Russia and western values: how the east was lost to capitalist opportunism

Boris Yeltsin, left, shakes hands with Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990, the year before the Soviet Union’s final collapse. Photograph: Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP

Readers should applaud Aditya Chakrabortty’s article (Western values? They enthroned the monster who is shelling Ukrainians today, 17 March). The west’s failure to back Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms and advocacy of reality led to the cataclysmic implosion of the Soviet Union and prevented the more gradual constitutional changes that would have provided stability.

The US, supported by the UK government, rushed to push open the door into Russia and other Soviet republics to enable capitalists to feast on the Russian economy, and particularly its natural resources, when what was needed was a kind of Marshall plan to underpin the rouble and to assist the development of civil society.