I would agree that this just seems like someone deciding what the problem was, then going to look for things to back that up. And that's just simply not good science or logic. Pushing an agenda is just incompatible with the goal of finding the truth, regardless of what the agenda is.
And summing up the collapse of the USSR as "it's because the lefties couldn't be stopped!!!" just comes off as... concerning.
USSR was genuinely struggling with ideology, technology, culture and everything from inside itself. It's wasn't fault of the West, but the history of USSR, Russia, and "Satellite countries" in general.
You can't deny that if USSR wasn't hostile to Europe and Europe wasn't cautious back. USSR would exist like China, get alot of wealth, Intelligence and help from the West, and it wouldn't collapse. Because alot of factories would've keep up the quality and quantity of western factories, maybe even more western factories and equipment would be bought like in 1930 and before.
The struggle was more organisation and allocation of things. Science wise they kinda got hindered by the fact that none of the Nazi scientists wanted to go there (an any that did get to go didn't under such nice terms as to the weat) but if anything USSR heavily invested into their STEM sciences, they mainly had resource issues, in a way that regions got allocated production quotas and they got taken regardless of how much was produced and how much was needed locally, i.e. you produce for union first then for yourself
Some interesting points and compelling analysis, but the loss of the Afghanistan war cost the Soviet military thousands of casualties and massive equipment losses (helicopters especially), in addition to the damage done to the prestige and authority of the Soviet military and subsequent public disillusionment regarding the Soviet government.
Gorbachev liked to think that the USSR would have successfully carried on had Chernobyl not happened, but this completely ignores the fact that they were already racing towards bankruptcy and had an obliterated economy that was in a tailspin. Chernobyl may have sped the process up slightly but the end was coming inevitably soon regardless.
Gorbachev was under the assumption that had the Chernobyl cleanup not happened, the domino chain either would have stopped, or not had fallen when, and how it did.
In some aspects, he may be correct. But thats being very generous. The Chernobyl cleanup wasn't the first domino to fall. It was probably the 7th or 9th. By that point the cleanup was just a domino along the chain. not the domino
> they were already racing towards bankruptcy and had an obliterated economy that was in a tailspin.
That's not accurate. Stagnation was a mjor issue, but the whole "Reagan outspent them" thing is hagiography.
In fact, the post Soviet economies collapsed much harder than anything seen under the Soviet Union.
>GDP decline in post-Soviet nations was substantial and averaged roughly 51%. From 1990 to 2000, GDP decline numbered:
63% in Armenia
60% in Azerbaijan
35% in Belarus
35% in Estonia
78% in Georgia
41% in Kazakhstan
50% in Kyrgyzstan
51% in Latvia
44% in Lithuania
63% in Moldova
40% in Russia
50% in Tajikistan
48% in Turkmenistan
59% in Ukraine
> the end was coming inevitably soon regardless.
Nobody in the world (except Reagan) believed that, at the time. And now that the dust has settled, most serious historians do not believe it was inevitable at all. We Americans lived through the great depression and came back. Many nations have gone through economic hardship and made it through. There was no good reason to predict a total collapse.
You have made a good point. But I think it’s also worth mentioning the fact that the economic woes that forced Gorbachev to ask the West for financial support were also making it increasingly difficult to maintain control of the Soviet republics. He was gradually ceding control and granting more and more autonomy to various republics that were full of people who wanted nothing to do with the Soviet Union. It seems like the fracture was going to happen with or without Chernobyl. It would have required a violent totalitarian ruler with the power and willingness to exercise it to keep it together and Gorbachev had neither.
I doubt the losses in Afghanistan was a significant factor, to be honest. They lost ~15,000 men. That's really not that much, in the grand scheme. The Americans lost ~60,000 in Vietnam.
The Soviets lost some 26,000,000 in WWII, for comparison.
In the end, it collapsed because of the economy. Perestroika, the Singing Revolution, etc were symptoms, not the cause. The underlying stress factor was USSR trying to compete with the US Star Wars program, yeeting their military spending up to double-digit percentages of their economy. The Afghanistan adventure and the Chornobyl kababoom did not help either.
Based on my limited perspective of actually living through that thing from inside. I was in Estonia, so probably my perspective is different from people living deeper behind the iron curtain.
That’s overly simplistic. The oil price collapsing in the 1980’s (oil and gas was something like 50% of the state budget and almost all of its hard currency reserves) meant that they couldn’t afford to keep going.
Maintaining half of Europe as dependent client states whose economies were just as fucked didn’t help either.
The biggest stress factor was the whole system was wildly inefficient and produced nothing outside of natural resources that anyone wanted.
Afghanistan, nationalism, corruption, nepotism, Chernobyl, and general economic malaise all helped kill it.
China isn’t to the same extent an unnatural amalgamation of an empire whose client peoples want nothing to do with it.
I'll be honest, you right. It's was also the USSR culture, build upon the warmongering instead of integration with the rest of the world, plus trying to shove it's influence down the throat.
Skateboarding is pretty cool, honestly really need to be very skilled person to even try it, so as a person that never had tried it, but seen countless media, It's no wonder why anyone who never seen skateboarding then learning about it, would want to learn and try.
China reformed economically, but not politically. The cohort that ordered the deaths at Tiananmen square are still in power. They have the largest domestic surveillance system in the world. They control all information (more or less) and crush any political dissent in china, and intimidate anyone they can overseas. As for the Soviet Union, I feel like searching for a single answer is never going to enlighten you. There are likely thousands of things that contributed to it, and about 12 single cause theories that I here repeated. One contributing factor that differs between the Soviet Union and China, is that in both countries, the citizens desire for a better life overwhelmed their fear of being killed by tanks. Gorbachov was a true believer in Communism, that people should want it, and would choose it if given the chance. When the people wanted to be let free, he hesitated to use force. The CCP did not hesitate, and smashed Beijing students to paste to retain power.
China “reformed” the economy gradually by joining the international trade system. They started off by creating special economic zones with low regulations and restrictions on foreign trade and then gradually expanded that. The Soviet Union tried economy wide reforms first, and crucially didn’t try and go the trade route China did. Mainly because it wasn’t available to them. The USSR was already a middle-income country so the cheap manufacturing that would lure foreign companies to invest was not available. And with the Cold War still raging the USSR would not be allowed into the international trade system. So the Cold War had to end, which Gorbachev tried to do by political reforms. Those political reforms fatally weakened the Soviet system. The west was willing to overlook China suppressing dissent. They weren’t when it came to the Soviets.
Not true. As someone who was alive in the USSR in those years it is wild how misinformed people are.
The March referendum did not have an option to leave or gain independence. In fact it had one universal question, roughly: Should the USSR be reformed from 1922 treaty?
That was the most conservative question they could ask and several republics refused to participate because it didn't have any other options and voting "no" could simply mean "everything should stay as is without reforms"
In addition there were a bunch of questions depending where you lived and if those questions included sovereignty or full independence from USSR - people overwhelmingly voted 'yes;, e.g. Ukrainians were asked two questions (split by regions): "Do you agree that Ukraine should be part of a Union of Soviet sovereign states on the basis on the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine?" - again no other option to leave but Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine greatly increased Ukraine's autonomy (this is the one that my family was asked) - 81.7% in favor
And some regions were asked directly: Should and independent state of Ukraine be created - 88% in favor in those regions.
And then 9 months there was another referendum asking all Ukrainians about full independence and 92% voted yes.
This was similar to most other republic. So no, people did not want the USSR to remain, they were always choosing the most radical and independence-oriented option presented to them.
This reads more like they have decided they wanted to write a hit piece on ideological communism and then began assigning things to it, rather than actually engaging with why the ideological position would produce reforms leading to the demise of the state.
Further these are largely liberalisation reforms referred to, which would naturally cause any communist system to be less communist over time, on account of it becoming more liberal.
I feel like many of the things stated in the article are either disingenuous or outright wrong/lies.
For example, the Soviet Union's economy didn't "collapse after reform", as stated. It was ALWAYS shit and the "reforms" they're mentioning were terribly implemented and made the economy go from a 2, if we're basing it on a scale of 1 to 10, to a 0 or -1.
The article also seems to hand wave the absolute tyranny against those who thought differently by saying they were "not numerous", as it ignores the 18 million people imprisoned in gulags, and that's not including other internment camps or those executed.
And it literally doesn't even mention the rampant corruption that was throughout basically 100% of the government.
I think a far more interesting question is why their transition to capitalism was so badly bungled.
But why is this being asked as though USSR existed in a vacuum and not the context of having to fight an expensive war against the entire rest of the world at the same time?
"Having to fight" is arguable in my opinion. They kept having a militarized economy their entire existence, probably owing to being formed from a revolution and civil war, but I would argue their failure to reduce the share of their economy dedicated to military is what in the long term made their system unworkable. That and the bureaucracy becoming an self-interest of its own.
I suppose one could argue the military wad necessary to keep them safe, but for much of the cold war the fear was, in Europe, from a standing military strong enough to invade and occupy the entire continent at any moment and that is just excessive in my opinion. NATO only ever had the resources to eventually push back after a large mobilization, never to threaten the USSR with a direct invasion with the forces they kept.
I think it's pretty hard to argue against, if you look at the timeline. Capitalists from USA to Japan invaded immediately after revolution to try to destroy them. Then once they finally make it out of the civil war, they don't even get 20 years before Nazi Germany invades. Then as soon as that ends, the allies become their new enemies and the Cold War begins.
Corruption is everywhere. But in a monarchy, corruption just means you get shit on by Fred instead of Steve. Not like things were going to be good for the peasantry without corruption. In a capitalist nation, corruption means the rich get more powerful, and the powerful get richer. Again, it's kind of a given. Sure it sucks, but even without corruption, you'd have rich and powerful people, and lower and middle class people who have to suck it up.
But in a communist society, the theory is that everyone is equal. Corruption RAPIDLY breaks that theory. And it's incredibly visible. You have a 1240 square foot government issued house. Comrade Suckup has a 4100 square foot mini-mansion. You are eating the same food every day as your 15 neighbors, but you've seen a truck delivering fresh fish to Suckup every other Friday.
You KNOW he's getting special treatment. Nobody else is near you, but him.
Corruption unravels Communism at it's seams. It sucks everywhere, but in a society built upon this idea of economic equality, it is brutally destructive.
Morw like bc that k8nd of transition allows for a lot of theft and embezzlment. Ever, eastern block countr, had a disasterously rushed transition that created a new upper class. Ofc maybe Russia's was the worst.
USSR born gen X here. It fell apart because we and our parents hated it in wast numbers. Still do. Stephen Kotkin can go look for a different solution looking for a different problem. Tnx. Bye. ;)
You'd know better than me, but it seems like granting permission is a reaction more than just good graces. Could just be my point of view, since you could argue communism was meant to be for the common good.
That's a completely dishonest anti academic boomer take.
The Communist Party of China is attempting to use capitalism to grow their economy so that they can transition into socialism. That's their claim. And that is in line with Marxist theory.
“Works” is very debatable depending on what you value. They basically replaced a centralized bureaucratic imperial government with a centralized bureaucratic dictatorial government. In practice and function these are virtually identical.
I'd argue that after Chernobyl, the higher ups understood that the writing was on the wall. Considering the sheer costs etc. so the idea was - if you dump the bad "debt" you can reorganize as a new empire without the waste.
This effectively meant that the oligarchs were able to purge the assets from the government, let the government fall and walk away. The West then capitalized the Russian people, while the oligarchs let their new wealth explode.
> the higher ups understood that the writing was on the wall
Quite the opposite. They believed they were invincible.
>the oligarchs were able to purge the assets from the government, let the government fall and walk away.
That is indeed what happened once the fall began. But that wasn't obvious during Chernobyl or anything. The US had nuclear disasters as well, but that didn't collapse the state. And there's no reason to assume it would.
I'm no expert, but I've been trying to understand the Soviet Union for a few years now, reading lots of books about it. Both positive and negative.
To put it simply and not get caught in the weeds - here is what I think happened:
>Revolution:
The socialists take power. They must hold power. The capitalists are obviously very concerned about this. Just like the Monarchists were very concerned about liberal democratic revolutions a few hundred years earlier. It's a threat. So they invade, and we have the civil war.
>Whites vs Reds:
White terror and red terror reign as the people turn on each other and inform. Paranoia is everywhere. The economy is in free fall. It very nearly falls apart. Mass liquidation of class enemies occurs. Things get very bad, very quick.
>Peacetime:
The Reds win, and peace is achieved, but at great cost. And now the new socialist government is extremely paranoid about capitalist interference. And you can't blame them, the capitalists invaded and tried to strangle them in the crib! So the police state takes over, and spies are recruited abroad. The famed intelligence apparatus is already taking place.
So now you have an increasingly paranoid elite ruling over the largely peasant population, trying to force generations of change all at once. They MUST industrialize so they can defend themselves against a future invasion. In order to do so, they sell the only good they have: grain. People have quotas, they lie, their bosses inflate this lie and pass it up the chain of command, repeat until the top brass believed they have a surplus they can export. They do not have such a surplus. This ends up starving millions of people. People are upset. Repression increases.
>Stalin:
Stalin takes power and pushes his "socialism in one country" theory. The idea is that the CCCP will become a fortress of socialism, doing it alone, and defending itself from a hostile world. This is logical, but it means Stalin must consolidate the gains made by the state and remain on the defensive. Socialist ideals take a back seat to state security. "The revolution must be defended at all costs". Even if that means postponing most democratic participation indefinitely.
>The Great Patriotic War:
The Nazis invade, and all of the Soviet Union's worst nightmares are made reality. And, yet again, the reds manage to win at great cost. The also take back the territory they lost in the treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which is the vast majority of their coalfields and industrial territory. In a strange twist of fate, WWII ends with the CCCP being the biggest winner. They are the masters of half of Europe, and Communism is ascendant.
>Paradox:
This creates a state that is very different from the socialist ideals it claims to be founded on. It is highly repressive and top down. Not at all the free society where the workers dictate the policy. But again, this makes sense. Stalin is dragging a medieval peasant country into the industrial era. But this isn't something that can continue forever. The longer the state holds complete control, the harder it will be to reform and progress when that time comes. And it will come.
>Reform & Collapse:
When the reforms finally come, the system cannot bare the load. The citizens see the Western standard of living compared to their own, and they want in on the goods. It is a very abstract argument to explain to your people:
>"No, our system is still superior! We started from 200 years behind the capitalists and we've nearly caught up! Yes, the standard of living is lower now, but that is so we can defend the revolution and advance socialism! You may not get the goods that the capitalists get, but your children will grow up in equality and solidarity. Future generations will live to see communism achieved! We MUST stick with it!"
That all falls on deaf ears when you see blue jeans and rock and roll and hollywood movies and McDonalds. The average person doesn't care about abstract future achievements. They want their marshmallow NOW - they don't want to wait 100 year and have two. And that is understandable. In an athiest society, why should someone go without so that future generations can succeed? What do they gain from such a sacrifice, if life on earth is all they have?
The contradicitons were too much. The satisfaction was too low. And above all of that - the state apparatus believed itself invincible and timeless. The idea that the revolution could just fall apart in a few short years without any civil war breaking out was unthinkable.
>Autopsy:
Once it finally fell apart, all of those sacrifices were for nothing. If anything, the Soviet Union may have doomed socialism. Or at least set it back 100 years. All of the momentum and good will evaporated in the Cold War. In Western nations today, "socialism" and especially "communism" are dirty words representing mass executions and starvation. The positive ideals seem like tankie nonsense to most people.
To diagnose the Soviet Union's failings is extremely difficult and complex. In short, they were trying to take a medieval country straight to socialism. That was never going to work (see China for the alternative, taking a medieval society into industrial capitalism and then using capitalism to transition into socialism, like Marx theorized). They tried to centrally plan a MASSIVE project on pen and paper before computers. Basically, they were too early, and Russia itself was a bad candidate for the socialist experiment. I think this is even more evident today with modern Russia. Modern Russia is, in many ways, the same autocratic repressive state they've always been. They swapped the hammer and sickle for the flag and the cross.
In closing, I believe the Soviet Union could've survived and reformed after Stalin, but they didn't. They swung too wildly from Stalinism to denouncing Stalin, to rehabilitating class enemies, etc. How can anyone believe in the state when the state is constantly admitting it murdered tens of thousands of innocent people by mistake? They needed to pick a story and stick to it. Again, see China. They don't claim Mao was perfect. They fully admit he made serious mistakes. But they haven't lost continuity of thought. The Communist Party retains control, and has made gradual changes to guide the nation to where it is now.
The Soviet Dream was beautiful. The reality was not.
Fun fact if you made it this far: Ludwig Wittgenstein tried to join the Soviet Union to be a manual laborer after he'd published his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and given away all of his money. They told him he would work as an academic, as he was not suited to industrial labor. He left.
Stephen Kotkin argues the Soviet Union collapsed because of Communist ideology itself, not the usual explanations. He says John Paul II, nationalism, dissidents, Afghanistan, the military burden and Reagan’s buildup were not decisive, and that Gorbachev’s choice to reform opened space the party could not control. Kotkin notes the economy only entered formal recession in 1990, after reforms began, and that Lenin’s federal structure gave republic-level elites a way to stay in power after the collapse. He also concedes the USSR could have muddled on with oil and gas revenue.
Did Gorbachev’s reforms cause the collapse, or did they just expose problems that were already fatal?
Agricultural failures in the 60's, 70's and early 80's were covered up with oil revenues paying for grain imports. The highest inflation adjusted oil price of the era was in 1980, it gradually dropped to half that by 1986, then it crashed by 50% again overnight as Saudi-OPEC politics changed. Oil extraction, especially in very cold weather ("Soviet engineers know it's cold when the steel gets too brittle to use in the same application"), very rural areas, has significant fixed costs, so as prices dropped, net profit (and basically government revenues) dropped to almost nothing. Over the next few years, the oil extraction system was basically stripped for every last nickel, maintenance stopped happening, drilling was abandoned, necessary machinery failed to be imported; The system was wrecked over a period of several years, whole sections of it went offline at times, and production volumes dropped by ~half.
Instead of oil revenues Russia paid for imported food with dollar-denominated debts. Limits to this system were paired with a trend of local farmers flat-out-refusing to part with their food into the Soviet distribution system at the federally stipulated rate, preferring to hoard it or sell on the black market, and later local republics effectively doing something similar. As the store shelves emptied, hoarding occurred, and amidst the positive feedback cycle the whole thing stopped functioning. The fact that large areas of Russia are thousands of kilometers from their food sources, created questions about continued feasibility of a Moscow-directed supplychain very quickly.
Food shortages seem to be the proximate spark that ignite most revolutions. "Three square meals away" and all that.
Isn’t this leaving some of then structural failures in their agricultural industry and the pricing structures which required them to use oil revenues to fund more expensive foreing sources?
If Gorbachev appeared 20 years prior, he could have succeeded. The country was dead and rotten on the inside, so transparency just showed that to everyone and accelerated the demise. If USSR reformed at its peak in the 60s, we would be living in a very different world today for better or worse
Decades of economic sabotage and collusion by European and US capitalist, imperialist powers. Socialism isn't just something interesting and different -- it's a promise of actual economic democracy and a fundamental challenge to billionaire controlled, bourgeois "democracies" they can manipulate and continue to, as those capitalist, imperialist countries have for hundreds of years, operate at the exclusive benefit of those very few extremely wealthy and privileged at the top.
Any other narrative is typically a capitalist apologist historical rewrite to justify continued extraction of the global south.
Or you know it was the fact that the Soviet Union was a fascist empire controlled by the very few and privileged at the top.
Or the fact that corruption and incompetence was rife in every level of society. Im sure it was the evil west that made every person with a bit of power abuse it.
Fascism is what capitalism does when its power is seriously threatened, and we first saw it in earnest in Italy and Germany in the 20s and 30s in the build up to WWII. It was the Soviet Union who led the charge against these violent regimes that threatened the entirety of Europe and beyond, and the Soviets who bore the brunt of their attacks.
To say the USSR was fascist betrays a deeply unserious, propagandized approach to attempting to rewrite history to fit the capitalist narratives the whole world has grown up with. The idea that it was corrupt and incompetent is also a false narrative that discounts decades of achievements in elevating literacy, people out of poverty, and industrializing a backward, peasant nation that had suffered centuries of brutal, exploitative monarchic rule. Capitalism naturally identifies with monarchy, minority rule, and exploitation -- and so obfuscates these critical details from its historical accounts.
Why were they shaking hands with the nazis in the middle of Poland after occupuing 3 other countries if they were such great adversaries to fascism? Capitalism at fault again?
ah yes the soviet union that led the charge against nazi Germany by... checks notes... signing a non aggression pack with them and dividing Poland with the nazis as well. you should really study some history and not just communist propaganda.
edit: and I forgot, helped nazi germany rebuild its tank design and production in secret.
As someone who has a first hand impressions of USSR (and still remained a socialist to the most part), this is extremely ignorant take. Yes, the West applied pressure on all Socialist countries but nobody forced them to become one of the most intolerant, brutal and unliberal regimes. It's like blaming 9/11 on US, Ukraine for Russian invasion, Israel for 07/10 or South Korea for NK atrocities.
...and " any other narrative is invalid" just points out that you can't coherently defend your position with arguments.
WWII having a little bit of an impact on the dissolution of the USSR is the understatement of the century, man. Tens of millions dead as a result. Not millions, tens of millions. Something like 15-20% of the population just... gone in the struggle against fascism. I mean, that is just hard for me to even grasp looking at it now as an American.
Frankly, it's one of the most impressive achievements of any nation across all of human history, taking that level of destruction on the chin and still being able to come out on top and continue existing as a nation-state with an economic system never tried before. It's wild, man.
I genuinely believe that if the USSR continued the same policies of socialist internationalism without losing a massive portion of their manpower and almost all of their economic output for nearly a decade going into war for survival while curbstomping the vermin that were the Nazis into the dust, that there is a very high likelihood of the Comintern overcoming Western Capital. The damage done to the longterm stability of the Soviet Union in the wake of WWII and the further instability of the Kruschev reforms really cannot be overstated.
The Soviets were the cause of 90% of all Nazi casualties. They, and the Chinese coalition, are far and away the largest reasons why fascism did not triumph in WWII, yet the Soviet Union is no longer viewed as the heroic bastion against the fascists that they once were in the West, and I think that is one of the most disgusting outcomes of the past 80 years of anti-Soviet/anti-Russian propaganda.
I’d say the Soviet Union collapsing is a two-part adventure. 1) it truly never occurred to them they were unpopular 2) Russia is an unnatural state. China has had a “state” since before Russians inventors toilet paper. China looked at what happens when Russia said a little reform is ok and said oh, no thanks.
Because Russia isn’t an unnatural state any more than China is, they both have heartlands overwhelmingly populated with Russians/Chinese for centuries, containing the majority of their populations…
… And more recent acquisitions like Siberia, Manchuria, Tibet…
ky_eeeee | 13 hours ago
I would agree that this just seems like someone deciding what the problem was, then going to look for things to back that up. And that's just simply not good science or logic. Pushing an agenda is just incompatible with the goal of finding the truth, regardless of what the agenda is.
And summing up the collapse of the USSR as "it's because the lefties couldn't be stopped!!!" just comes off as... concerning.
greyetch | an hour ago
It is such a shame that we cannot even discuss the Soviet Union seriously without all of this baggage.
Everything is either Pro Soviet and Anti Soviet, there's very little nuance.
Diligent-Luck4331 | 7 hours ago
USSR was genuinely struggling with ideology, technology, culture and everything from inside itself. It's wasn't fault of the West, but the history of USSR, Russia, and "Satellite countries" in general.
You can't deny that if USSR wasn't hostile to Europe and Europe wasn't cautious back. USSR would exist like China, get alot of wealth, Intelligence and help from the West, and it wouldn't collapse. Because alot of factories would've keep up the quality and quantity of western factories, maybe even more western factories and equipment would be bought like in 1930 and before.
Lplus | 6 hours ago
Possibly but the whole point of the ideology was to be hostile to a capitalist western Europe.
Kyrros | 12 minutes ago
The struggle was more organisation and allocation of things. Science wise they kinda got hindered by the fact that none of the Nazi scientists wanted to go there (an any that did get to go didn't under such nice terms as to the weat) but if anything USSR heavily invested into their STEM sciences, they mainly had resource issues, in a way that regions got allocated production quotas and they got taken regardless of how much was produced and how much was needed locally, i.e. you produce for union first then for yourself
LordQuasar_ | 15 hours ago
Some interesting points and compelling analysis, but the loss of the Afghanistan war cost the Soviet military thousands of casualties and massive equipment losses (helicopters especially), in addition to the damage done to the prestige and authority of the Soviet military and subsequent public disillusionment regarding the Soviet government.
ModeatelyIndependant | 13 hours ago
Gorbachev has been quoted claiming the cost of stopping and cleaning up Chernobyl disaster was also a major factor in the collapse.
E-Pluribus-Tobin | 10 hours ago
Gorbachev liked to think that the USSR would have successfully carried on had Chernobyl not happened, but this completely ignores the fact that they were already racing towards bankruptcy and had an obliterated economy that was in a tailspin. Chernobyl may have sped the process up slightly but the end was coming inevitably soon regardless.
TheKappaOverlord | 8 hours ago
Gorbachev was under the assumption that had the Chernobyl cleanup not happened, the domino chain either would have stopped, or not had fallen when, and how it did.
In some aspects, he may be correct. But thats being very generous. The Chernobyl cleanup wasn't the first domino to fall. It was probably the 7th or 9th. By that point the cleanup was just a domino along the chain. not the domino
greyetch | an hour ago
> they were already racing towards bankruptcy and had an obliterated economy that was in a tailspin.
That's not accurate. Stagnation was a mjor issue, but the whole "Reagan outspent them" thing is hagiography.
In fact, the post Soviet economies collapsed much harder than anything seen under the Soviet Union.
>GDP decline in post-Soviet nations was substantial and averaged roughly 51%. From 1990 to 2000, GDP decline numbered:
63% in Armenia 60% in Azerbaijan 35% in Belarus 35% in Estonia 78% in Georgia 41% in Kazakhstan 50% in Kyrgyzstan 51% in Latvia 44% in Lithuania 63% in Moldova 40% in Russia 50% in Tajikistan 48% in Turkmenistan 59% in Ukraine
> the end was coming inevitably soon regardless.
Nobody in the world (except Reagan) believed that, at the time. And now that the dust has settled, most serious historians do not believe it was inevitable at all. We Americans lived through the great depression and came back. Many nations have gone through economic hardship and made it through. There was no good reason to predict a total collapse.
E-Pluribus-Tobin | 24 minutes ago
You have made a good point. But I think it’s also worth mentioning the fact that the economic woes that forced Gorbachev to ask the West for financial support were also making it increasingly difficult to maintain control of the Soviet republics. He was gradually ceding control and granting more and more autonomy to various republics that were full of people who wanted nothing to do with the Soviet Union. It seems like the fracture was going to happen with or without Chernobyl. It would have required a violent totalitarian ruler with the power and willingness to exercise it to keep it together and Gorbachev had neither.
ModeatelyIndependant | 9 hours ago
Speed it up and made it unrecoverable
greyetch | an hour ago
I doubt the losses in Afghanistan was a significant factor, to be honest. They lost ~15,000 men. That's really not that much, in the grand scheme. The Americans lost ~60,000 in Vietnam.
The Soviets lost some 26,000,000 in WWII, for comparison.
The prestige hit was more significant.
Tehnomaag | 7 hours ago
In the end, it collapsed because of the economy. Perestroika, the Singing Revolution, etc were symptoms, not the cause. The underlying stress factor was USSR trying to compete with the US Star Wars program, yeeting their military spending up to double-digit percentages of their economy. The Afghanistan adventure and the Chornobyl kababoom did not help either.
Based on my limited perspective of actually living through that thing from inside. I was in Estonia, so probably my perspective is different from people living deeper behind the iron curtain.
Assadistpig123 | 4 hours ago
That’s overly simplistic. The oil price collapsing in the 1980’s (oil and gas was something like 50% of the state budget and almost all of its hard currency reserves) meant that they couldn’t afford to keep going.
Maintaining half of Europe as dependent client states whose economies were just as fucked didn’t help either.
The biggest stress factor was the whole system was wildly inefficient and produced nothing outside of natural resources that anyone wanted.
Afghanistan, nationalism, corruption, nepotism, Chernobyl, and general economic malaise all helped kill it.
China isn’t to the same extent an unnatural amalgamation of an empire whose client peoples want nothing to do with it.
Diligent-Luck4331 | 7 hours ago
I'll be honest, you right. It's was also the USSR culture, build upon the warmongering instead of integration with the rest of the world, plus trying to shove it's influence down the throat.
superdupermensch | 14 hours ago
Russian Gen Xers were not going to hide in the basement and listen to AC/DC. They wanted to skateboard on Stalin's tomb.
_SolidarityForever_ | 13 hours ago
They were so real for that
droans | 4 hours ago
Less Ozzy, more Ollies.
Diligent-Luck4331 | 7 hours ago
Skateboarding is pretty cool, honestly really need to be very skilled person to even try it, so as a person that never had tried it, but seen countless media, It's no wonder why anyone who never seen skateboarding then learning about it, would want to learn and try.
LordBrandon | 12 hours ago
China reformed economically, but not politically. The cohort that ordered the deaths at Tiananmen square are still in power. They have the largest domestic surveillance system in the world. They control all information (more or less) and crush any political dissent in china, and intimidate anyone they can overseas. As for the Soviet Union, I feel like searching for a single answer is never going to enlighten you. There are likely thousands of things that contributed to it, and about 12 single cause theories that I here repeated. One contributing factor that differs between the Soviet Union and China, is that in both countries, the citizens desire for a better life overwhelmed their fear of being killed by tanks. Gorbachov was a true believer in Communism, that people should want it, and would choose it if given the chance. When the people wanted to be let free, he hesitated to use force. The CCP did not hesitate, and smashed Beijing students to paste to retain power.
veerKg_CSS_Geologist | 2 hours ago
China “reformed” the economy gradually by joining the international trade system. They started off by creating special economic zones with low regulations and restrictions on foreign trade and then gradually expanded that. The Soviet Union tried economy wide reforms first, and crucially didn’t try and go the trade route China did. Mainly because it wasn’t available to them. The USSR was already a middle-income country so the cheap manufacturing that would lure foreign companies to invest was not available. And with the Cold War still raging the USSR would not be allowed into the international trade system. So the Cold War had to end, which Gorbachev tried to do by political reforms. Those political reforms fatally weakened the Soviet system. The west was willing to overlook China suppressing dissent. They weren’t when it came to the Soviets.
Beaivimon | 8 hours ago
What? Most folks in the USSR voted for the Union to remain...
Ar3dee3 | 3 hours ago
Not true. As someone who was alive in the USSR in those years it is wild how misinformed people are.
The March referendum did not have an option to leave or gain independence. In fact it had one universal question, roughly: Should the USSR be reformed from 1922 treaty?
That was the most conservative question they could ask and several republics refused to participate because it didn't have any other options and voting "no" could simply mean "everything should stay as is without reforms"
In addition there were a bunch of questions depending where you lived and if those questions included sovereignty or full independence from USSR - people overwhelmingly voted 'yes;, e.g. Ukrainians were asked two questions (split by regions): "Do you agree that Ukraine should be part of a Union of Soviet sovereign states on the basis on the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine?" - again no other option to leave but Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine greatly increased Ukraine's autonomy (this is the one that my family was asked) - 81.7% in favor
And some regions were asked directly: Should and independent state of Ukraine be created - 88% in favor in those regions.
And then 9 months there was another referendum asking all Ukrainians about full independence and 92% voted yes.
This was similar to most other republic. So no, people did not want the USSR to remain, they were always choosing the most radical and independence-oriented option presented to them.
Diligent-Luck4331 | 6 hours ago
And it's collapsed anyway.
Invisible_Stalkbug | 15 hours ago
This reads more like they have decided they wanted to write a hit piece on ideological communism and then began assigning things to it, rather than actually engaging with why the ideological position would produce reforms leading to the demise of the state. Further these are largely liberalisation reforms referred to, which would naturally cause any communist system to be less communist over time, on account of it becoming more liberal.
throw-away_867-5309 | 10 hours ago
I feel like many of the things stated in the article are either disingenuous or outright wrong/lies.
For example, the Soviet Union's economy didn't "collapse after reform", as stated. It was ALWAYS shit and the "reforms" they're mentioning were terribly implemented and made the economy go from a 2, if we're basing it on a scale of 1 to 10, to a 0 or -1.
The article also seems to hand wave the absolute tyranny against those who thought differently by saying they were "not numerous", as it ignores the 18 million people imprisoned in gulags, and that's not including other internment camps or those executed.
And it literally doesn't even mention the rampant corruption that was throughout basically 100% of the government.
weareonlynothing | 4 hours ago
Please explain this 1-10 scale of the economy more
ElectronGuru | 13 hours ago
I think a far more interesting question is why their transition to capitalism was so badly bungled.
But why is this being asked as though USSR existed in a vacuum and not the context of having to fight an expensive war against the entire rest of the world at the same time?
martinborgen | 10 hours ago
"Having to fight" is arguable in my opinion. They kept having a militarized economy their entire existence, probably owing to being formed from a revolution and civil war, but I would argue their failure to reduce the share of their economy dedicated to military is what in the long term made their system unworkable. That and the bureaucracy becoming an self-interest of its own.
I suppose one could argue the military wad necessary to keep them safe, but for much of the cold war the fear was, in Europe, from a standing military strong enough to invade and occupy the entire continent at any moment and that is just excessive in my opinion. NATO only ever had the resources to eventually push back after a large mobilization, never to threaten the USSR with a direct invasion with the forces they kept.
greyetch | an hour ago
I think it's pretty hard to argue against, if you look at the timeline. Capitalists from USA to Japan invaded immediately after revolution to try to destroy them. Then once they finally make it out of the civil war, they don't even get 20 years before Nazi Germany invades. Then as soon as that ends, the allies become their new enemies and the Cold War begins.
You can't blame them for being defensive.
wyldmage | 9 hours ago
At it's core, I'd simplify it down to corruption.
Corruption is everywhere. But in a monarchy, corruption just means you get shit on by Fred instead of Steve. Not like things were going to be good for the peasantry without corruption. In a capitalist nation, corruption means the rich get more powerful, and the powerful get richer. Again, it's kind of a given. Sure it sucks, but even without corruption, you'd have rich and powerful people, and lower and middle class people who have to suck it up.
But in a communist society, the theory is that everyone is equal. Corruption RAPIDLY breaks that theory. And it's incredibly visible. You have a 1240 square foot government issued house. Comrade Suckup has a 4100 square foot mini-mansion. You are eating the same food every day as your 15 neighbors, but you've seen a truck delivering fresh fish to Suckup every other Friday.
You KNOW he's getting special treatment. Nobody else is near you, but him.
Corruption unravels Communism at it's seams. It sucks everywhere, but in a society built upon this idea of economic equality, it is brutally destructive.
lo_fi_ho | 11 hours ago
It was bungled because the criminals never left office.
Illesbogar | 10 hours ago
Morw like bc that k8nd of transition allows for a lot of theft and embezzlment. Ever, eastern block countr, had a disasterously rushed transition that created a new upper class. Ofc maybe Russia's was the worst.
kors | 12 hours ago
USSR born gen X here. It fell apart because we and our parents hated it in wast numbers. Still do. Stephen Kotkin can go look for a different solution looking for a different problem. Tnx. Bye. ;)
Sousanators | 11 hours ago
This is his argument though. Once the party allowed for change, the people demanded it changed, and the old system could not be sustained.
kors | 11 hours ago
I find it rather hard to determine what came first. The permission or the demand.
Sousanators | 10 hours ago
You'd know better than me, but it seems like granting permission is a reaction more than just good graces. Could just be my point of view, since you could argue communism was meant to be for the common good.
INITMalcanis | 8 hours ago
It was jump or be pushed by that point.
hey_listen_hey_listn | 10 hours ago
Did the people in Russian sfsr hate the union too?
tdfast | 11 hours ago
Famous Chinese philosophy: we’ll do whatever works and call it communism.
They aren’t ideological. They just control. The Soviets clung to their ideology until death.
greyetch | an hour ago
That's a completely dishonest anti academic boomer take.
The Communist Party of China is attempting to use capitalism to grow their economy so that they can transition into socialism. That's their claim. And that is in line with Marxist theory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourgeois_revolution
The Soviets basically tried to skip that step, and it didn't go well. Mao tried, too - with similar results.
All of this information is freely available. You can just click around wikipedia and get a basic understanding of these theories.
SpaceyCoffee | 8 hours ago
“Works” is very debatable depending on what you value. They basically replaced a centralized bureaucratic imperial government with a centralized bureaucratic dictatorial government. In practice and function these are virtually identical.
twizzjewink | 9 hours ago
I'd argue that after Chernobyl, the higher ups understood that the writing was on the wall. Considering the sheer costs etc. so the idea was - if you dump the bad "debt" you can reorganize as a new empire without the waste.
This effectively meant that the oligarchs were able to purge the assets from the government, let the government fall and walk away. The West then capitalized the Russian people, while the oligarchs let their new wealth explode.
It's fascinating in a weird way.
greyetch | an hour ago
> the higher ups understood that the writing was on the wall
Quite the opposite. They believed they were invincible.
>the oligarchs were able to purge the assets from the government, let the government fall and walk away.
That is indeed what happened once the fall began. But that wasn't obvious during Chernobyl or anything. The US had nuclear disasters as well, but that didn't collapse the state. And there's no reason to assume it would.
nicman24 | 10 hours ago
It was nepotism that converted the party to an oligarchy
greyetch | an hour ago
I'm no expert, but I've been trying to understand the Soviet Union for a few years now, reading lots of books about it. Both positive and negative.
To put it simply and not get caught in the weeds - here is what I think happened:
>Revolution:
The socialists take power. They must hold power. The capitalists are obviously very concerned about this. Just like the Monarchists were very concerned about liberal democratic revolutions a few hundred years earlier. It's a threat. So they invade, and we have the civil war.
>Whites vs Reds:
White terror and red terror reign as the people turn on each other and inform. Paranoia is everywhere. The economy is in free fall. It very nearly falls apart. Mass liquidation of class enemies occurs. Things get very bad, very quick.
>Peacetime:
The Reds win, and peace is achieved, but at great cost. And now the new socialist government is extremely paranoid about capitalist interference. And you can't blame them, the capitalists invaded and tried to strangle them in the crib! So the police state takes over, and spies are recruited abroad. The famed intelligence apparatus is already taking place.
So now you have an increasingly paranoid elite ruling over the largely peasant population, trying to force generations of change all at once. They MUST industrialize so they can defend themselves against a future invasion. In order to do so, they sell the only good they have: grain. People have quotas, they lie, their bosses inflate this lie and pass it up the chain of command, repeat until the top brass believed they have a surplus they can export. They do not have such a surplus. This ends up starving millions of people. People are upset. Repression increases.
>Stalin:
Stalin takes power and pushes his "socialism in one country" theory. The idea is that the CCCP will become a fortress of socialism, doing it alone, and defending itself from a hostile world. This is logical, but it means Stalin must consolidate the gains made by the state and remain on the defensive. Socialist ideals take a back seat to state security. "The revolution must be defended at all costs". Even if that means postponing most democratic participation indefinitely.
>The Great Patriotic War:
The Nazis invade, and all of the Soviet Union's worst nightmares are made reality. And, yet again, the reds manage to win at great cost. The also take back the territory they lost in the treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which is the vast majority of their coalfields and industrial territory. In a strange twist of fate, WWII ends with the CCCP being the biggest winner. They are the masters of half of Europe, and Communism is ascendant.
>Paradox:
This creates a state that is very different from the socialist ideals it claims to be founded on. It is highly repressive and top down. Not at all the free society where the workers dictate the policy. But again, this makes sense. Stalin is dragging a medieval peasant country into the industrial era. But this isn't something that can continue forever. The longer the state holds complete control, the harder it will be to reform and progress when that time comes. And it will come.
>Reform & Collapse:
When the reforms finally come, the system cannot bare the load. The citizens see the Western standard of living compared to their own, and they want in on the goods. It is a very abstract argument to explain to your people:
>"No, our system is still superior! We started from 200 years behind the capitalists and we've nearly caught up! Yes, the standard of living is lower now, but that is so we can defend the revolution and advance socialism! You may not get the goods that the capitalists get, but your children will grow up in equality and solidarity. Future generations will live to see communism achieved! We MUST stick with it!"
That all falls on deaf ears when you see blue jeans and rock and roll and hollywood movies and McDonalds. The average person doesn't care about abstract future achievements. They want their marshmallow NOW - they don't want to wait 100 year and have two. And that is understandable. In an athiest society, why should someone go without so that future generations can succeed? What do they gain from such a sacrifice, if life on earth is all they have?
The contradicitons were too much. The satisfaction was too low. And above all of that - the state apparatus believed itself invincible and timeless. The idea that the revolution could just fall apart in a few short years without any civil war breaking out was unthinkable.
>Autopsy:
Once it finally fell apart, all of those sacrifices were for nothing. If anything, the Soviet Union may have doomed socialism. Or at least set it back 100 years. All of the momentum and good will evaporated in the Cold War. In Western nations today, "socialism" and especially "communism" are dirty words representing mass executions and starvation. The positive ideals seem like tankie nonsense to most people.
To diagnose the Soviet Union's failings is extremely difficult and complex. In short, they were trying to take a medieval country straight to socialism. That was never going to work (see China for the alternative, taking a medieval society into industrial capitalism and then using capitalism to transition into socialism, like Marx theorized). They tried to centrally plan a MASSIVE project on pen and paper before computers. Basically, they were too early, and Russia itself was a bad candidate for the socialist experiment. I think this is even more evident today with modern Russia. Modern Russia is, in many ways, the same autocratic repressive state they've always been. They swapped the hammer and sickle for the flag and the cross.
In closing, I believe the Soviet Union could've survived and reformed after Stalin, but they didn't. They swung too wildly from Stalinism to denouncing Stalin, to rehabilitating class enemies, etc. How can anyone believe in the state when the state is constantly admitting it murdered tens of thousands of innocent people by mistake? They needed to pick a story and stick to it. Again, see China. They don't claim Mao was perfect. They fully admit he made serious mistakes. But they haven't lost continuity of thought. The Communist Party retains control, and has made gradual changes to guide the nation to where it is now.
The Soviet Dream was beautiful. The reality was not.
Fun fact if you made it this far: Ludwig Wittgenstein tried to join the Soviet Union to be a manual laborer after he'd published his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and given away all of his money. They told him he would work as an academic, as he was not suited to industrial labor. He left.
[OP] works-in-progress | a day ago
Stephen Kotkin argues the Soviet Union collapsed because of Communist ideology itself, not the usual explanations. He says John Paul II, nationalism, dissidents, Afghanistan, the military burden and Reagan’s buildup were not decisive, and that Gorbachev’s choice to reform opened space the party could not control. Kotkin notes the economy only entered formal recession in 1990, after reforms began, and that Lenin’s federal structure gave republic-level elites a way to stay in power after the collapse. He also concedes the USSR could have muddled on with oil and gas revenue.
Did Gorbachev’s reforms cause the collapse, or did they just expose problems that were already fatal?
Vishnej | 15 hours ago
Agricultural failures in the 60's, 70's and early 80's were covered up with oil revenues paying for grain imports. The highest inflation adjusted oil price of the era was in 1980, it gradually dropped to half that by 1986, then it crashed by 50% again overnight as Saudi-OPEC politics changed. Oil extraction, especially in very cold weather ("Soviet engineers know it's cold when the steel gets too brittle to use in the same application"), very rural areas, has significant fixed costs, so as prices dropped, net profit (and basically government revenues) dropped to almost nothing. Over the next few years, the oil extraction system was basically stripped for every last nickel, maintenance stopped happening, drilling was abandoned, necessary machinery failed to be imported; The system was wrecked over a period of several years, whole sections of it went offline at times, and production volumes dropped by ~half.
Instead of oil revenues Russia paid for imported food with dollar-denominated debts. Limits to this system were paired with a trend of local farmers flat-out-refusing to part with their food into the Soviet distribution system at the federally stipulated rate, preferring to hoard it or sell on the black market, and later local republics effectively doing something similar. As the store shelves emptied, hoarding occurred, and amidst the positive feedback cycle the whole thing stopped functioning. The fact that large areas of Russia are thousands of kilometers from their food sources, created questions about continued feasibility of a Moscow-directed supplychain very quickly.
Food shortages seem to be the proximate spark that ignite most revolutions. "Three square meals away" and all that.
BeefCakeBilly | 13 hours ago
Isn’t this leaving some of then structural failures in their agricultural industry and the pricing structures which required them to use oil revenues to fund more expensive foreing sources?
ghost_desu | 12 hours ago
If Gorbachev appeared 20 years prior, he could have succeeded. The country was dead and rotten on the inside, so transparency just showed that to everyone and accelerated the demise. If USSR reformed at its peak in the 60s, we would be living in a very different world today for better or worse
Memory_Less | 15 hours ago
According to my Russian friend the corruption and wealth concentration became privatized in the hands of the oligarchs.
n0_punctuation | 15 hours ago
That mostly happened after the dissolution during the shock therapy period from my understanding.
stablefish | 10 hours ago
Decades of economic sabotage and collusion by European and US capitalist, imperialist powers. Socialism isn't just something interesting and different -- it's a promise of actual economic democracy and a fundamental challenge to billionaire controlled, bourgeois "democracies" they can manipulate and continue to, as those capitalist, imperialist countries have for hundreds of years, operate at the exclusive benefit of those very few extremely wealthy and privileged at the top.
Any other narrative is typically a capitalist apologist historical rewrite to justify continued extraction of the global south.
HugeHans | 9 hours ago
Or you know it was the fact that the Soviet Union was a fascist empire controlled by the very few and privileged at the top.
Or the fact that corruption and incompetence was rife in every level of society. Im sure it was the evil west that made every person with a bit of power abuse it.
greyetch | an hour ago
>the Soviet Union was a fascist empire
Well that's just silly. It was very clearly not fascist. Totalitarian, yes. Repressive, sure. But not fascist.
stablefish | 9 hours ago
Fascism is what capitalism does when its power is seriously threatened, and we first saw it in earnest in Italy and Germany in the 20s and 30s in the build up to WWII. It was the Soviet Union who led the charge against these violent regimes that threatened the entirety of Europe and beyond, and the Soviets who bore the brunt of their attacks.
To say the USSR was fascist betrays a deeply unserious, propagandized approach to attempting to rewrite history to fit the capitalist narratives the whole world has grown up with. The idea that it was corrupt and incompetent is also a false narrative that discounts decades of achievements in elevating literacy, people out of poverty, and industrializing a backward, peasant nation that had suffered centuries of brutal, exploitative monarchic rule. Capitalism naturally identifies with monarchy, minority rule, and exploitation -- and so obfuscates these critical details from its historical accounts.
HugeHans | 3 hours ago
Why were they shaking hands with the nazis in the middle of Poland after occupuing 3 other countries if they were such great adversaries to fascism? Capitalism at fault again?
lurch119 | 3 hours ago
ah yes the soviet union that led the charge against nazi Germany by... checks notes... signing a non aggression pack with them and dividing Poland with the nazis as well. you should really study some history and not just communist propaganda. edit: and I forgot, helped nazi germany rebuild its tank design and production in secret.
DorkHarshly | 9 hours ago
As someone who has a first hand impressions of USSR (and still remained a socialist to the most part), this is extremely ignorant take. Yes, the West applied pressure on all Socialist countries but nobody forced them to become one of the most intolerant, brutal and unliberal regimes. It's like blaming 9/11 on US, Ukraine for Russian invasion, Israel for 07/10 or South Korea for NK atrocities.
...and " any other narrative is invalid" just points out that you can't coherently defend your position with arguments.
RubCocksWithThePope | an hour ago
Turns out if you allow a market economy to exist that makes your country a lot more viable.
Reaganson | 14 hours ago
It was a combination of Reagan, Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II.
longjumpingtote | 14 hours ago
> It was a combination of Reagan, Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II.
Everything the Soviet Union did to itself before, but especially after, WWII had a little bit of an impact too.
gigalongdong | 12 hours ago
WWII having a little bit of an impact on the dissolution of the USSR is the understatement of the century, man. Tens of millions dead as a result. Not millions, tens of millions. Something like 15-20% of the population just... gone in the struggle against fascism. I mean, that is just hard for me to even grasp looking at it now as an American.
Frankly, it's one of the most impressive achievements of any nation across all of human history, taking that level of destruction on the chin and still being able to come out on top and continue existing as a nation-state with an economic system never tried before. It's wild, man.
I genuinely believe that if the USSR continued the same policies of socialist internationalism without losing a massive portion of their manpower and almost all of their economic output for nearly a decade going into war for survival while curbstomping the vermin that were the Nazis into the dust, that there is a very high likelihood of the Comintern overcoming Western Capital. The damage done to the longterm stability of the Soviet Union in the wake of WWII and the further instability of the Kruschev reforms really cannot be overstated.
The Soviets were the cause of 90% of all Nazi casualties. They, and the Chinese coalition, are far and away the largest reasons why fascism did not triumph in WWII, yet the Soviet Union is no longer viewed as the heroic bastion against the fascists that they once were in the West, and I think that is one of the most disgusting outcomes of the past 80 years of anti-Soviet/anti-Russian propaganda.
HugeHans | 9 hours ago
Could you define what fascism is?
Vishnej | 14 hours ago
This is an incredibly Western centric narrative about a civilizational battle of Great Men.
Pretty sure a bunch of people whose names you've never heard of, made decisions that played a bigger part than those three.
Reaganson | 2 hours ago
Those three were the catalyst that began Russia’s downfall. It’s all documented.
cleon80 | 14 hours ago
That's like saying the Americans won WW2 in Europe. The Soviets had a big hand in defeating Hitler, as well as ushering their own collapse.
SpaceMan_Barca | 13 hours ago
I’d say the Soviet Union collapsing is a two-part adventure. 1) it truly never occurred to them they were unpopular 2) Russia is an unnatural state. China has had a “state” since before Russians inventors toilet paper. China looked at what happens when Russia said a little reform is ok and said oh, no thanks.
eranam | 10 hours ago
Do you mean the USSR is an unnatural state?
Because Russia isn’t an unnatural state any more than China is, they both have heartlands overwhelmingly populated with Russians/Chinese for centuries, containing the majority of their populations…
… And more recent acquisitions like Siberia, Manchuria, Tibet…
SpaceMan_Barca | 5 hours ago
For sure without a strong central state both would break up. Russia has been in perpetual turmoil with its central government since the 1860s though.
Flat_News_2000 | 28 minutes ago
All states are unnatural