Reagan is revered by post FSU/ Warsaw Pact peoples - at least the anti-communists. He delivered strength to the US at a weak point. For that, we westerners are generally thankful. What's forgotten is his abandoning of the State of California to the democrat party. He granted amnesty to 3M illegals, effectively flipping California. He never got his "border reform" concessions, as promised to him by democrats - because that would be mean and raycist. The playbook has worked on every Republican since, and the electoral college/bicameral balance will flip - permanently - if Texas falls to the Dems. For this, and other efforts, Reagan is no longer the great Republican savior. Conservatives have been in retrograde since his time.
As for "Standing up to the Russians" - Reagan offered at Reykjavik to completely ban nuclear weapons. It was an unexpected offer, which never came to fruition, but it cleared the negotiating board for meaningful "trust but verify" agreements. He's respected for that.
What many of us westerners struggle with is - "was the USSR Russian, or were the Russians the greatest victims of the USSR?" Knowing now more about the (((bolsheviks))) leads one to believe the Solzhenitsyn line - the USSR was a jewish creation that duped and victimized millions of Russians and all other Slavs. Granted, many of those Russians/Slavs were willing participants, but without the early jewish leadership and early decades of apparatchik, the USSR wouldn't have been able to get off the ground.
What a telling piece that is. It coincides with the arrival of neocon founder Irving Krystal - who created the movement that co-opted and is destroying the Republican party. This does explain a lot of baffling "conservative" behavior, post USSR. Many Gen X/boomer Americans well-remember being taught "we hate the Soviet Union, not the Russian people." Our behavior post FSU has proven that was a complete lie - at least at the policy level. Main street Americans never hated (and generally still don't) Russians or Slavs. Our leadership - well that's a different story. Normies just don't get the distinction, and understandably point to the occasional USSR-nostalgic people/events that are seen in FSU as reason to believe the Russians are still downlow commies that seek world domination.
@cognitive dissonance 73, do you believe the people of Russia genuinely seek a return of the USSR? How long has it been since you lived in EE? Do you travel there often?
