Is the West's handling of Russia after the collapse of USSR comparable to Germany after WWI? How so?

by bananaskits1

Simon Jenkins for the Guardian:

"History may yet regard the handling of a defeated and depressed Russia in the 1990s as like its handling of Germany after 1918."

Seumas Milne for The Guardian:

“The crisis in Ukraine is a product of the disastrous Versailles-style break-up of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.”

If so, does the following hold true as well?

Tony Wood on Novara Media:

"The Revanchist, bristlingly hostile Russia that we see now is the outcome of NATO expansion."

Kochevnik81

In a word, no.

The break up of the USSR is not an externally-imposed peace treaty, as Versailles was. The Versailles Treaty, for whatever it's strengths and weaknesses (and there has been debate pretty much since its signature as to how punitive it really was), stripped Germany of territories given to neighboring states, limited the size of its military, provided for occupation of German territory by foreign troops, and ordered the payment by Germany of reparations, as part of the acceptance by Germany of the treaty's "war guilt" clause. German representatives had no ability to negotiate the treaty's terms, and were more or less forced to sign in order to lift the Allied naval blockade that remained in effect even after the suspension of hostilities.

In contrast, the dissolution of the USSR is entirely the result of internal forces, namely Gorbachev instituting a series of reforms that spun out of his control and away from his intended consequences. By 1991 it was clear that the very political structure of the Union was going to need to be renegotiated - preventing the signing of a treaty establishing a "Union of Sovereign States", with much stronger republican institutions and a weaker center was the reason for the August 1991 coup. With the failure of that coup, and Yeltsin more or less launching a counter coup seizing Communist Party assets and banning its operation, other republics sought to secure the sovereignty they had begun to claim starting in 1990 and declare outright independence (in the case of the Baltics, the independence that they had already declared was recognized by Yeltsin).

In any case, the final dissolution of the Union in December, through the Belavezha and Alma-Ata Accords, was entirely negotiated by the leaders of the republics, without even the input of Gorbachev or whatever was left of the central government. Nor was this the desired outcome by foreign powers - by December, President H.W. Bush recognized the dissolution as a fait accompli, but had earlier in the year made quite clear that he preferred to work with Gorbachev and the central government, going to far as to give his infamous "Chicken Kiev" speech at the Ukrainian SSR Soviet warning of the perils of national breakup.

The international reaction to the breakup was also quite different to Versailles. Unlike Germany being shunned from the League of Nations, all former Soviet Republics were admitted as United Nations members very rapidly, and their republican borders recognized as international frontiers. Russia was allowed to claim to be the successor state to the USSR, and was therefore allowed to inherit the Soviet permanent seat in the UN Security Council, as well as Soviet diplomatic properties (this was not a privelige extended to any of the former Yugoslav republics for a point of comparison). Ultimately, Russia was allowed to retain control over the entire Soviet nuclear arsenal, and the US, fearing nuclear proliferation, ultimately extended programs such as Project Plowshare (which bought Soviet nuclear warheads for use in US civilian nuclear power plants), and the Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention, which literally paid former Soviet weapons scientists to keep them "off the market" and not involved in weapons proliferation.

Furthermore, instead of reparations, Russia and other former Soviet States were recipients of international aid, usually in the form of IMF loans (the USSR had started seeking and receiving these loans under Gorbachev). Overall, something like an estimated $100 billion was provided to Russia. The impact of this was mitigated through corruption and mismanagement, something like an estimated $150 billion left Russia during this same period as the well connected in business and government engaged in asset stripping and the sending of capital abroad.