I’ve always smiled at the geeko political joke….as a sort of mutant lefty: What did a few years of capatilsm do that communism in Russia never did?
Make communism (post-gulagy) look really good…check out the following tid-bits furnished by Perry Anderson:
In just five years, from 1990 to 1994, the mortality rate among Russian men soared – in peacetime – by 32 per cent, and their average life-expectancy plummeted to under 58 years, below that of Pakistan. By 2003, the population had fallen by more than five million in a decade, and is currently losing 750,000 lives a year. When Yeltsin took power, the total population of Russia was just under 150 million. By 2050, according to official projections, it will be just over 100 million. So many were not undone by Stalin himself.