wnyc.org / 93.9fm / am 820

Thank you very much for bringing Professor S.F. Cohen on air. I'm paying the great respect to this extremely intelligent person, who deeply knows the subject.
I know that a lot of people would not like what he is saying. The truth is not always pleasant to hear.

I’d appreciate having a change in a future to listen a full interview with Professor S.F. Cohen on post-soviet Russian-American relationship.

Thanks.

Thank you for having Professor S.F Cohen on the air!
I fully share his positions on every issue discussed. He really knows the subject!
It might not be very pleasant to hear for some folks but the truth is not always sweet.
Thanks again!

Calls'em As I Sees'em from McLean, VA, asks "Lenny [to] please ask the authors about the dangers of the modern and delusional bunch of Bolsheviks and Maoists today lead by Obama, Pelosi, Reid and Weiner et al who want to bring to America the rationing and oppression of those failed systems."

Or about the dangers of the fascists Bush, Reagan, Cheney & Rumsfeld...

Peter from New York City asks: "Has Professor Cohen seen "Woman in Berlin"? That film shows the Soviet army in action, and backs up what my German stepmother told me about the end of the war in Berlin."

Or read either: "A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City: A Diary" or "Berlin Diaries, 1940-1945" by Marie Vassiltchikov. The uneducated and undisciplined Soviet army was clearly bent on revenge and sanctioned to commit atrocities against the German civilian population.

Lenny, please ask the authors about the dangers of the modern and delusional bunch of Bolsheviks and Maoists today lead by Obama, Pelosi, Reid and Weiner et al who want to bring to America the rationing and oppression of those failed systems.

The professor is wrong when he says the Soviets 'won the war'. Certainly the Soviets played a necessary role in winning the Second World War, but simply because the suffered and died more does not mean they won they war and without the American leand-lease aid andthe Allied bombing of Germany, the Soviet Union would have crumbled.

Has Professor Cohen seen "Woman in Berlin"? That film shows the Soviet army in action, and backs up what my German stepmother told me about the end of the war in Berlin.

The Soviet Block and its style of "Communism" was doomed the day Lenin dissolved the democratically elected constituent assembly in 1918.

Communism as a viable economic system, was already dead by 1921 (the NEP). After that, it became a slave state with an ideology, but not really different than the many slave empires of ancient past. The allegedly last believer in the ideology was Andropov, and when he croaked, I immediately it was all over for the USSR. While for generations it had been able to blame saboteurs or foreign agents, or wars, etc., for the failure of communism to deliver on its promises, by 1980 it was clear that the system itself was inherently unsustainable.

In addition to the inherent incapacity of communism to deliver anything other than bombs and missiles, there was a huge minorities problem in the Soviet Union that went largely unnoticed in the West. In fact, ethnic nationalism reemerged despite decades of denial and suppression, and the various republics went their separate ways.

Reagan was merely the diamond worker who knows where to tap the hard diamond to split it just so that it not shatter. My father, who was in the REd Army in WWII, told me back when I was a kid that the USSR was a hard substance like a diamond but just as easy to split cleanly by a master diamond cutter. And Reagan was just the right guy.

What about one of the bigger pieces to the collapse of the Soviet Union that is rarely talk about? Its over-reliance on petroleum revenue to prop up its state functions when oil prices were high, and then oil's precipitous price decline during the USSR's 10-year war in Afghanistan.

The USSR's economic well being depending too much on a single, volatile commodity (fossil fuels) for its prosperity, something that is happening to a lesser extent in Russia today.

Please tell your listeners that not all Germans love David Hasselhoff! ;-)

Stephen F. Cohen is THE BEST!!! thanks for having him on!!!!