Europe, and all of these countries look to the West for economic opportunity and thought leadership. Putin talks about resurrecting the old Soviet Union, but what was this? It was a horrendous regime and system that in many ways worse than the Nazis. In fact, one wonders why the US helped the Soviet Union by sending material support for the Soviet Union and coordinating them. Literally, how could any country in good conscious aligh itself with the Soviet Union?

Furthermore, the Nazis were in power for a comparatively short period of time, roughly 12 years, from when Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany to the end of WW2. in 1945. However, the Soviets terrorized the world for roughly when Stalin comes to power in 1925 to roughly 1989, or 65 years. And Russia continued to terrorize its neighbors for decades after the fall of the Soviet Union. Russians are often in complete denial about what their country has wrought upon any country close to Russia.

These factors lead me to believe that the best thing for the world is the weakest possible Russian country. Russia is certainly terrible for all but the elite in Russia, but a strong Russia would be terrible for all the countries that surround Russia.  Furthermore, Russia does not seem to have learned anything, and it is not making any progress towards being a more civilized country.

Overall, Russia has one of the most horrendous histories of any country, and the real history of Russia looks worse the more you learn about it. This history is not very well understood by either Russians or people outside of Russia. The people with the most clear-eyed view of Russia are the countries that have the misfortune to be located close to Russia.