Pretty good editorial. At least IMHO.
OTish only- because I think this ties in very well to the
recurring question, How did the west grow rich and speed
out of the poverty of Medieval Ages?
In My Firm Opinion, because in Western Europe no one ruler
was strong enough to keep individuals from trying their own
new ideas on how to be more creative and profitable.

Kristof here says, " far wealthier than Russia. Poland has become
a sophisticated manufacturing base for Europe, --
“Poland has been able to serve as a model for countries to the east,”
Selected figures from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita
It shows
3 Norway Europe 101,103
7 United States Americas 80,034
12 Austria Europe 56,802
14 Sweden Europe 55,395
15 Finland Europe 54,351
19 Germany Europe 51,383
22 United Kingdom Europe 46,371
28 Japan Asia 35,385
30 Taiwan Asia 33,907
35 Czech Republic Europe 31,368
42 Latvia Europe 25,136
50 Poland Europe 19,912
53 Hungary Europe 19,385
63 Russia Europe 14,403
64 China Asia 13,721
71 Turkey Asia 11,931
114 Ukraine Europe 4,654
139 India Asia 2,601

Nicholas Kristof: How to break a country

By NICHOLAS KRISTOF | New York Times
July 17, 2023 at 4:02 p.m.

TALLINN, Estonia — Vladimir Putin has compared himself to the czar Peter
the Great. But to travel through Eastern Europe is to see how much he
has instead caused Russian influence to shrink.

I’ve been on a road trip through Poland, Ukraine and the Baltic
countries of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia — and it’s clear that Putin
has managed to unite nearly everyone against Russia. Even Russian
speakers who often used to feel loyalty to Moscow are now fundraising
for Ukraine.

One of my first memories is of a trip to Poland in the 1960s to visit my
grandparents (Kristof is short for Krzysztofowicz). What I remember is
that communist Poland seemed endlessly bleak and depressing. Later, when
I began to travel around Eastern Europe as a law student and aspiring
journalist, my main impression was that in the communist bloc, you
didn’t need color film.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who was in Vilnius, Lithuania, for the NATO
summit, told me that when he first visited the country in 1979, he had
the same impression: “It looked like everything had been whitewashed
with gray paint. It was drab and lifeless.” Flash-forward, and today
these countries are almost unrecognizable: vibrant, colorful and far
wealthier than Russia. Poland has become a sophisticated manufacturing
base for Europe, and Intel just announced that it would build a $4.6
billion chip plant near Wroclaw.

“Poland has been able to serve as a model for countries to the east,”
Mark Brzezinski, the U.S. ambassador to Poland, told me. And Russia has
been a model of a different kind.

“Putin’s actions since February 2022 have proven the thesis that Russia
under Putin is interested in leadership by terror and authoritarianism,”
Brzezinski added. “For other countries of the former Soviet bloc, if
they ever were wobbly about joining the West, they certainly have had a
clarifying experience.”

The improvements in the Baltics have been as pronounced as those in
Poland. Estonia is now a jewel of Europe, the global model of a
high-tech and prosperous “e-state.” It has nurtured countless high-tech
startups, including Skype, and as I walked through Tallinn, the capital,
I shared a sidewalk with a robot delivering a takeout dinner to a nearby
home.

In contrast, Russia and the places that have remained in its orbit like
Belarus and Transnistria remain dismal and oppressive. A glimpse of that
side of the chasm: One of the world’s bravest journalists, Elena
Milashina, who has reported on human rights in Russia, was attacked
recently in Chechnya; thugs beat her, shaved her head, poured dye on her
and left her with a brain injury.

Putin claims to be a champion of the rights of Russian speakers, whose
families often moved to neighboring nations when they were all under
Soviet rule. And historically many were allied with Moscow and had
grievances against the post-communist pro-Western governments. Now Putin
has upended that. His invasion and behavior embarrass many Russian
speakers and make them rethink their allegiance.

In Lviv, Ukraine, Oleksandra Kabanova told me that she and her husband
are native Russian speakers who always spoke to each other in Russian.
But after her husband joined the Ukrainian army last year to fight the
Russian invaders, they switched to Ukrainian, even if she sometimes
struggles to find the right word.

“It was way too toxic to continue speaking Russian,” she said.

Putin’s invasion paradoxically strengthened the Baltic countries, which
until last year faced fundamental challenges. Each had a seemingly
indigestible Russian minority, plus NATO’s real-life commitment to
protect these countries was uncertain — especially during the presidency
of Donald Trump. (A nightmare for leaders in the region is that Trump is
reelected in 2024, possibly wrecking NATO, cutting off aid to Ukraine
and rescuing Putin from himself.)

Putin also revived NATO. It has added Finland and is moving to include
Sweden, and there is renewed commitment to Article 5, which would lead
all NATO countries to rush in to fight off any Russian incursion. As for
the Russian speakers, they are finally being digested.

“The majority of our Russian-speaking people are with us,” Estonian
Prime Minister Kaja Kallas told me. “They clearly see that life here is
so much better than life in Russia.”

The mood in the Baltics is reflected by a huge poster in Riga, Latvia,
showing Putin’s face as that of a skull-like monster.

The fundamental truth is that Putin has weakened Russia. It appears to
be in a long-term economic and demographic decline that Putin has
accelerated. Russia’s only claim to relevance is its nuclear arsenal.

Driving through the countries that Moscow once ruled, through societies
now united against him, I’m ready to bet that Putin will not be
remembered as a modern Peter the Great. Rather, he will go down in
history as the leader who broke his country: Vladimir the Lilliputian.

Nicholas Kristof writes a column for the New York Times, 620 Eighth
Ave., New York, NY 10018. He’s at Facebook.com/Kristof and
Twitter.com/NickKristof

Tags: InternationalNational ColumnistsNational PoliticsRussia-Ukraine war
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Nicholas Kristof | columnist
Nicholas Kristof writes a column for the The New York Times.
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