Actually, there is a rather funny satire called “Stalin and the reptoids” (most of the ruling Soviet establishment of the early 1930s being actually carnivorous reptiles who can temporarily assume the human shape). 🤪
Could the USSR be saved with a POD after 1980?
- Thread starter Vinization
- Start date
1) USSR can’t liquidate all non engineering nomenklatura with justification after a hysteric left nomenklatura failed "to the countryside"
2) USSR does not have a peasantry
3) USSR does not have a new proletariat you create, it is a proletarianised society
4) USSR has existing capital stocks which are actively depreciating
5) USSR has a factory based welfare system which could only be dismantled through horrific brutality historically
Can’t pull a China. Imagine claiming the UK in the Winter of Discontent could pull a South Korea complete with political massacres?
* * *
Also the discussion of gosplan has entirely avoided the market, banks, and pricing mechanisms that existed below the plan and before firm level
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marathag
Banned
And the existing Soviet products were getting worse.
Demand for color TV sets was so high, corners were cut.
So after you get your new Rovesnik TV set(off the waiting list) you were warned not to leave it plugged in when not watching, as could catch fire.
Most fires in apartments in Moscow were caused by the TVs cooking off
chankljp
Donor
Seeing as how much the Soviets needed Western grain imports to kept the country fed... I will say that this will NOT help them at all, with the resulting climate change wrecking them very badly as well as much as as the rest of the world.
marathag
Banned
Not incredibly low.
Low, yes.
what was incredibly low was the soft landing, it just dissolved.
Soviet leadership was treading an unbeaten path in reforming totally state-run economy. Nobody could give reasonable advice for the lack of historical parallels.
Soviet administration was a system without feedback.
Only two things could help - clairvoyance or blind luck. Clairvoyance is ASB, so we are left with blind luck, that is the situation when random decisions taken for the wrong reasons are unexpectedly helpful.
Soviet administration was a system without feedback.
Only two things could help - clairvoyance or blind luck. Clairvoyance is ASB, so we are left with blind luck, that is the situation when random decisions taken for the wrong reasons are unexpectedly helpful.
No, it could not.
That USSR was on the brink of economic collapse by that time is only a half of the problem. The second half was that there were no people in power who could look at it critically, nobody who could steer the economic system onto a different direction. They - how do you say it in English? - have drunk their own Kool-Aid.
That's what Gorbachev did - he tried to fix the unfixable, to reform the system without radically changing it, and it disintegrated around him. Anybody who had a real chance of replacing him would do one of three things: the same as he did, try to continue as it is, Brezhnev-style, or double down. Neither would allow the USSR to survive longer than 15-20 years.
That USSR was on the brink of economic collapse by that time is only a half of the problem. The second half was that there were no people in power who could look at it critically, nobody who could steer the economic system onto a different direction. They - how do you say it in English? - have drunk their own Kool-Aid.
That's what Gorbachev did - he tried to fix the unfixable, to reform the system without radically changing it, and it disintegrated around him. Anybody who had a real chance of replacing him would do one of three things: the same as he did, try to continue as it is, Brezhnev-style, or double down. Neither would allow the USSR to survive longer than 15-20 years.
That's... Most of the union? If only the Baltics leave, which Gorbachev was fine with, the rest could easily still call itself the soviet union and probably keep running as such. Without Russia pulling out, there wouldn't been that much of a motive to blow it up.
Unfortunately, shoddy manufacturing and inferior consumer goods are not issues monopolized by central planning/command economies. Ask any Iranian or former Iranian if they remember the Paykan... after a peal of laughter followed by a string of profanities, you'll get an amusing story or two...
Back in the late '80's, I had a '79 Mustang that I would've given someone in a flat trade for a Trabi after a month or two
1)True
2) Untrue , its farming sector is much larger than the US. Their farmers were, at best, peasants, with serfs being a better description.
3) Which needed to be shifted to make more modern products.
4) Shut them down. Use foreign capital to build new factories. Move workers from the old plants to the new plants. Obsolete plants making obsolete products did the USSR very little good.
5) That you would have to nationalize. The central government would have to be responsible for welfare.
Without pricing mechanisms from top to bottom it will do little good and retail prices were definitely fixed. Bread prices were fixed so low that peasants fed it to their pigs instead of grain.
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Yeah, the thing that the Russians should be proud of is that it wasn't much, much worse when the USSR collapsed.
Most people expected the cis to be a rebranded soviet union.
The real thing is Russia pulling out was actually the smart thing to do cut the dead weight.. Central Asia still depends on Russia.. They have the cis agreement.. Etc etc..
Sure Russia leaving was the final nail.
That said yeltsin couldn't decide this alone.
After the coup and all that happened it seemed logical if you look at it. How do you eliminate the dead besides burrying it.. Tossing some holy water on it and moving on.
Last item - I really think they wanted change and thought the west would help.. Surprise
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"Eliminate the dead weight". That's an incredibly callous way to word it.
It was pure Russian selfishness that powered the dismantling. And of course, as you say, the west didn't give a damn anymore once its main foe was down. It only bothered supporting the rest of Eastern Europe to ensure it went to their side fully.
I wouldn't say that.. Once the center lost its legitamcy it was over, why keep, what's holding back. At that point in history it's basically all the way or it was all for nothing. When the military says enough.. Yiu know it's done. There is lots of after the fact glorification of the Soviet union.. I get it. I'm from Minsk.
I'm saying that the system itself was over. Question was did it go quietly or Russian / soviet Civil War 2.0
Eastern Europe wanted out
Quite a few republics inside the Soviet union.
Now, I belive it was good intentions but that those in charge really didn't know what to do with what they had achieved.
Back on track. I said the Soviet union didn't need to disolve I'm saying Ata certain point it was basically a given.
And yes dead weight means what is holding back reforms..
What is keeping change from occurring and making it manageable..
Also quite a few republics relied on Russia..
It's a term in English so its not callous
Oh, the complexities inherent in this one... I may have to break up my response into several posts so as not to drone on and on into something that no one will finish reading
1st off - I've noticed that most of the responses here have dealt with internal matters; the centrifugal forces seemingly pulling the USSR apart by 1991, the collapsing or at least decaying economic sectors, etc. I say "seemingly" b/c if you look at the referenda, about 3/4 of the Soviet population in 9 republics wanted no such thing to happen. But relatively few people have referenced the external matters that led to the situation decaying to the point that total collapse became likely.
In short, the USSR didn't fall, it was PUSHED. It wasn't just lack of support from the West that caused various reforms to fail, it was a calculated effort on the part of the West and in particular the United States to push the Soviet Union off the nearest cliff and free the world from the threat of the spread of Communism, and make the world safe for free-market capitalism er I mean "Democracy". I can think of no other time in world history when one nation has worked so hard to undermine another nation - and a nation at that with which no "hot war" had EVER been fought.
I can think of a few good examples: 1) the Nixon "rapproachment" with the PRC - looking at modern history I'd say he backed the wrong horse, and looking at the PRC at that time I'd say it was one of the most amoral political calculations ever made by a US President; 2) US support for the Afghan insurgency - most people forget that the Soviet "invasion"of Afghanistan was at the behest of most of the government of the DRA, who had just seen their President killed and the position usurped by a would-be dictator - and that Soviet failure exacerbated by US, Pakistani and other Western aid led more or less directly to the Taliban regime; 3) that Reagan brought an end to the 1970's oil crisis by cajoling and bribing the Saudis to massively increase oil production, making the one exportable commodity that the USSR had scads of uncompetitive; and 4) the massive US military buildup under the Reagan and Bush I years, causing the Soviets to (try to) keep up - NO nation can survive for long dumping 70% of its economy into military expenditures.
Know I'm gonna draw some flak for this one...
RousseauX
Donor
That was before the August Coup: the support for the Soviet Union fell after the conservative coup. In any case, popular political opinion in the Russia, both today and historically, rarely mattered that much. It was the opinion of the political elites which mattered.Oh, the complexities inherent in this one... I may have to break up my response into several posts so as not to drone on and on into something that no one will finish reading
1st off - I've noticed that most of the responses here have dealt with internal matters; the centrifugal forces seemingly pulling the USSR apart by 1991, the collapsing or at least decaying economic sectors, etc. I say "seemingly" b/c if you look at the referenda, about 3/4 of the Soviet population in 9 republics wanted no such thing to happen. But relatively few people have referenced the external matters that led to the situation decaying to the point that total collapse became likely.
No, the USSR's external position in 1985 was stronger than it had being in the past, certainly stonger than it had being in the 1930s. You are buying too much into America's own narrative where it "won" the Cold War through its own actions rather than the Soviets willingly choosing to end it.
The events you are mentioning are setback to Soviet foreign policy: they were not fatal blows to the Soviet state. They might have being -contributing factors- sure, but not decisive. In any case, the USSR survived all those crisises. What destroyed the USSR was Gorbachev's decision to liberalize and dismantle the mechanisms of centralized state-party control over the political system.
The USSR did not spend 70% of its GDP on military expeditions, IIRC it was something more like 5-10%
Foreign policy setbacks rarely if ever causes a state collapse short of actually losing a World War scale war. The fall of the USSR was caused by its own political elites working to dismantle the Communist system either out of idealism (Gorbachev) or out of simple desire for personal political power (Yeltsin).
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Could we have a (transitional) political system that is dominated de jure by the CPSU but that is actually a multi party sysytem?
For example, every singe politician has to be a member of the CPSU but the candidate selection process (primaries?) is so open that lots of people who aren't communists and would otherwise be dissidents are legislators and such? This could be a transition between the single-party autocracy into a deeply flawed but funtional multi-party democracy.
For example, every singe politician has to be a member of the CPSU but the candidate selection process (primaries?) is so open that lots of people who aren't communists and would otherwise be dissidents are legislators and such? This could be a transition between the single-party autocracy into a deeply flawed but funtional multi-party democracy.
My mistake re: the military expenditures. Should have been 70% of the national budget, not 70% of the whole economy. Still a whopping amount.
And yeah, the 4 factors I listed were contributing factors, not decisive factors - but they DID all contribute. And the USSR did survive, but it can't be said that it was thriving exactly by 1985. A Soviet Union which had not been weakened by external factors would've better been able to adapt to Gorbachev's new direction, if such a thing would've even happened if that were the case.
I believe the August Coup would've been survivable too, had it been handled differently by Gorbachev. The USSR needed a "man of the hour", and unfortunately Gorby didn't rise to the occasion. That fell to a loudmouthed buffoon named Yeltsin who should've been shuttled off to run a power plant in Siberia or something.
RousseauX
Donor
That's how the Soviet electoral sytsem was suppose to work in the first place. The problem is that obviously the party gets to decide who gets to be a candidate in the first place since you can't be a politician without being a party member.
That's what would have to be opened up at first: the selection of the candidates.