From Reform to Ruin in the USSR
cogitations.co
cogitations.co
Could be economic freedom, religious, intellectual, social etc.
Also, I'd argue giving your citizens freedom of movement is critical if you're going to implement necessary but drastic economic reforms, it gives the bourgeois, who often end up leading revolutions in despotic states, an option to exit stage left instead of putting on camo and moving to the jungle with a bunch o guns.
Education not controlled by politicians is dangerous to authoritarian regimes.
The current rhetoric from JD Vance about tertiary education is part of the usual script of tinpot despots, sadly.
If people think they are better off economically as a region they will leave. This might look like a economic problem, but its actually a political problem. It literally deals with the fact that who gets to collect and keep taxes, and later plan how to spend that money.
>>Education not controlled by politicians is dangerous to authoritarian regimes.
Its always a mistake to assume that people don't know if conditions elsewhere are better, or there own conditions are worse.
Just because people put up with bad governments, it doesn't mean they will not rebel later. Really it all depends on the situation, and time.
This is exactly what happened to the Qing: the Chinese population never really liked the Qing, but when it was a mostly hands-off distant authority, they lived with it. But when the Qing attempted to become a modern country with high state capacity, this woke up slumbering Han nationalism which proceeded to tear down the dynasty.
And that's what happened in the USSR too: early Soviet leaders correctly guessed that Russian nationalism had to be suppressed in the Soviet system, or else with the majority of the population and territory, Russia would end up dominating the rest of the country. And to their credit, they mostly made good on this: Russia didn't have too much of an outsized impact on or benefit from the Soviet economy, and representation from other states in the political elite was pretty good. But as soon as Gorbachev opened things up, Russian nationalism asserted itself and wanted to throw off the "unfair treatment", and the USSR immediately fell apart.
There are contemporary examples today, too: I argue this same pattern is what has been happening in Burma. When the junta had total control, they were able to force the patchwork of ethnic groups to mostly get along; as soon as a little democracy got introduced, the Buddhist majority started genociding everyone else.
If you want to open up an autocracy, you have to pay very close attention to whatever forces it has long been suppressing.
Same applied to almost all of the national "republics". Most people were only willing along with it due to fear and hopelessness (since any type of civil disobedience would be violently suppressed).
Opening up the economy so that Western piggus can take over everything and corrupt the nation with their DMARKS and Dollars? What were they thinking...
Those regions might be politically important to China but demographically and economically (besides any potential natural resources) they hardly matter.
Han make up 91% of the population of China, in the USSR Russians were barely above 50%.
I mean China is a nation state that engages in some imperialism. The USSR was an empire first and foremost.
There are few countries where there is a single language and culture. Just looking at Western Europe, there is Basques in Spain, Bretons in France, Welsh/Scottish in the UK, Frisians in Netherlands, Lombards in Italy, Walloons in Belgium etc etc.
>it weren’t for force and oppression.
Nah. That's USAID propaganda.
The soviet union was the same way. Even member states mostly represented multiple nations, which often crossed member state borders.
Here's the relevant work from Stalin: "Marxism and the National Question": https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1913...
I'm pretty skeptical myself that nationalism was the thing that tore the soviet union apart. The most ethnically diverse areas (notably, georgia and central asia) generally benefitted the most from attachment to the soviet union. Surely here in the US we are less bound together by shared culture than the soviets ever were. If the soviets were an empire of nations, we are a prison-ship of them.
Another important factor was China's significantly larger population compared to the Soviet Union, combined with notably lower labor costs. All these factors eventually propelled the country to great prosperity. Without them, I think China today wouldn't look much different from any other East Asian country.
The Soviets simply didn't have such opportunities. Leaving aside the fact that Western countries never offered them a similar deal, Soviet labor simply couldn't match the industrial productivity enabled by the cheap workforce of East Asian countries.
The USSR had vast land and abundant natural resources, but its population density was relatively low. Additionally, it already possessed advanced technologies and a well-developed industrial base. From the U.S. perspective, such a country looked more like a potential (and actual) competitor rather than just another member of the Western economic system.
I'm not a big fan of a planned economy. And I believe that the lack of social freedoms and democratic institutions, typical of Western countries, was a major factor in the Soviet collapse. But regardless of the decisions and reforms Soviet authorities could have made after World War II, I think the country was doomed either way.
The Soviet Union simply didn't have a large enough population to effectively develop such an enormous landmass. After WWII, significant male losses and the effects of the second demographic transition led to continuous population decline. The only reasonable course of action would have been to relinquish part of its global influence and territory, which it eventually did — but perhaps too late. However, the authorities of any country rarely want to give up power, and the Soviets were no exception.
As for turning points, I don't think it was the NEP. More likely, the Communist (October) Revolution itself was the crucial historical moment. The Russian Empire was a relatively promising state, evolving in the right direction. It was gradually building democratic institutions and transitioning to a liberal economy. Its industrial development was progressing similarly to other European countries — perhaps with some lag, but still moving forward.
Perhaps the real turning point in Russian history was when radicals, driven by controversial economic and social ideas, inherited a wealthy country and used its potential for large-scale social experiments.
Nixon arrived a full year after Gough Whitlam established Australian-Chinese trade which prompted Henry Kissinger to take a secret visit to China to negotiate the terms for Nixon’s mission.
Wait, but this simply isnt true. USSR population grew continiusly until the 90iez.
The was the "war echo" in this growth, but it wasn't declining.
You cant really beat 3 year maternity leave and free kindergarder from the age of 3.
All that really worked and beinf a single mother was normalized too, because of distorted gender ratio.
Otherwise said, people stopped having kids when economic opportunities opened up.
If you think that people didn't have ambitions, it's also not true. You could still climb the ladder inside the system, it's just the monetary reward was capped at having middle class-level comfort instead of being unbelievably rich. You could always be a head of something or go by the party route to have more nice things or have friends to bring stuff from the west too.
Your options to climb the ladder inside the system were severely limited, especially if you was young. Communism and working in communism was sleepy and having ambitions was negative - just about the only way to use ambitions was to be political, denounce who you have to denounce and do the dirty work for the state.
> You could always be a head of something or go by the party route to have more nice things or have friends to bring stuff from the west too.
Of course that implies comfort with a lot of dirt and amorality. Yep, some people did that. Everybody knew what being party meant and some of these people are still the sleaziest politicians out there. Not everyone had stomach for that.
Plus, you could not do this if you was from the wrong family.
Why would that matter? Australia and Canada are doing reasonably well regardless of the overwhelming majority of their territories being empty "wasteland" (economically).
If anything relatively low population coupled with huge amounts of natural resources per capita is one of the best positions to be in.
>relinquish part of its global influence and territory
By in and large their relinquished the more highly populated areas not the empty ones.
However, to a large extent, this is the result of cutting expenditures on projecting Soviet influence abroad. The Soviet Union had enormous spending on subsidizing friendly regimes and their economies around the world, as well as maintaining a military presence. The same applies to some former Soviet republics that the USSR had to subsidize for decades.
I think we are observing similar processes in the United States today. They are attempting to cut spending and perhaps even reduce their military presence simply because they cannot afford it in the long term without sacrificing their own prosperity.
Their only opportunity to truly fix things was to accept Marshall plan, and thus finish with Communism and introduce private properly and democracy, after WWII. But personal ambitions of the leadership prevented that.
The road to hell...
Is it, though? Putin's Russia is no better than the Soviet Union - in some ways worse. It's essentially a mafia state run by one thug. One could imagine a different scenario where Gorbachev would have been able to land the plane in a bit more of a controlled fashion and stayed around to transition to something that would look more like a European democracy - but of course, things got way too chaotic for him to stay on.
The guiding intellectual principle in the US at the time w.r.t. the economy of the ex-USSR was "You can't cross a canyon in two leaps". This was what passed for intelligent thought.
Every other ussr and soviet-aligned country got it going somehow.
The Americans actually understood this which is why they focused on the economy when they helped Japan and Europe to rebuild after the war.
Well considering that Yeltsin had to order the army to shell the Russian parliament less than 2 years after the USSR was dissolved that somewhat arguable.
When he saw that average Americans were enjoying consumer choices well beyond anything the highest echelons in the USSR could attain, he was never quite the same after that.
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/trending...
Would anyone here care to assert that more people would be better off today if the Wall had not fallen?
Probably not. Kerensky and most other moderates were still reactionary imperialists by modern standards and wanted to keep the empire together.
And the divergence between Russia and Norther European countries occurred hundreds of years prior to the revolution. Overwhelming majority of Russians were very poor and illiterate peasants. It would be near impossible to build a progressive/democratic society in such a place without massive economic and social changes (which wouldn't just happened on their own).
> he essentially outworked
He was also an extreme liar and a hypocrite. The Bolsheviks did and said anything to get into power and then reneged on most of their promises. Main issues at the time were land reform and ending the war, the Bolsheviks pretty much just stole the Socialist land reform plan and pretended they'll implement it when they get into power (which likely resulted in much less direct opposition to them in the early stages than would have been the case otherwise). Yet they obviously nationalized most of the land as soon as they secured their position. They also tried invading Poland/Ukraine/Baltics/etc. as soon as the German army withdrew.
In addition, the elites realised how poorly they were treated compared not just to the leading, but even to the capitalist nations of similar per capita GDP - that is, mediocre ones - and wanted to change that. Seriously, speaking of economic grievances, no one had more to complain about but the Soviet elites. Those who in America, had Learjets and beachside villas, had to make do with bugged apartments and black Volgas in the Soviet Union and they rightly saw it as unfair.
Both problems could be "fixed" with 1937-style repression IN ADDITION to 1933-style famine (because Soviet Union depended on food imports and the West won't give them in case of a new Purge), but Gorby had no balls for that sort of thing in 1987, and thank God he didn't.
Simply put, there was no way to fool too many people, increasingly well-educated and capable of critical thinking, for too long a time. Communism ended because it's time was up.
The Soviet Union endured a most destructive war, and then had economic warfare waged against it by its former allies. Kind of hard to compete under such circumstances.
And also, their lives were full of risks compared to capitalists who could at worst bankrupt their companies and walk away to their beachfront villas, Soviet elites that misstepped, ended up in Gulag.
Elites in the end, were the most intrinsically anti-Soviet part of the Soviet society: they had a lot to gain from the collapse of the System, and they indeed, did gain a lot when it happened.
One thing that Politburo could do to extend the life of the Soviet Union was to be softer on the elites by letting them freer access to foreign currency, facilitate their freedom of travel, owning foreign property and investments, and so on. They couldn't escape after all - they had no skills to make good money in the West.
The mid-level commanders that carried out his orders were rewarded with wealth and power. The ones that didn't got purged.
Russia came out of that coup and constitutional crisis with all power consolidated in the office of the President.
And you would never guess what happened next!
Short version:
"Deng Xiaoping thought Mikhail Gorbachev was an idiot"
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-31/mikhail-gorbachev-met...
It completely ruined any hope glasnost had to succeed.
1. Geriatric leadership of 80+ y.o. dudes clinging to power
2. Loose fiscal policy and huge deficit. Soviets were subsidizing communist regimes around the world and spending everything on military build-up and arms race
3. Bloated and inefficient bureacracy that became its own class (Nomenklatura)
4. Inefficient economy
5. Military humiliation (Afghanistan) and industrial catastrophe (Chernobyl) that costs a lot in $ and regime reputation
The US is incredibly successful at exporting about half of the pain from its fiscal policy to other nations, (given that the dollar is the world's reserve currency), not the other way around. It's economy is incredibly productive, and its bureaucracy is roughly the same size to that of other developed nations.
What it does have is a tidal wave of propaganda, sponsored by a small group of robber barons and oligarchs people who would benefit from destroying that bureaucracy. Which somehow convinced ~49.8% of the country that the richest man in the world somehow has their interests at heart.
Well...when you consider the competition you get what you get. In this case the richest man in the world positioned to be the "savior" from the previous regime.
> its bureaucracy is roughly the same size to that of other developed nations.
Slashing the bureaucracy is not the full story. Basically, most Americans have umbrage against the previous regime. So the enemy of my enemy is my friend...or at least useful.
80% of all of features in Word are useless to me, but for each user, it's a different 80%.
The same with government. There isn't a person alive that doesn't have issue with some part of it, but start going down the list, and you'll very quickly discover why so many parts of it are important, and why you shouldn't delegate picking and choosing to an unelected billionaire narcissist with no skin in the game, no consequences for bad behavior, and most of all, no legal authority to make any of those arbitrary choices.
In the complex set of events that lead to the collapse, Chernobyl is only a footnote.