Natalie Nougayrede is right that post-Soviet Russia should have been offered the “equivalent of a Marshall plan” which “would have prevented its slide towards authoritarianism” (It may take years, but we need to plan for Russia after Putin, 9 December).
Those of us who remember the collapse of the iron curtain and Soviet communism during those heady days of 1989-91 could scarcely have believed that events would have turned out the way they have. The west’s response to those near-miraculous years was a combination of “You’re free now. Goodbye and good luck” and shameless exploitation and profiteering of “new markets”.
Contrast its approach to a defeated Germany in 1945. A country that had descended to unprecedented depravity; where most of its adult male population were complicit in crimes against humanity; a country, quite literally, in ruins. Within a couple of decades, with the considerable help of some of its erstwhile antagonists, West Germany had undergone its “economic miracle”, rebuilt and was a stable democracy. Today, unified Germany is – along with Canada – arguably the world’s most enlightened major democracy.