OK all you history-buffs, and even better, old-timers who were actually there and are less subject to the "spin" of the historians...

Things in Russia today strike me as bad as pre-WWII Germany. For example, here is just one story:

CBN story on Russia

I haven't heard of "wheel-barrows of money" being used for a loaf of bread, but it does seem roughly equivalent there in terms of difficulty eating. I especially noted the lack of electricity and water outside the city (shades of TEOTWAWKI). Interestingly, previous stories elsewhere indicate that Jews ("Yids" (as in Yiddish) is the term Russians use) are being blamed for "stealing" the profitable industries there when Russia privatized a few years back. All-in-all, the Russian story sounds very familiar - but I was born AFTER WWII, and I don't have first-hand experience.

While my question does not involve the merits of using 2 digits to represent a 4 digit year, since we are currently bombing the begeebers out of a close friend of Russia, and since Y2K may increase worldwide desperation, it seemed useful to know the true magnitude of the Russian problem. After all, they do have very big bombs, and other very nasty weapons (just like the US).

...and desperate people do desperate things!

-- Anonymous99 (Anonymous99@anonymous.com), March 26, 1999

Answers

Ever hear the old saw:

"Don't F@#@ with somebody who's got nuthin' to lose" ????

Fits here.

Though we should be OK, they don't have a Reichstag to burn.. ;-)

(TIC)

Chuck

-- Chuck, a night driver (reinzoo@en.com), March 26, 1999.

An interesting question. I think you are referring to the period of 1919-1923 in Germany, which went through a period of hyper-inflation. The middle class was wiped out.

Russia has no middle class to wipe out. There is no population that has seen their decades of savings become the value of a postage stamp. The most troubling aspect of the German situation was the way this once great nation was reduced to poverty and treated badly by other nations. This caused great resentment by Germans.

I think Russians are convinced that other nations have reduced them to poverty. Even before Kosovo, Russians have been convinced that the west is marginalizing Russia. Now it is way worse.

There is a great article in the October 1998 Esquire called "What did you do after the crash, daddy" ("Rule 1: don't panic, rule 2: panic first") that deals with this comparison between Germany and Russia.

-- David Holladay (davidh@brailleplanet.org), March 26, 1999.

and i can tell you all that russia is every bit as clueless about y2k as all the stories you hear. dale hurd, the reporter who did that story (and who sits about 10 feet from me every day) told me they just had no idea of what it was all about. i asked how he would rate their y2k awareness on a scale of 0 to 10 and he said "zero-point- five. it's not an exagerration- it's a subset of their information dearth. they get all their best information from outside their own country."

-- Drew Parkhill/CBN News (y2k@cbn.org), March 26, 1999.

i am very concerned about both russia and egypt. i think both of these countries are powder kegs waiting for a match. not to mention north korea...

-- jocelyne slough (jonslough@tln.net), March 26, 1999.

And my local paper had an article that the Russians are now refusing to cooperate further in y2k remediation because of our bombing campaign. They really are into "cutting off their nose to spite their face".

-- DaKozak (Kozak@ukie.com), March 28, 1999.