Horrendous... each detail is more chilling than the last, culminating in the immersion in the pool of those two poor bastards. Hell indeed! The USSR and Russia had/have a horrendous safety record in all NBC domains, anthrax releases, nuclear disasters, poisoning with Polonium.. it’s almost a bad joke.
Not to mention Chernobyl! Common themes are massive systemic fuckups and attempts to cover up making it all worse. Even without NBC it’s the same pattern, turning bad into worse.
Underfunded mandates + constant military competition + PR-driven secrecy
It's worth remembering these were the other side of the "beat the Soviet Union by making it economically unsustainable to maintain military parity" course charted in the late 70s & 80s.
Ultimately a successful strategy, but cases like this (less so Chernobyl) can't be ignored as a consequence.
Rest assured, the Soviet government did not need any pressure from the outside to create its own version of hell on earth. If you doubt this, just read the Gulag Archipel (amongst others). The problems seen here do not relate to any western policies, they stem from the ineptitude of the Soviet government and pre-date any western attempt to topple the latter by "forcing" them to increase military spending:
"The repository was constructed in the early 1960s
by construction brigade soldiers from central Asian
and Caucasian republics. Many did not have professional
construction training, and some could not speak the
Russian language."
If the accident was in 1982, I don't think attributing it solely to events at its construction in the 1960s is fair.
Construction issues could have been recognize and addressed in any of the intervening ~20 years.
And yes, chasing parity with the US did lead to unsustainable Soviet military GDP allocations, ultimately empowering Gorbachev with an economically- rather than ideologically-derived mandate and thus leading to the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
It's a fair argument as to whether or not this was intentionally engineered, but it's a fact that the Soviets spent roughly twice as much of their GDP on their military, and that the Soviet Union eventually collapsed for economic reasons.
From what I have read, that US policy started with Reagan, who was elected president in 1981. And the Soviets, as communists, were quite clear their long-term objective was to communize the whole world.
If an Article was titled "Obama for President [2017]" because the article was written in 2017, it would be misleading because the article is about his presidency in 2008.
If an article published this year about the holocaust was titled "6M Jews dead [2017]," referencing the holocaust of world war 2, it would also be misleading because is is also not about 2017.
Therefor, the ask for the year was to clarify people clicking in to the wikipedia page, that it's not current world news...
Just because you reply with a truism, it doesn't make you correct.
He posted a fact and made no arguments. It's impossible for that to be a fallacy.
> If an Article was titled "Obama for President [2017]" because the article was written in 2017, it would be misleading because the article is about his presidency in 2008.
The inverse is true. It would be misleading to put '[2008]' in the title of such an article because the perspective and facts in the article would be totally different having been written in 2008 than in 2017. This is a great case for putting the publication date in the title.
> If an article published this year about the holocaust was titled "6M Jews dead [2017]," referencing the holocaust of world war 2, it would also be misleading because is is also not about 2017.
That would be a terrible title for an article written in 2017... I'd argue that's the fault of the author rather than the stylistic standard of including the publication date in square brackets.
The way dang edited the title (adding 'of 1982') is ideal for this purpose but unnecessary; the style of the original title made it clear that it's not a news article.
P.S. Outside the academic world we would take it easy with the thesaurus and just call it a fact, not a truism. ;)
17 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 50.3 ms ] threadEdit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sverdlovsk_anthrax_leak
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_al...
Not to mention Chernobyl! Common themes are massive systemic fuckups and attempts to cover up making it all worse. Even without NBC it’s the same pattern, turning bad into worse.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Chikatilo
It's worth remembering these were the other side of the "beat the Soviet Union by making it economically unsustainable to maintain military parity" course charted in the late 70s & 80s.
Ultimately a successful strategy, but cases like this (less so Chernobyl) can't be ignored as a consequence.
Construction issues could have been recognize and addressed in any of the intervening ~20 years.
And yes, chasing parity with the US did lead to unsustainable Soviet military GDP allocations, ultimately empowering Gorbachev with an economically- rather than ideologically-derived mandate and thus leading to the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
It's a fair argument as to whether or not this was intentionally engineered, but it's a fact that the Soviets spent roughly twice as much of their GDP on their military, and that the Soviet Union eventually collapsed for economic reasons.
Soviet military spending by year: https://nintil.com/2016/05/31/the-soviet-union-military-spen...
Reallocation example under Gorbachev: http://www.nytimes.com/1989/05/31/world/soviet-military-budg...
And a nice longform article about it: https://www.damninteresting.com/in-soviet-russia-lake-contam...
If an Article was titled "Obama for President [2017]" because the article was written in 2017, it would be misleading because the article is about his presidency in 2008.
If an article published this year about the holocaust was titled "6M Jews dead [2017]," referencing the holocaust of world war 2, it would also be misleading because is is also not about 2017.
Therefor, the ask for the year was to clarify people clicking in to the wikipedia page, that it's not current world news...
Just because you reply with a truism, it doesn't make you correct.
He posted a fact and made no arguments. It's impossible for that to be a fallacy.
> If an Article was titled "Obama for President [2017]" because the article was written in 2017, it would be misleading because the article is about his presidency in 2008.
The inverse is true. It would be misleading to put '[2008]' in the title of such an article because the perspective and facts in the article would be totally different having been written in 2008 than in 2017. This is a great case for putting the publication date in the title.
> If an article published this year about the holocaust was titled "6M Jews dead [2017]," referencing the holocaust of world war 2, it would also be misleading because is is also not about 2017.
That would be a terrible title for an article written in 2017... I'd argue that's the fault of the author rather than the stylistic standard of including the publication date in square brackets.
The way dang edited the title (adding 'of 1982') is ideal for this purpose but unnecessary; the style of the original title made it clear that it's not a news article.
P.S. Outside the academic world we would take it easy with the thesaurus and just call it a fact, not a truism. ;)
Also, "truism," is an elementary school word. I suppose not in your zip code.
picked couple pictures to illustrate:
• http://andreeva.1gb.ru/foto%20albom/foto/nms1b.jpg
• http://andreeva.1gb.ru/foto%20albom/foto/nms2b.jpg
• http://andreeva.1gb.ru/foto%20albom/foto/nms4b.jpg
• http://andreeva.1gb.ru/foto%20albom/foto/nms5b.jpg
• http://andreeva.1gb.ru/foto%20albom/foto/nms8b.jpg - on this picture they are using concrete cube as a hammer to nail tubes with radioactive materials into the hole
• http://andreeva.1gb.ru/foto%20albom/foto/nms9b.jpg
Perhaps that article jogged someone else’s memory?