Moral causes of the collapse of the Soviet Union (2011) | Hacker News Reader

Moral causes of the collapse of the Soviet Union (2011)

foreignpolicy.com

43 pointsemilsedgh66 comments

If you read the New York Times articles of 1917, 1918, 1919, they talk about how the Bolshevik government would be collapsing any day now...eventually it happened seventy years later - because leaders of the communist party decided to.

When the leaders of Russia's communist party decided to reorganize their government in 1991, what governments in continental Europe from 1917 still existed in the same form, uninterrupted? Not Germany, not France, not Italy. Not Spain, not Portugal, not Holland. The only country I can think of is Switzerland, although perhaps one or more slip my mind. Some "failure" - when you've outlived everyone else and are done away with by the leaders of the party that was in charge seventy years before decides to throw in the towel. While in the meantime surviving numerous major wars, and, under Stalin, having enormous economic growth, at a time when the rest of the world was stagnating economically.

Russia was a backwards country in 1917. Lenin said Russia would not be a leader among countries, but the opportunity availed itself and so socialists would hold out in Russia while the rest of the world went on with its processes. This was followed by invasion by every country (including the US in places like Arkhangelsk), then 25 years later being invaded by a coalition of most of continental Europe, followed by a Cold War against a military alliance of all the world's industrialized nations. What magic pixie dust would the Russians have to combat all this? It's a miracle they made it to 1991, in the process launching the first satellites, man in space etc., before deciding themselves to close up shop in 1991.

It's a strange triumphalism - exaggerate a threat beyond all proportions, then crow how you defeated it. 1917 US (and allies) against 1917 Russia is like an NFL team against a Pee-wee league. This is the case for triumphalism? It's a miracle the Russians did as well as they did - they even beat Nazi Germany. It shows there must have been something to what they were doing.

> What magic pixie dust would the Russians have to combat all this?

Totalitarianism, imperialistic colonialism in their immediate neighbourhood, and total disrespect for their subjects' dignity, environment and life?

Disappearance of Stasi and getting rid of KGB in most of the ex-SSRs (if not in Russia main) is always case for triumphalism. Anyway, government never is equal to the people it governs, especially when it's doing its utmost to claim so.

Speaking of governmental continuity, you forgot Sweden. And about the only part of the old Russian empire Soviets (more or less by sheer luck on our part) didn't manage to re-invade, Finland (merely politically subjugate post-WW2). Depending on how one counts these things, especially the revolution/civil war period of 1917/18, our parliamentary and wider governmental system could be viewed as a direct continuation of the czars' local regime. Yay for outliving?

Of course, even if one accepts this weird 'race of continuity' viewpoint, the 'uninterrupted' is quite nice technicality. Denmark, Norway or the Netherlands are still quite recognizable as the about same governmental and national entities both before and after WW2. Even France, with all its constitutional changes since Napoleon III, didn't try such large changes at the societal level.

Enormous economic growth, especially for those millions of Soviet citizens that were starved[1], executed, or imprisoned[2] during collectivization.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1932%E2%80%93... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kulak#Dekulakization

You may them sound like victims. They were quite happy playing the game of thrones themselves, allying with Nazi Germany, invading countries left and right and starting to carve up Eastern Europe, then fighting a covert war with the West for decades, with neither side particularly caring about who would get crushed in the process.

"Russia was a backwards country in 1917" Russia has lost a war in 1917.

It was not a backwards country in 1914. This is a soviet hoax so widely spread.

Surely, it lacked in some areas, but it was already industrializing fast, building ships, cars, planes, railroads and stuff. Then came soviets and took credit for all aforementioned.

It was, but not because it did not industrialize. It did build the railroads and factories, of course, and it was at the peak of economical power by 1913, we all know that. It was a backwards country because of 99% of population still living in extreme poverty (the level of social and political inequality that noone these days can understand or accept), corruption and incompetence, which lead to defeat in war with Japan 10 years ago, and backwards political system, unable to solve challenges of the time. The Empire was doomed, and noone should cry about it.

Citation needed.

Certainly for "99%" + "extreme poverty".

Most of other claims are weasel-y. You could say the same about a lot of countries who then figured themselves out.

"the level of... political inequality that noone these days can understand or accept" is especially fun to read for a citizen of Putinist post-Soviet Russia. I not only understand political inequality but also experience levels of it that exceed what 1914 had to offer. For example, they had real Duma with real parties! That didn't always vote the same!

Hundred years passed and yet today we are far worse off.

I found this paper [1] which tends to show that pre-Soviet Russia wasn't that bad off. However, it's only based on data from St Petersburg and Moscow, so it's difficult to say how representative the conclusions are compared to the rest of Europe at the same time period.

As for the Tsarist Duma, come on. It was only established after the revolution of 1905, and after 1907, the electoral laws were engineered to favour the ruling class and the pro-Tsarist currents, and the Tsar retained most of his authority.

1: http://www.ehs.org.uk/dotAsset/62d8a367-8beb-4dd0-b21f-d98b4...

Still it seems to be a better Duma than the one Russia has today.

Modern Duma is young too, but really degenerate: voting unanimously, no opposition parties due to very high barrier to entry (by both not registering new parties and 7% elective barrier) and general monopolization of power in Russia. Rules now change before every new elections.

"Continental Europe" is cherry-picking. Great Britain has effectively the same government. Post-Ataturk Turkey has effectively the same government. And Russia is no more in Continental Europe than either of those are.

(the fact that one of Britain/USA, Nazi Germany, or Russia invaded basically all of Europe in the post-1917 period doesn't help)

They only beat the Nazi Germany after allying with them[1], starting the war, and letting Germans bleed out across Europe. Even then, despite massive difference in size and population (~100M people that Stalin hasn't murdered yet), barely.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pac...

"letting Germans bleed out across Europe"

How much exactly did they "bleed" before starting war with the USSR? AFAIK they mostly took countries intact with low to none losses.

They took 50-90% (depending on the source) of their total losses fighting the Soviets.

It's generally agreed upon that Germany started the war with Russia and that they lost because of the resources their Eastern front required.

Yes. But first Germany and the Soviet Union jointly kicked off World War II.

"This is not a peace. It is an armistice for twenty years."

"...the greatest villainy of the century"

"Peace for Our Time"

The USSR didn't "ally" with Germany. They signed a non-aggression treaty, which basically meant they agreed to not attack each other while partitioning weaker states. Which is similar to what the western powers did together with Germany at the Munich agreement (which didn't include the USSR).

They did ally with Nazi Germany.

Non-allied states are not performing joint military invasions or provide military support to each other in ongoing war.

80% of German casualties were on the Eastern Front. USSR fought Nazi Germany head on, matching its strength with human resources prior to 1942, and outmatching it technologically past 1942. Submachine guns for every infantryman, a large amounts of good tanks and artillery (including rocket artillery) and passable airplanes led USSR to victory.

"Everything You Think You Know About the Collapse of the Soviet Union Is Wrong"

Quick quiz: what were you supposed to know about the collapse of USSR before reading this article?

My guess is that Ronald Reagan caused the collapse by spending billions on Star Wars program.

That was part of it. The Soviets had put an immense amount of money into their Strategic Rocket Forces, and even a modest implementation of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI, let's not use the name chosen by those who attacked it) would have negated it, because a (first strike) attacker can't chose which warheads get taken out.

We also hit them hard in the pocketbook: convinced OPEC/the Saudis to lower the price of oil, directly sabotaged their gas exports to Western Europe, otherwise denied them technology that would have improved their economy, and made Afghanistan their Vietnam.

And then the moral aspect; I haven't read the fine article, but Reagan wasn't afraid to correctly refer to the Soviet Union as an "Evil Empire", told Gorbachev to "Tear down this wall!" (separating East and West Germany). I've also read from accounts inside the Iron Curtain that our invasion of Grenada was a massive shock, this was the first time ever that the West had taken back a Communist nation, explicitly denying the Brezhnev Doctrine, which we also attacked in many ways in Eastern Europe.

Bottom line was that Reagan was the first US President to decide to destroy, rather than merely contain, the Soviet Union, and despite the wavering of George H. "Chicken Kiev" W. Bush, succeeded shortly after leaving office. This, without massive bloodshed, is hands down the greatest geopolitical achievement in post-WWII 20th Century history.

"Reagan wasn't afraid to correctly refer to the Soviet Union as an "Evil Empire""

I don't think that affected inter-country morale long-term. What mattered is what happens inside, what we do to each other, how we live. That's true even with immense value that soviet mentality always gave to outside views on it.

"our invasion of Grenada was a massive shock"

I was born in 1985, ostensibly, but I've never heard of this and don't even know where that Grenada is.

Frankly, what you wrote doesn't sound very important to the issue.

I agree. In many countries if you are the president and the USA president call you "evil", you improve your popularity because it's a sign that you are "fighting" the yankee imperialism. You simply call the USA president "evil" and get even more popular support.

> I was born in 1985, ostensibly, but I've never heard of this and don't even know where that Grenada is

I was born in 1993 and I know plenty about the communist-backed coup and subsequent invasion of Grenada. I wouldn't use being born in chronological proximity to an event as a measure of it's geopolitical importance. That said, I've never heard that the US invasion of Grenada was so important in the wider Cold War as to call it "a massive shock". In reality, the collapse of the good ol' USSR is a confluence of events, political, economic, and social that lead to the breakup of world's only other super power. Look at that, the world isn't all black and white and can fit into an online article!

Unrelated, but I think schools should do more to teach kids about history in relation to current major events and issues around the globe. I most adoringly recall my "Current Events" course which was entirely based around teaching the last 150 or so years of major events and the underlying history that lead to those events. At the very least, folks would be a bit better served by learning why Iraq and Afghanistan are the clusterfucks they are as opposed to the Lewis & Clark expedition. I guess what I'm getting at is the US history education pretty much starts on the East coast and ends on the West with not much outside those boundaries.

I think more likely they're referring to Perestroika and Glasnost leading to the 1991 failed coup. Does anyone who matters seriously believe the above myth?

> in 1985, no government of a major state appeared to be as firmly in power, its policies as clearly set in their course, as that of the USSR.

the ship was rotting and falling apart from inside. Andropov, before Gorbachev, was trying to treat the situation the way that was natural to him - previously head of KGB - by enforcing the workplace discipline and implementing strict restrictions on alcohol. Talking about the way Russian government can lose the last trust and support of the people! (i say Russian because the rest of USSR had significant other reasons to leave the empire) Current regime in Russia has learned the lesson - https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/02/02...

I think the point that this article somewhat strenuously tries to make is, if the ship was rotting and falling apart on the inside, why didn't it do it in the Brezhnev years, during the stagnation and attempted economic reforms, especially when oil prices dropped to an all-time low?

To say that simply "the system was bad, and 1985-90 was just when the bottom fell out" smacks of hindsight bias.

People often forget that a typical existence in the USSR is on par with being poor white trash in the semi-rural northern US, just swap the trailer park for the apartment complex. They weren't starving but they had been close for decades. They were working as hard as anyone else who's trying to make ends meet but getting nowhere fast. For example, if a light-bulb burnt out in their home the only way to replace it was to switch it with a working one at work. Walking a miles in negative double digit temperatures to get to work, or to go to the grocery store because you can't afford to buy gas until payday wears on you. Taking scraps of insulation from a dumpster to keep the wind from coming in around your windows isn't fun. Having to park your car on a hill so you can roll start it in the morning because you can't afford a battery that can start your car in the cold doesn't make you feel good about your life. When you're living poor like that you've got so little invested in the system that you just don't give a damn. You wouldn't care if society collapses because you know in the back of your mind that there's a chance that in the following chaos you might come out ahead. These are the kind of people that made up the working class of the USSR. Some were better off, some worse but very, very few were comfortable where they were.

Meanwhile the upper middle class and above are comfortable but insecure. Sure the nation looks good on paper but even the people who are doing ok aren't going to be comfortable in a corrupt system because even if they put in the time and effort to do good work there's that chance that the next bunch of guys in charge will have someone else they'd rather give your job to or worse, by doing good work you've put yourself at odds with them and might be promoted to digging a ditch in Siberia.

IMO the statistics may have looked good there were a lot of unhappy people in the Soviet Union and in retrospect the place looks like a house of cards.

> Current regime in Russia has learned the lesson

Why is it a "regime"? Putin was democratically elected and even Western opinion research institutes unequivocally attest that he is supported by 85 to 90 percent of the Russian population.

In US media this is always attributed to "propaganda" while economic successes that might have an influence on Russian votes is completely ignored. For example: Russian GDP rose during Putins years tenfold. Russia reduced its foreign debt down to 23% of GDP and a flat tax of 13% for everyone was introduced. (I live in the EU and I am basically robbed by my government - I pay a hefty 50% tax on top of being forced to charge 20% VAT from my customers)

If these aren't good reasons to vote for someone then I don't know what is. I would vote for ANY party (except radicals), be it left or right that would stimulate GDP growth while reducing my taxes down to 13%.

In the years preceding the collapse of the USSR, circa 1987, 98% of the population supported the Communist Party. When there is no freedom of speech votes aren't predictive or indicative of anything at all other than the amount of propaganda.

There is no freedom of speech in Russia today, in fact it's been deteriorating year by year. So no, the pro-Putin votes you have today will evaporate in a (historical) instant just like they did then, in the 1980s.

I see Russians everywhere on the Internet speaking their mind freely and hosting political Youtube channels. The government has nowhere near the grip on information it had during the USSR.

Additionally Russians can access all Western media whenever they like and they do so often, especially the urbanized population. (where the majority of them create pro-Putin comments defending the actions of the Russian government)

That pro-Putin votes will evaporate is just your personal opinion and hope, but it isn't based on anything real. After the Yeltsin years it will take many decades for liberalism to recover in Russia.

Russian government does censor the internet. There is a blacklist maintained by Roskomnadzor; it, for instance, blacklists certain Wikipedia pages, along with certain opposition and other "extremist" web sites. Russia lacks a China-style single-choke-point firewall; ISPs have to enforce it.

If you have a chance to watch any Russian TV, you can't avoid noticing how propaganda-heavy it is, and how all the propaganda is in favor of the government (in the US, at least, the latter is not the case).

Also, being a businessman of any importance and not following the party line does not work. Not all cases are as dramatic as Khodorkovsky's, who happened to own one of the largest oils and gas companies, but legal harassment of business for political non-conformance continues, or continued while such non-conformance lasted, or, at least, was publicly visible.

This is milder than China, and way milder and more sane than than the Soviet regime was; there's no doubt about it. Also, the sharp rise in living standards of 2000s, fueled by oil prices, is still remembered and has not completely deteriorated. So Putin does enjoy some genuine citizens' support. It's still not something that citizens, acting freely and with consideration, have chosen, kind of like the Swiss do in their referenda.

Yes. Although I disagree with censorship where ever it happens, you can hardly argue that the blocked pages are political in nature.

Wikipedia was blocked for drug and suicide related content and was since then unblocked. (after Wikipedia removed these articles in its Russian version)

I can argue. Why were grani.ru blocked?

I'm a Russian freely speaking my mind on the Internet. I’ve only started doing that after I've took my one-way flight from there, with no intention to return ever.

Are you sure those Russians you're talking about aren't emigrants like me?

Who or what prevented speaking your mind on the Internet while in Russia. I'd really like to know.

It's not like they have a great firewall there where every foreign service is blocked.

And yes, based on the sheer number of Russian comments found on the Internet you would have to be insane to honestly propose that these are only coming from emigrants

There is rampant blocking of religious freedom in Russia - online and in real life, enforced by government and England's by the Orthodox Church. It is a regime and it is a tyranny.

What is "blocking of religious freedom" even supposed to mean? Do you mean the freedom to be a Sunni Jihadist or following some other school of extremist indoctrination?

> Additionally Russians can access all Western media whenever they like and they do so often, especially the urbanized population.

East Germans could get West German television.

It's pretty easy to consolidate reported public support when your government has nationalized the bulk of the media, and exerts economic and coercive violent pressure on the opposition press.

Media is in Russia overwhelmingly owned by private shareholders, so please get your facts straight.

Same could be said for Singapore substituting violent pressure for legal pressure.

Singapore is successful, Russia is crumbling. That's the main difference.

Of course it always depends on perspective. There are some people who would claim relative success of Singapore not compensating restrictions, and yet some other people would claim even North Korea is doing okay so stop insulting them.

"Democratically elected" for some value of. Take voting in North Caucasus, for example, where official turnover is 99% but tens of percents say in polls that they never go to elections.

But. Putin stole elections to Duma. Those were totally baked, and to make matters more humiliating, they did it in Moscow, they outright rewrote results, they let same people to vote dozens of times, they threw batches of fake votes into bins. This is widely documented.

Do you think this will be forgotten? Do you think this will never shoot back?

> Take voting in North Caucasus, for example, where official turnover is 99% but tens of percents say in polls that they never go to elections.

You know Chechens are the most fervent Russian nationalists today? They experienced the joys of living under an extremist Islamic caliphate for a few years between the first and the second Chechen war. Today they'll vote for any strongman that will ensure stability and security in the region. And that my friend is currently Putin.

> But. Putin stole elections to Duma. Those were totally baked

Yes sure. When Western opinion research reaches the conclusion that 85-90% of Russians support Putins policies it obviously makes a lot of sense to "steal" elections.

> This is widely documented.

Where? In the CIA fact sheet?

> Do you think this will be forgotten? Do you think this will never shoot back?

Please spare us all of this childish rhetoric.

I think he's claiming that the official election results are blatantly not true, since they claim "99% of voters voted", but over 10% of the population claims to be voters that did not vote in the election.

It's irrelevant how fervent you are when you are presumed voting when you actually don't.

I don't know how much sense does it make to steal elections; nontheless it has been done.

Weren't strict restrictions on alcohol a Gorbachev thing?

Anyway, this is not the lesson, it's just one lesson.

>Weren't strict restrictions on alcohol a Gorbachev thing?

Indeed, Andropov did the opposite by lowering vodka's price, hence "andropovka" name for the "Moskovskaya" vodka.

WRT assumptions we carry around with us:

The Soviet Union seemed to have adjusted to undertaking bloody "pacifications" in Eastern Europe every 12 years - Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, Poland in 1980

One should really compare the bloodliness of those pacifications with similar ones undertaken against Iraq or Libya. The difference would be dramatic.

Not that I am defending soviet regime. Adding insult to injury, they routinely failed their PR campaigns.

> One should really compare the bloodliness of those pacifications with similar ones undertaken against Iraq or Libya. The difference would be dramatic.

Why? This is a very ham fisted attempt at the usual "bu.. but the Americans are worse!" routine with no need to compare the two in the first place. The only possible reason for comparing them would be to find the Soviet Union more peaceful or less bloody outside of its borders than the US, something that has little to no relevancy to this article.

This however have relevance for readers, because they are going to use those cliches afterwards, and will, for example, call for "stronger measures" because "that's how it is done", citing article they read years ago.

Are you saying that they were a lot 'better' at helping other nations ? Better in execution and/or human view ? I know nothing about this.

Or pacifications that were undertaken, with U.S. government support, in Central and South America.

I am not defending Russian empire either. Putin actually seems to be bend to follow the U.S. model in Chechnya, Ukraine, Syria..

Remind me, which countries did US annex.

What has annexing to do with it? USSR didn't annex Czechoslovakia (the country where I was born) or Hungary; they just supported anti-democratic government that was more in line with their interests. You can downvote as much as you want, but the U.S. did the same in many countries of the Latin America, often with more violence. Here's a good reference: http://williamblum.org/books/killing-hope/

BTW, this is also spot on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6Vcct_g_z4 (and this insulation of the Eastern Europe is actually nicely shown now on the stance to the refugee crisis)

> What has annexing to do with it?

Because Putin annexed part of Ukraine.

Mexico?

Texas and California.

Puerto Rico, the Phillipines, Guam, Wake, Hawaii.

Strange article, it does not even mention that parts of the USSR were countries occupied before WW II and that they were never happy about it. Perestroika and glasnost gave some room to breathe for their independence movements which gained strength in in late 1980ies. I am still amazed how we were able to pull https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Way off. My country (Lithuania) declared independance back in March 1990, Latvia did the same in May, and Estonia was well on its way—that's more than a year befor August 1991 happen. And by the August events we already had January 1991 so I highly highly doubt there was a real chance for USSR to survive and continue business as usual.

Well... "Not happy" - depends on who you ask in Lithuania. My great grandmother was killed by nationalists near Zarasai. So her daughter - my grandmother - was brought up by relatives in Kaunas, and understandably never had any sympathies for the pre-war Lithuanian state and people missing it. She's still alive, by the way, and hates the way modern Lithuanian official historians idealize "forest brothers", nationalists, etc.

This does not make USSR a much better place, of course, but they did just let everyone go in the end, didn't they..? I still remember all those endless trains with tanks going east. I can't really remember too many examples of such a "mild" empire, em, disappearance.

USSR was terrible in the way it constrained personal freedom and property, but thats not why it collapsed, the grievances of common people had nothing to do with its collapse at all. I believe a large portion voted to stay in the union. USSR was broken up by top cadres so that each can have a personal fiefdom, it had nothing to do with what the sheeple was bleating.

That's true too. People brought "top cadres" into relative freedom, and then they destroyed the USSR against people's will.

That does not apply to all parts of the union.

Three Baltic States, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, were among the first to claim their independence. The people did it, not some top cadres: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singing_Revolution

The moral can't be too high in North Korea.

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