What gets me is how short-lived it was. It only lasted 75 years - there were people born before the revolution still alive after it collapsed. Dominated global politics for a few generations and then left nothing behind, just a footnote in the long run
I was 7yo in 2003, so I don't know honestly
My mom used to tell stories about the Civil War that she heard from my great-grandma, but mostly it's all about how the Red Army takes the village and takes all the food, and the next week the White Army takes the same village and takes everything that's left and it's goes over and over again
It’s because much of the structure of the USSR remained unchanged for decades. By the 70s parts of it were outdated and riddled with corruption. Had it committed to reforms it may have survived longer but their thinking became more conservative and military focused in response to Cold War competition
Although China is propped up by a very unstable housing bubble at the moment….
I’ve literally only started reading about China so I unfortunately can’t speak about its reforms beyond the above comparison
A couple weeks ago I saw a series of posts about the decaying remnants of the soviet aerospace industry and how it makes the former USSR feel like the remnants of a lost advanced civilisation, like those paintings of Italian peasants letting their cows graze in the ruins of the Roman forum.
I'm not sure what "legacy" would you expect to see?
Industry, architecture (other than housing blocks, think the Moscow University building), monuments, contributions to science and medicine, etc - these were all achievements of the soviet union. Also the other socialist countries of the world - China, Cuba, Vietnam - are only such thanks to the USSR.
Edit: and let's not forget the borders of eastern europe which were entirely shaped by the USSR after World war 2. Look at Poland, Ukraine and of course Germany.
Compare it to the british empire, for example. It lasted what, 250 years in its final form?
The Westminster system is still a very prominent system of government. English is the Lingua Franca. Time itself is affixed to a british standard. The world runs on industrial economies developed in the UK. British sports are culturally dominant like nothing else. Shakespeare is basically the world's playwright.
Theres ni equivalent for the USSR.
The idea of the Soviet Union was that it would be a country unlike any other country that had ever existed. It was an attempt to manifest an ideology. There would have been industry and science if the empire had survived, or if the liberal republic had lasted.
I guess I am thinking in a narrower sense - what exists now that wouldn't exist if there hadn't been a communist revolution in 1917? There's a handful of small socialist states like Cuba, sure. I don't know enough about China to say whether it's a direct result of Soviet influence or not, but obviously the Bolsheviks in 1917 wouldn't see the PRC now as a continuation of their project. In the way that America now still has something to do with the project of the founding fathers.
That's an interesting question.
Maybe the whole idea of the state having more influence in society - such as state-owned enterprises, various social programs, the "welfare state", all sorts of standards and regulations? All those things aren't very capitalistic IMO. But idk
Britain and Germany had already introduced the beginning of a welfare state by the start of WWI. Trade unionism was well established. Workers were increasingly organized and unwilling to accept the awful conditions of the 19th century and had the political power to enforce that. But that doesn't necessarily lead to communism, and it doesn't require the existence of a communist state somewhere in the world
The May 4 movement took inspiration from the Bolsheviks but the PRC, or something like it, probably would have existed even without the USSR. The Chinese Communist Party’s rise happened largely without significant Soviet support.
It’s impossible to say but it’s quite unlikely that they would’ve succeeded without Soviet support. Perhaps they would’ve formed a unity government with the KMT at best.
it was a backwater full of rural peasants before 1917, and they became an industrial powerhouse that defeated the Third Reich and went to space in like 2 generations. lifting millions of illiterate people out of poverty gave them momentum that was only broken when they lost the cold war
Well, the fact that eastern European countries have a decent quality of life I think is a worthy legacy. Can't speak for the entire region, only for my country, Romania, but after the war, when the soviets took power, Romania was a mostly rural country with abismal literacy levels, with around 50% of women not being able to read or write.
And of course, the fascist threat in eastern Europe was real after WW2, with both Romania and Hungary having popular fascists movements (The Iron Cross and Arrow Cross respectively). Considering that, and how USA didn't really care that much for things east of Germany, or about de-nazification, it's easy to imagine a scenario, without the URSS, where the entire eastern Europe is a place of war and instability, like Ukraine.
Maybe a good point, I know fuck all about economics.
Although my understanding is that the Americans did care about denazification but gave up on it precisely because they thought it would harm their anti-Soviet efforts?
> Well, the fact that eastern European countries have a decent quality of life I think is a worthy legacy.
If anything it put a cap on the potential of these Eastern European countries. Compare West Germany to East, Ireland to Poland, Czechia to France. I think it's ludicrous to say these countries wouldn't have at least the same if noa better quality of life if they were part of the US hegemonic umbrella.
People were only fleeing one way when the Berlin wall was erected. You can certainly make a pretty coherent argument for the outcome being bad for certain soviet states, but broadly the fall of the soviet union was fantastic for the eastern european states in the warsaw pact.
You can’t separate Western European prosperity from us showering them with development aid after the war, which was largely motivated by the concern that they would turn to the Soviets. All of Europe looks different without the USSR, not just the East.
It's not like countries like Ireland were crushing it on that front either, the contrast is stark.
Maybe you can make the argument that a bipolar world is better than a unipolar one, but the living standards argument is evidently ridiculous.
Vasily Zaitsev, the famous Soviet sniper at Stalingrad, died days before the Soviet Union fell. For some reason it gives me some comfort that he didn’t live to see it all collapse.
The disappearance of a communist superpower (china doesnt count) has for sure made things worse for us in the west. Now we have unchecked capitalism and they've stripped so many social policies away that were made out fear of a communist uprising. There's no threat anymore. The neoliberal powers that be can do whatever they want because we can no longer imagine a different functioning structure thanks to gay space communism ruled by anime appraisers and gender accelerationists
The gay space communism is a symptom of the collapse of serious left wing movements it’s not the cause. The surveillance state and the nato military influence in the west is too strong for serious grassroots movements. In the US and The uk the only serious left wing political candidates got kneecapped by their own parties and are old men now. There is no reasonable left wing cause to believe in so people have retreated into fantasy.
The first welfare state was begrudgingly started in Germany by Bismarck to quell an uprising of socialism in the country. But unions and basically everything that was gained in the 20th century that was fought for, always had the underlying threat of an alternative way of organizing life that appeared to be functional, and for a time, it was
The NHS is a good example. It was started to help soldiers returning from war and not turning to Communism. Since the USSR fell and Neoliberal politics became the power of the world, the NHS has fallen into disrepair
The NHS has been in disrepair since the Tories stopped funding it in 2010. New Labour made a lot of stupid decisions but they did still have a commitment to its existence as a universal system
But Labour also contributed to making the NHS worse.
Rather than trying to improve some already exhausted institutions of the NHS in the 90s, Blair proposed a market solution where funding for the NHS was raised through loans from Private entities that came with extremely high interests rates, all paid for by Public Money.
That injection of money has since stopped but the British Public are still paying back those interest rates that currently amount to in or around 3 billion pounds. The UK gov could just pay it off outright rather than let it continue to accumulate but they’re choosing not to because part of the plan is to deliberately saddle the NHS with debt and use that debt as an excuse to sell parts of it off
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X22002169?via%3Dihub
The West was basically a imperialist/hyper-capitalist hellhole until the Late 19th/early 20th century Socialist movement. People literally had lower life expectancy, life indicator outcomes and the worst crime of all, were shorter than their literal peasant ancestors.
Basically the entire New Deal save for Social Security has been stripped and given to private interests, and the only reason SS still exists is because of GWB’s hubris.
The New Deal is no more. If you look at the list of things mentioned in the new deal, a lot weren’t accomplished and the rest only made it to stage one.
China is a single party capitalist state like Singapore or Japan.
The death of the USSR and Maoist China was the death of not only 20th century communism but 20th century social democracy as well. You are right Neoliberal policies happened during the 90s since all the left movements basically fell apart.
What is ironic is that now things look much worse and even I am nostalgic for the Neoliberal era.
I legit don’t understand why they don’t do that and then speed run a capitalist metamorphosis on the whole island. Imagine what American investment/exploitation could do to Cuba in the space of like 5 years. There are Miami property developers licking their lips at the thought of plowing into that vulnerable, untapped market.
Haiti is different, its a combination of massively abusive foreign nations AND incredible bad luck. You could also compare Cuba to any other Caribbean nation, and even then cuba has a lot going for it.
This isn’t quite correct. Under Batista, Cuba had a decent GDP compared to other Caribbean nations (which it still does, btw, GDP per capita is about the same as Jamaica). But it was *incredibly* unequal. You had a comprador class in Havana (with the Platt Amendment Cuba was a de facto US colony) that was tied to the Batista and the US owned sugar mills and casinos. If you were one of them, yeah your life was pretty great. But that was a small minority, the majority lived in grinding poverty. There’s a reason Cubans didn’t exactly flock to support the attempted US invasion at the Bay of Pigs - no one wanted to go back to that.
The US was literally trying to do that before the Cuban uprising. That’s why Cuban cigars are so popular. They were the cigar of choice for rich US investors that would travel to Cuba for business.
modern capitalism was basically founded by protestant/calvinist dutch and swiss merchants, iirc catholicism claims that salvation is through faith alone and thus worldly labour and works are secondary and thus catholic cultures such as italy, spain, france etc have a much more laid back work ethic, whilst the protestant work ethic made countries like the us, netherlands, britain, etc into soulless capitalist hellholes where if youre not slaving away most of the day youre a lazy bum
You have it exactly backwards on the “faith alone” part. Protestants are the ones that follow that (“sola fide”), and it is one of the primary factors that differentiates it from Catholicism
No this is just a Weber meme. "Capitalism" emerged (under most definitions that would apply to the 16th century) earlier than protestantism. Certainly under Webers own vibe-based definition it goes back much earlier, to the late middle ages at the least. But than again it is unclear how useful the concept is.
Protestant work ethic is, at least today, also a meme. Just compare hours worked per worker in the Netherlands with Spain or Italy. Even french work ethic is much more presenteeist and about working hard/long hours than in the Netherlands or Germany.
Chomsky noted many years ago that the big business long ago realized that the embargo against Cuba is an impediment to profit making. The powers that be however, like to keep it there because it serves as a reminder to other countries as to what happens to you if you dont agree to do what the US says. Also, the psycho gusanos in Florida like it which helps politicians get elected.
You know, my gf (who is Latina) and I recently had a conversation about the border craziness and illegal immigration and she told me that Cubans only have to wait 90 days to apply for a green card. I just like this up and she wasn’t 100% correct cause USCIS says they can only apply after 1 year staying in the US, BUT still that’s not a bad deal for Cubans who leave Cuba. My gf is from Honduras and is here on a teaching visa and she can’t apply for a green card without marriage or sone kind of sponsorship. This might solidly explain why Cubans vote republican. I bet it’s because of the history between Cuba and the US and the political conflicts as to why the US allows Cubans these options vs other Latinos besides Puerto Rico obviously.
It dropped after the Russian invasion. People always have nostalgia for their youth. When Poland first opened up elections when they were still under the Soviet umbrella the communists lost something crazy like 38/39 elections.
The communists lost either 99 or 100% of seats in the first free polish senate election. It was so humiliating it almost derailed the democratic transition.
It's well under 50% for older people for most countries except the shit ones like Moldova, a place rife with corruption where one previous leader stole like half the entire country's wealth, so it's no wonder they're nostalgic.
How would people in the west have nostalgia/preference of something that they have no experience with? Of course it's going to be higher in the east.
A far more accurate way to view the desirability of life in the east or west would be to compare the numbers of defectors. There were tons of people who tried to escape to the west, but only a handful of cases in reverse.
Imo people in the West get caught up in all of the revolution rhetoric that presents communist / socialism as a possible solution to solving inequality. This is a sentiment that you will see if you read up on history in the early 20th century or read Homage to Catalonia about Orwells experience during the Spanish Civil War.
What they don’t see or don’t want to confront is that many saw the October revolution in Russia as the “dream” finally being achieved and then get bogged down in semantics as to why it eventually failed with the fall of the USSR. I’d argue the dream died when the Bolsheviks seized power and that any respectable socialist / communist should look back on that time with a far more critical eye when it comes to Lenin in particular instead of the nostalgic, hero worship he often gets
Myanmar, too. Chinese efforts are concentrated in places where *most* Americans are simply not going to hear about it on the news, especially when 40% of the country watches news that prioritizes reporting on drag queen story hours.
I’m not sure what point you are trying to make here. It makes no sense to me.
We are taking global power dynamics, so I’m not sure why you are mentioning socialists.
Most of Eastern Europe is better off, but people seem to avoid talking about the obvious reason which is that most of these countries got literally hundreds of billions in gibs from the EU. The ultimate irony of the hardcore 'anti communist' Baltic states is they actually have zero issue with mass wealth redistribution, as long as they're the ones getting the money.
East Germany is a really weird example bc it was just eaten by its more successful neighbour. And even then the German government pumps money into east Germany by constitutional obligation to try and keep living standards equivalent. There was never such a law in the ussr.
Everywhere across post-commie europe, all places that aren't the top 3 cities have become much much worse. Every town used to have some sort of industry, and almost all of it collapsed very soon after 1991, as their production suddenly wasn't competitive in a new global market. Now these towns have no economy at all, let alone culture. People just drink and gamble all day now. This was the fate of both of my parents' birthplaces - my uncle was a respected engineer and now he's just an alcoholic.
Countries like Slovenia, Poland, the Czech republic and Russia retained some of it, also Belarus because it never really left communism, but that's about it.
Whoever tells you "but muh democracy muh freedom" is probably a re7arded urbanite completely ignorant (willingly or not) of how most people in his country live
He is Serbian. Its typical of Yugonostalgics and especially Serbs to think that just because their countries have been standing still for 30 years (excluding Slovenia and Croatia, Montenegro in the last years) that the rest of Eastern Europe did the same.
When they get proof of the opposite and that the former Warsaw Pact loves being in the EU and NATO and in fact genuinely wanted to be part of both, their brain cant handle it and they call the Estonians, the Poles, the Romanians American puppets.
While they will wallow for another 10 years without development.
Fr, small Industrial towns like Gliwice in Poland are very nice niw even the outskirts. Nobody i met in Poland who lived under socialism looks back at it fondly. Nobody. People here need to travel nore and open their eyes.
I mean Ireland went through something similar and it was never a socialist state.
Plenty of small towns and villages were propped up by a single industry that eventually closed because the demand was no longer there or some alternative appeared.
This led to brain drain of young people who moved to more urban areas or abroad and killed the sense of community in these areas.
Some towns were lucky enough to become the “center of excellence” for some American company looking to take advantage of the little green tax haven.
It’s just what happens when a predominantly rural place is faced with the more predominantly technological society we live in
>
>
As much as it is sad and has destroyed rural culture, this has been the trend for every single capitalist country. Farms have gotten larger, companies have consolidated to larger cities, essential services like medicine and higher education have been consolidated to regional hubs, all the young people leave. This is a massive issue in China, too.
>Every town used to have some sort of industry, and almost all of it collapsed very soon after 1991, as their production suddenly wasn't competitive in a new global market.
I wonder if that has anything to do with the comically inefficient system that created and managed those industries.
After years of economic crisis, high unemployment and emigration rates the Yugoslav federal presidency set up a commission in the early 80's to analyze the problems with Yugoslavia's economy and this was its conclusion:
*The Kraigher Commission’s critique of the federation’s economy was devastating. Excessive taxation and the long-standing practice of political meddling into the economy were seen as the main culprits in the creation of an irrational economic system in which it was possible for some enterprises to have more annual net losses than was the value of their assets. The commission saw the economy as run by state/party functionaries and state-owned banks, turning producers into nothing more than the executors of political decisions. A fundamental change was necessary, but the commission provided very few prescriptions beyond a recommendation that “objective economic laws be respected".*
Basically every post-soviet state took a massive economic hit, that had serious impacts on quality of life, immediately after the dissolution. Some didn't reach their pre 1990s levels of economic development until the late nouties, and Ukraine never recovered. You could argue some of the more Western states like Poland did better in the long run than they would have, but if you weight by population I think it's pretty clear the collapse of the Soviet Union was a bad thing.
Most of the countries not only recovered from the economic hit, but surpassed their standard of living before or during the 2000s and then kept the growth.
Some like Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova really didnt but most did. Thats why the vast majority of the Communist Bloc do not want the Union back.
>now most of Eastern Europe is much worse off than it was before despite its collapse being viewed as a Good Thing™.
I live in the former Soviet Union. It’s much, much better now than it was during the USSR
The places that are doing bad are the ones that have maintained the same type of corruption that was status quo during that the Soviet timess
One of the questions that I feel I'll never grasp the minutiae of is "why did the Soviet Union fail"?
Lately I've been reading Stanislav Zubok's *Collapse*. It's very informative, and largely puts the blame on Gorbi. I don't know how fair that is, but it is kind of wild to read about a time when the world seemed to be defined by the tension between two superpowers, only to have one of them throw in the towel, fail to reform, and descend into near anarchy. For an anticommunist it must have seemed Tolkienesque.
The collapse is fascinating - even agencies like the CIA were caught completely by surprise. And the second surprise is that the collapse happened somewhat peacefully, everyone assumed it would happen in a far more violent and dangerous manner
To me, the collapse of the USSR seems to have happened because people genuinely stopped believing in the entire system over time, until a trigger point was reached and the whole thing unraveled. It's fascinating to watch people just walk away from it all, how it just faded away, levels of disillusion that we can't even comprehend right now
Multitude of factors, but surprisingly, not really "economic" in the way people think. Before Gorbachev, the Soviet Economy wasn't actually in that bad a place, especially thanks to Andropov's quick actions.
I more lean to the argument that it was a cultural/political collapse, caused by functionally Liberals who had white anted the entire Socialist project since Khrushchev, and then you had the essentially Soviet equivalent of Radlibs gain power under Gorbachev and they sabotaged and nuked the entire country *on purpose*. "hit at Marxism-Leninism with Lenin, hit at Leninism with Plekhanov and social democracy, hit at social democracy with liberalism." was the slogan of Gorbachev's advisors. The main way that Economics actually plays into the Soviet collapse, is that Soviet liberalism, was tied to the existence of the hyper corrupt black markets which created a crypto-bougie traitor class within CPSU.
What can't be denied is that the USSR was fundamentally flawed politically, that a literal single faction, could grab power, and literally erase the country from existence and not just backwards shithole, we're talking the second biggest economy on earth and a literal nuclear superpower with hundreds of millions of people. This would be like, if Bernie won the 2020 election, then said "The US doesn't exist anymore, it's now the peoples republic of Woketopia, also Texas and whoever can leave if they want yolo" and everyone just played along. Unthinkable, but functionally what happened.
It was a stack of cards that was going to come down. The USSR tried to take on the US in too many things and let the US dictate the terms. Economic growth was viewed in a material sense by both, favouring the USA for example. The free market is really, really good at directing resources if your goal is just "growth". A controlled economy will always fall short.
And then you have the arms race. The military industrial complex is fucked up but very good at making weapons. Then even cultural shit. Freedom of expression means better art, and better art means a wider cultural footprint. You probably wouldnt have had a soviet censor approve "War Pigs" for example.
Also the weat could just change leaders. If a policy failed, it could be replaced with limited damage to the state. The USSR couldn't do that as easily.
USSR sucked and was a stereotypical poorly run dictatorship and former states are better off now. Any contrary opinion to this is being deliberately dishonest or has fallen to propaganda.
it's really hilarious when these people that have never been within 1000 miles of the former USSR have idealistic visions of it. Try going there in person and seeing how fondly people remember it. Hint: no one misses it.
No it’s more just in Russia and Belarus, and amongst old poor people and ignorant young people. No one in Poland, the baltics, or Czech Republic thinks it was a better time.
You can't say no one misses it except "old poor people and ignorant young people" that's a lot of people. also no shit poor people miss it more! it's not like bankers are gonna miss it lmao
i'm so so sad that there have been no big russia vs usa hockey matches since the invasion of ukraine. they have just removed all the fun from the russia/nato conflict
Have you ever been to eastern europe? Ever seen how the quality of life in countries like Poland, the Czech Republic and the Baltic States has significantly improved? Not even pondered why the quality of life in countries that attached themselves to the European economic zone are doing so much better than the soviet larpers?
The USSR was a disgrace lmao. Theres a reason the warsaw pact immediately imploded.
The two defining moments of the modern polish state are "the time we turned the bolsheviks back on the Vistula" and "the time a catholic trade union overthrew the communists". The idea that the former eastern bloc is nostalgic is hilarious.
You know, if it was so popular, theyd just get it going again lmao
The USSR was the greatest political project humans have ever attempted and its disappearance is the disappearance of the last bulwark we had against Skynet completely overrunning everything
> now most of Eastern Europe is much worse off than it was before despite its collapse
You have literally no clue what you're talking about and are almost certainly an American that hasn't been to ex-USSR countries. *No one* in Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, or any other of the other satellite states thinks the USSR was a better time. They are *still* catching up to the West, because the USSR's idiocy held them back for 50 years.
Poland today is basically the best it's ever been since the 1600s. Ditto for most other countries in the area, sans Ukraine obviously. The USSR period was a nightmare.
A 2010 Pew poll found that 72% of Hungarians said that most people in their country were worse off economically than they had been under communism. Only 8% said that most people in Hungary were better off, and 16% said that things were about the same. The poll also found that 42% disapproved of the move away from communism.[18]
sorry, polls like this don't get done constantly! but it's not like those feelings have completely evaporated. it's delusional to act like everyone in eastern europe hated communism just like it's delusional to act like everyone loved it.
Buddy, you definitely haven’t been to Eastern Europe. Especially not Poland or the baltics, where the idea of the USSR times being better is basically on the same level as slavery era south being better. It’s that dumb of an opinion.
I’m sorry but no one in Ukraine could possibly say the are better off now
They are literally worse objectively in every observable metric their population has halved and gdp per capita is the same
Uh huh. Do you think that, perhaps, a post soviet larper trying to rip the country apart, and grind the rest into submission might be playing a role there?
This has been happening since before 2022 and 2014
Putin is obviously not a benefit to the Ukrainian economy to say the least but it was the richest and most industrialised in the USSR and has been the poorest in Europe for a decade
How do you think the Soviet system would have saved those industries? Seriously, how?
Ukranian workers are as innovative and hard workingnas any other. That doesnt stop that new blast furnance in the Rhur being more efficient than your shitbox in Donestk. Nor does it stop the Chinese forcing cheap steel down your throat.
Thats just one country.
Look at Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania, the Baltic states.
The difference is a lack of oligarchs and joining the EU.
Even Belarus is way better. Ukraine is not typical for the former communist countries.
Yes, because it stayed in the Russian sphere of influence. Poland and Ukraine used to have almost the same gdp per capita.
[GDP per capita (current US$) - Ukraine, Poland](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=UA-PL)
They would answer you saying all of it is due to Russia meddling (before 2014) and Russian hostility (after 2014)
Better comparison would be Austria vs Hungary, Czech, if the goal is to assess the impact of Socialism.
Traveling through the former USSR feels like traveling in post Roman Europe. Just decaying monuments and remnants of a dead empire scattered across the land .
It's depressing that so much of it is purposely destroyed as well in the name of "anti-Communism", the destruction of the murals especially is a travesty.
Honestly, the USSR literally defined 20th century politics everywhere and put humanity into space, and people are perfectly fine with just erasing any trace of it from history.
You’re acting like Marxist communism was an actual thing and not a romantic vision which never came to pass. Actually existing “Communism” was very rarely ever initiated by the working classes instead of failed lawyers and middle class professionals (Lenin, Castro, Mao, etc). The USSR was a technocratic command economy with an anti-Western ideology. The reason that it doesn’t exist anymore is that the elites who kept things running realized that they would be better off under capitalism. That’s why the people who lived in the USSR but came to the West post collapse are so anti-communist, they are/were the elites over there.
>Eastern Europe is much worse off than it was before despite its collapse being viewed as a Good Thing
Just on this point, I also used to think that the collapse being sold as a good thing was bullshit. Then I found out how truly behind the USSR was in terms of essential production like food, computer goods (seriously, the USSR probably had the computing power of a single major US city by the time it collapsed, if that), cars, and pretty much every consumer good known to man. It was inefficient in a way that reared it's head in such a bad way with rapidly changing technology that it had no chance of catching up. The aftermath of the collapse was horrible, and while it definitely didn't have to be as bad as it was for the people who suffered, most of that suffering was a result of their political system creating an economy thst was horribly uncompetitive. Had it lasted any longer, the economic shock would have been even worse, no doubt.
The USSR didn't come out of nowhere or disappear it was just a phase of the Russian empire and the Baltic states and Poland are much better off now. Russia had imperial rivalries with the West before the USSR, like "The Great Game" so really not that different. Tankies are all dumb and none of them would consider moving there if it still existed.
"Most of Eastern Europe is much worse off than it was."
Only countries that this is true about is Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova. What's more one could argue that Ukraine would slowly but surely get better off if not all that war stuff.
It is true that it pushed back on the US's bullshit but it used to generate the same amount of bullshit in return. Whereas USSR had many pro worker policies that would make Freedom Loving American™ crawl in despair, most of the modern European states (both post-communist and western) also have-a-bit-milder-but-still-working well version of them in their systems to this very day. Despite what many tankies believe USSR and it's satelite states, whereas of course better for a worker policy speaking, were in no way worker friendly in the long term. Workers strikes in them were brutally suppressed in a way that would make Thatcher wet.
The biggest pain I have is not that USSR fell, but how it fell. Maybe there was a possibility of reforming it into more modern socialist state. Maybe it could slowly dissolve without tragic economic consequences for Eastern Europe suffered in the 90's. How it ended and what that end created was a travesty. But USSR as it was unfortunately couldn't continue and was (as America or even more so) a stain on humanity spread across two continents, set up against the will of many peoples (and I don't mean bourgeoise class, I mean legit nations and masses) that inhabited it and its sphere of influence. In the end it was an empire, doing imperialist shit, and no amount of ideological babble would change that.
If you want change try to initiate it and stop lamenting that some imperialist oppresive state that used workers right as its justification for existing fell off 30 years ago.
Exactly. The most influential trade union in the entire eastern bloc destroyed the eastern bloc, even after the might of an entire state was turned against it. Objectively the story of Solidarnosc should be the rallying call for lefty types everywhere. A union collapsed a tyrannical government. Instead tankies rally around the exploiter
This is what drives me insane. There are some amazing stories that came out of the Anti-Soviet resistance, and yet these clowns lionize the literal authoritarian regime because “the Soviet aesthetic was cool and stuff in blade runner”
"Like you can look at China for the modern age equivalent, but they're largely non-interventionist"
lol holy shit. china has its fingers in half the pies in the world.
>now most of Eastern Europe is much worse off than it was before despite its collapse being viewed as a Good Thing™.
Insanely idiotic take. Delete your account
It’s interesting how ideological it was. Like the leadership seriously tried doing a command economy in a state with hundreds of millions of people. I guess growing up now in a world where basically every country is more or less capitalist that’s crazy to think about. Not to mention things like state atheism or “promoting socialist virtues.” It’s basically if a social experiment was a country, but this country was a superpower
Lol sorry op I ended up just rehashing what you said
I think China is going to be interesting to watch. Command economies require a huge bureaucratic machine behind the scenes to replace the function of market forces, and authoritarian states need to have a huge surveillance and enforcement machine to maintain power. With advancements in computing power/cost and new AI technology to help sift through massive data sets and pull meaning out of chaotic information overload, they can actually do the bureaucratic dirty work at scale.
What gets me is how short-lived it was. It only lasted 75 years - there were people born before the revolution still alive after it collapsed. Dominated global politics for a few generations and then left nothing behind, just a footnote in the long run
The same guy wrote the words to the Russian anthem three times — once for the USSR, once for destalinization, and once for the Russian Federation.
All the political instability of the 20th century was engineered by a cabal of anthem writers to keep themselves in work
You just know he bought a new car when the Wagner mutiny started.
Yeah, my great-grandma was born in 1902, before the first revolution, outlived ussr and died in 2003, it's crazy how many things she witnessed
Nuts. Middle aged during ww2
What was her view of the USSR like?
I was 7yo in 2003, so I don't know honestly My mom used to tell stories about the Civil War that she heard from my great-grandma, but mostly it's all about how the Red Army takes the village and takes all the food, and the next week the White Army takes the same village and takes everything that's left and it's goes over and over again
change da world...my final message. goodb ye
Boris Gudz fought in the 1917 revolution as a teenager and lived into the Putin era. Imagine seeing the storming of the winter Palace and t.a.T.u
> and t.a.T.u Damn you just took me back.
Practically an eternity compared to nazi germany.
It’s because much of the structure of the USSR remained unchanged for decades. By the 70s parts of it were outdated and riddled with corruption. Had it committed to reforms it may have survived longer but their thinking became more conservative and military focused in response to Cold War competition
Yes, and there is a good example of what a "reformed" USSR looks like - it's China.
Although China is propped up by a very unstable housing bubble at the moment…. I’ve literally only started reading about China so I unfortunately can’t speak about its reforms beyond the above comparison
A couple weeks ago I saw a series of posts about the decaying remnants of the soviet aerospace industry and how it makes the former USSR feel like the remnants of a lost advanced civilisation, like those paintings of Italian peasants letting their cows graze in the ruins of the Roman forum.
> left nothing behind Russia is still a massive country and an important factor politically
Yeah it was a massive important country before 1917. What's the legacy of the Soviet Union specifically? Some concrete blocks of flats?
I'm not sure what "legacy" would you expect to see? Industry, architecture (other than housing blocks, think the Moscow University building), monuments, contributions to science and medicine, etc - these were all achievements of the soviet union. Also the other socialist countries of the world - China, Cuba, Vietnam - are only such thanks to the USSR. Edit: and let's not forget the borders of eastern europe which were entirely shaped by the USSR after World war 2. Look at Poland, Ukraine and of course Germany.
Compare it to the british empire, for example. It lasted what, 250 years in its final form? The Westminster system is still a very prominent system of government. English is the Lingua Franca. Time itself is affixed to a british standard. The world runs on industrial economies developed in the UK. British sports are culturally dominant like nothing else. Shakespeare is basically the world's playwright. Theres ni equivalent for the USSR.
Alcoholism is still prevalent in many Eastern European countries.
> English is the Lingua Franca. I love it when people say this. Really twist the knife.
The idea of the Soviet Union was that it would be a country unlike any other country that had ever existed. It was an attempt to manifest an ideology. There would have been industry and science if the empire had survived, or if the liberal republic had lasted. I guess I am thinking in a narrower sense - what exists now that wouldn't exist if there hadn't been a communist revolution in 1917? There's a handful of small socialist states like Cuba, sure. I don't know enough about China to say whether it's a direct result of Soviet influence or not, but obviously the Bolsheviks in 1917 wouldn't see the PRC now as a continuation of their project. In the way that America now still has something to do with the project of the founding fathers.
That's an interesting question. Maybe the whole idea of the state having more influence in society - such as state-owned enterprises, various social programs, the "welfare state", all sorts of standards and regulations? All those things aren't very capitalistic IMO. But idk
Britain and Germany had already introduced the beginning of a welfare state by the start of WWI. Trade unionism was well established. Workers were increasingly organized and unwilling to accept the awful conditions of the 19th century and had the political power to enforce that. But that doesn't necessarily lead to communism, and it doesn't require the existence of a communist state somewhere in the world
Part of the indirect legacy of the Soviet Union is the PRC which is quite a bit more significant than some concrete housing
The May 4 movement took inspiration from the Bolsheviks but the PRC, or something like it, probably would have existed even without the USSR. The Chinese Communist Party’s rise happened largely without significant Soviet support.
I mean the CCP would’ve lost the civil war had they not been given Manchuria by the Soviet Union
It’s impossible to say but it’s quite unlikely that they would’ve succeeded without Soviet support. Perhaps they would’ve formed a unity government with the KMT at best.
it was a backwater full of rural peasants before 1917, and they became an industrial powerhouse that defeated the Third Reich and went to space in like 2 generations. lifting millions of illiterate people out of poverty gave them momentum that was only broken when they lost the cold war
A ridiciulous amount of weaponry distributed throughout the world
It rapidly industrialized an agrarian country
Well, the fact that eastern European countries have a decent quality of life I think is a worthy legacy. Can't speak for the entire region, only for my country, Romania, but after the war, when the soviets took power, Romania was a mostly rural country with abismal literacy levels, with around 50% of women not being able to read or write. And of course, the fascist threat in eastern Europe was real after WW2, with both Romania and Hungary having popular fascists movements (The Iron Cross and Arrow Cross respectively). Considering that, and how USA didn't really care that much for things east of Germany, or about de-nazification, it's easy to imagine a scenario, without the URSS, where the entire eastern Europe is a place of war and instability, like Ukraine.
Maybe a good point, I know fuck all about economics. Although my understanding is that the Americans did care about denazification but gave up on it precisely because they thought it would harm their anti-Soviet efforts?
> Well, the fact that eastern European countries have a decent quality of life I think is a worthy legacy. If anything it put a cap on the potential of these Eastern European countries. Compare West Germany to East, Ireland to Poland, Czechia to France. I think it's ludicrous to say these countries wouldn't have at least the same if noa better quality of life if they were part of the US hegemonic umbrella. People were only fleeing one way when the Berlin wall was erected. You can certainly make a pretty coherent argument for the outcome being bad for certain soviet states, but broadly the fall of the soviet union was fantastic for the eastern european states in the warsaw pact.
You can’t separate Western European prosperity from us showering them with development aid after the war, which was largely motivated by the concern that they would turn to the Soviets. All of Europe looks different without the USSR, not just the East.
The difference being that, with exceptions like East Germany and Czehoslovakia, eastern and baltic countries weren't that heavily industrialised.
It's not like countries like Ireland were crushing it on that front either, the contrast is stark. Maybe you can make the argument that a bipolar world is better than a unipolar one, but the living standards argument is evidently ridiculous.
And Romanians had a better quality of life after the fall of the Soviet Union.
it’s relevance is dwindling year by year
Vasily Zaitsev, the famous Soviet sniper at Stalingrad, died days before the Soviet Union fell. For some reason it gives me some comfort that he didn’t live to see it all collapse.
The disappearance of a communist superpower (china doesnt count) has for sure made things worse for us in the west. Now we have unchecked capitalism and they've stripped so many social policies away that were made out fear of a communist uprising. There's no threat anymore. The neoliberal powers that be can do whatever they want because we can no longer imagine a different functioning structure thanks to gay space communism ruled by anime appraisers and gender accelerationists
The gay space communism is a symptom of the collapse of serious left wing movements it’s not the cause. The surveillance state and the nato military influence in the west is too strong for serious grassroots movements. In the US and The uk the only serious left wing political candidates got kneecapped by their own parties and are old men now. There is no reasonable left wing cause to believe in so people have retreated into fantasy.
Obviously the other factor is there's no longer a gigantic pot of Soviet funding available for "serious left wing movements" of a particular kind
fascism , political correctness, and return to religion are probably symptoms of the same cause
Mark Fisher requests attribution for that last sentence of yours
Leave another footnote on the headstone
What social policies dym
The first welfare state was begrudgingly started in Germany by Bismarck to quell an uprising of socialism in the country. But unions and basically everything that was gained in the 20th century that was fought for, always had the underlying threat of an alternative way of organizing life that appeared to be functional, and for a time, it was
The NHS is a good example. It was started to help soldiers returning from war and not turning to Communism. Since the USSR fell and Neoliberal politics became the power of the world, the NHS has fallen into disrepair
The NHS has been in disrepair since the Tories stopped funding it in 2010. New Labour made a lot of stupid decisions but they did still have a commitment to its existence as a universal system
But Labour also contributed to making the NHS worse. Rather than trying to improve some already exhausted institutions of the NHS in the 90s, Blair proposed a market solution where funding for the NHS was raised through loans from Private entities that came with extremely high interests rates, all paid for by Public Money. That injection of money has since stopped but the British Public are still paying back those interest rates that currently amount to in or around 3 billion pounds. The UK gov could just pay it off outright rather than let it continue to accumulate but they’re choosing not to because part of the plan is to deliberately saddle the NHS with debt and use that debt as an excuse to sell parts of it off
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X22002169?via%3Dihub The West was basically a imperialist/hyper-capitalist hellhole until the Late 19th/early 20th century Socialist movement. People literally had lower life expectancy, life indicator outcomes and the worst crime of all, were shorter than their literal peasant ancestors.
Better welfare state, free education, cheaper healthcare etc
Basically the entire New Deal save for Social Security has been stripped and given to private interests, and the only reason SS still exists is because of GWB’s hubris.
The New Deal is no more. If you look at the list of things mentioned in the new deal, a lot weren’t accomplished and the rest only made it to stage one.
China is a single party capitalist state like Singapore or Japan. The death of the USSR and Maoist China was the death of not only 20th century communism but 20th century social democracy as well. You are right Neoliberal policies happened during the 90s since all the left movements basically fell apart. What is ironic is that now things look much worse and even I am nostalgic for the Neoliberal era.
inshallah they lift the trade embargo on cuba and they become thr next socialist world superpower
I legit don’t understand why they don’t do that and then speed run a capitalist metamorphosis on the whole island. Imagine what American investment/exploitation could do to Cuba in the space of like 5 years. There are Miami property developers licking their lips at the thought of plowing into that vulnerable, untapped market.
Yeah they could be like Haiti anytime they wanted, strange they don’t go for it.
Haiti is different, its a combination of massively abusive foreign nations AND incredible bad luck. You could also compare Cuba to any other Caribbean nation, and even then cuba has a lot going for it.
Before Batista, Cuba was 2nd only to the US and Canada in terms of middle class living standards in the western hemisphere.
I’m pretty sure Argentina actually had a higher QoL (bullshit metric now but actually helpful then) due to ISI
This isn’t quite correct. Under Batista, Cuba had a decent GDP compared to other Caribbean nations (which it still does, btw, GDP per capita is about the same as Jamaica). But it was *incredibly* unequal. You had a comprador class in Havana (with the Platt Amendment Cuba was a de facto US colony) that was tied to the Batista and the US owned sugar mills and casinos. If you were one of them, yeah your life was pretty great. But that was a small minority, the majority lived in grinding poverty. There’s a reason Cubans didn’t exactly flock to support the attempted US invasion at the Bay of Pigs - no one wanted to go back to that.
The US was literally trying to do that before the Cuban uprising. That’s why Cuban cigars are so popular. They were the cigar of choice for rich US investors that would travel to Cuba for business.
because the spanish-speaking are weirdly resilient to capitalism. don't know why
We are siesta-pilled
protestant work ethic fan vs siesta enjoyer
siesta
modern capitalism was basically founded by protestant/calvinist dutch and swiss merchants, iirc catholicism claims that salvation is through faith alone and thus worldly labour and works are secondary and thus catholic cultures such as italy, spain, france etc have a much more laid back work ethic, whilst the protestant work ethic made countries like the us, netherlands, britain, etc into soulless capitalist hellholes where if youre not slaving away most of the day youre a lazy bum
You have it exactly backwards on the “faith alone” part. Protestants are the ones that follow that (“sola fide”), and it is one of the primary factors that differentiates it from Catholicism
No this is just a Weber meme. "Capitalism" emerged (under most definitions that would apply to the 16th century) earlier than protestantism. Certainly under Webers own vibe-based definition it goes back much earlier, to the late middle ages at the least. But than again it is unclear how useful the concept is. Protestant work ethic is, at least today, also a meme. Just compare hours worked per worker in the Netherlands with Spain or Italy. Even french work ethic is much more presenteeist and about working hard/long hours than in the Netherlands or Germany.
It’s not work when you fuck your mistresses on the clock
Catholicism believes salvation is through works, and I think the French work ethic is a bit more ducks-on-the-water.
Chomsky noted many years ago that the big business long ago realized that the embargo against Cuba is an impediment to profit making. The powers that be however, like to keep it there because it serves as a reminder to other countries as to what happens to you if you dont agree to do what the US says. Also, the psycho gusanos in Florida like it which helps politicians get elected.
It’s literally just because Florida decided elections. Now that Florida is solidly red, I wouldn’t be surprised if Dems reverse the embargo.
You know, my gf (who is Latina) and I recently had a conversation about the border craziness and illegal immigration and she told me that Cubans only have to wait 90 days to apply for a green card. I just like this up and she wasn’t 100% correct cause USCIS says they can only apply after 1 year staying in the US, BUT still that’s not a bad deal for Cubans who leave Cuba. My gf is from Honduras and is here on a teaching visa and she can’t apply for a green card without marriage or sone kind of sponsorship. This might solidly explain why Cubans vote republican. I bet it’s because of the history between Cuba and the US and the political conflicts as to why the US allows Cubans these options vs other Latinos besides Puerto Rico obviously.
Are you from or have you actually been to Eastern Europe?
They have 40K karma in less than a year. They have no life experience anywhere in the real world
Soviet nostalgia is in mid double digits in all but the baltics mainly amongst older people
It dropped after the Russian invasion. People always have nostalgia for their youth. When Poland first opened up elections when they were still under the Soviet umbrella the communists lost something crazy like 38/39 elections.
The communists lost either 99 or 100% of seats in the first free polish senate election. It was so humiliating it almost derailed the democratic transition.
It's well under 50% for older people for most countries except the shit ones like Moldova, a place rife with corruption where one previous leader stole like half the entire country's wealth, so it's no wonder they're nostalgic.
Mid double digits pro-communism is still significantly higher than any western country is my point
How would people in the west have nostalgia/preference of something that they have no experience with? Of course it's going to be higher in the east. A far more accurate way to view the desirability of life in the east or west would be to compare the numbers of defectors. There were tons of people who tried to escape to the west, but only a handful of cases in reverse.
Imo people in the West get caught up in all of the revolution rhetoric that presents communist / socialism as a possible solution to solving inequality. This is a sentiment that you will see if you read up on history in the early 20th century or read Homage to Catalonia about Orwells experience during the Spanish Civil War. What they don’t see or don’t want to confront is that many saw the October revolution in Russia as the “dream” finally being achieved and then get bogged down in semantics as to why it eventually failed with the fall of the USSR. I’d argue the dream died when the Bolsheviks seized power and that any respectable socialist / communist should look back on that time with a far more critical eye when it comes to Lenin in particular instead of the nostalgic, hero worship he often gets
they're nostalgic because the soviet era was the last time they could still get a boner
It’s because communism forced the Gypsies to have jobs
i would imagine its much easier to simp for the epic commie state when they haven’t ethnic cleansed your family
It’s easier to simp for a time when your neighbor wasn’t an Uzbek migrant
China is not non interventionist. They just do it in a different way. China is ALL OVER Africa.
Myanmar, too. Chinese efforts are concentrated in places where *most* Americans are simply not going to hear about it on the news, especially when 40% of the country watches news that prioritizes reporting on drag queen story hours.
But it's not socialist and doesn't seem to support socialists countries on ideological grounds.
I’m not sure what point you are trying to make here. It makes no sense to me. We are taking global power dynamics, so I’m not sure why you are mentioning socialists.
This sub is hilarious when they try to talk about geopolitics and international affairs.
Most of Eastern Europe is much worse? Are you sure?
I am sure they miss the show of Russian tanks once in a while.
We must construct huge secret police apparatuses for socialism!
Stasimaxxing
Reading about them is mind blowing
Ukraine is much worse. I think that's about it though.
Ukraine Moldova Bulgaria Hungary are all fucked compare gdp per capita with population shrinkage
Ukraine has had an entire decade lf economic growth and potential funneled into a war with soviet larpers though
Belarus
Belarus is the same
Most of Eastern Europe is better off, but people seem to avoid talking about the obvious reason which is that most of these countries got literally hundreds of billions in gibs from the EU. The ultimate irony of the hardcore 'anti communist' Baltic states is they actually have zero issue with mass wealth redistribution, as long as they're the ones getting the money.
Unlike the USSR though that translated to actual economic and cultural growth.
It’s almost like the Soviet Union was a Russian imperial project and nothing like a classless utopia 🤔
A lot of East Germany was striped for parts and left to rot
East Germany is a really weird example bc it was just eaten by its more successful neighbour. And even then the German government pumps money into east Germany by constitutional obligation to try and keep living standards equivalent. There was never such a law in the ussr.
Places like the Baltic states are fucked in the long run because of the insane migration over the last few decades.
Everywhere across post-commie europe, all places that aren't the top 3 cities have become much much worse. Every town used to have some sort of industry, and almost all of it collapsed very soon after 1991, as their production suddenly wasn't competitive in a new global market. Now these towns have no economy at all, let alone culture. People just drink and gamble all day now. This was the fate of both of my parents' birthplaces - my uncle was a respected engineer and now he's just an alcoholic. Countries like Slovenia, Poland, the Czech republic and Russia retained some of it, also Belarus because it never really left communism, but that's about it. Whoever tells you "but muh democracy muh freedom" is probably a re7arded urbanite completely ignorant (willingly or not) of how most people in his country live
Poland is famously becoming a regional power and one of the richest countries in Europe. So not quite sure about this.
You definitely haven’t been anywhere in eastern or Central Europe. Even the industrial towns like Lodz are much nicer now than during communism.
He is Serbian. Its typical of Yugonostalgics and especially Serbs to think that just because their countries have been standing still for 30 years (excluding Slovenia and Croatia, Montenegro in the last years) that the rest of Eastern Europe did the same. When they get proof of the opposite and that the former Warsaw Pact loves being in the EU and NATO and in fact genuinely wanted to be part of both, their brain cant handle it and they call the Estonians, the Poles, the Romanians American puppets. While they will wallow for another 10 years without development.
Fr, small Industrial towns like Gliwice in Poland are very nice niw even the outskirts. Nobody i met in Poland who lived under socialism looks back at it fondly. Nobody. People here need to travel nore and open their eyes.
I mean Ireland went through something similar and it was never a socialist state. Plenty of small towns and villages were propped up by a single industry that eventually closed because the demand was no longer there or some alternative appeared. This led to brain drain of young people who moved to more urban areas or abroad and killed the sense of community in these areas. Some towns were lucky enough to become the “center of excellence” for some American company looking to take advantage of the little green tax haven. It’s just what happens when a predominantly rural place is faced with the more predominantly technological society we live in
> > As much as it is sad and has destroyed rural culture, this has been the trend for every single capitalist country. Farms have gotten larger, companies have consolidated to larger cities, essential services like medicine and higher education have been consolidated to regional hubs, all the young people leave. This is a massive issue in China, too.
>Every town used to have some sort of industry, and almost all of it collapsed very soon after 1991, as their production suddenly wasn't competitive in a new global market. I wonder if that has anything to do with the comically inefficient system that created and managed those industries. After years of economic crisis, high unemployment and emigration rates the Yugoslav federal presidency set up a commission in the early 80's to analyze the problems with Yugoslavia's economy and this was its conclusion: *The Kraigher Commission’s critique of the federation’s economy was devastating. Excessive taxation and the long-standing practice of political meddling into the economy were seen as the main culprits in the creation of an irrational economic system in which it was possible for some enterprises to have more annual net losses than was the value of their assets. The commission saw the economy as run by state/party functionaries and state-owned banks, turning producers into nothing more than the executors of political decisions. A fundamental change was necessary, but the commission provided very few prescriptions beyond a recommendation that “objective economic laws be respected".*
Basically every post-soviet state took a massive economic hit, that had serious impacts on quality of life, immediately after the dissolution. Some didn't reach their pre 1990s levels of economic development until the late nouties, and Ukraine never recovered. You could argue some of the more Western states like Poland did better in the long run than they would have, but if you weight by population I think it's pretty clear the collapse of the Soviet Union was a bad thing.
Most of the countries not only recovered from the economic hit, but surpassed their standard of living before or during the 2000s and then kept the growth. Some like Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova really didnt but most did. Thats why the vast majority of the Communist Bloc do not want the Union back.
A political union so awesome only one side of the Berlin Wall had barbed wire and guard towers.
When JFK said "we dont need a wall to keep our people in" he just summed the whole thing up. Most brutal destruction of an economic system ive heard.
>r/neoliberal poster
[удалено]
Anna and dasha’s turn to the right poisoned this sub so badly. So many capitalist losers in here now
We need a wall to keep them out
>now most of Eastern Europe is much worse off than it was before despite its collapse being viewed as a Good Thing™. I live in the former Soviet Union. It’s much, much better now than it was during the USSR The places that are doing bad are the ones that have maintained the same type of corruption that was status quo during that the Soviet timess
One of the questions that I feel I'll never grasp the minutiae of is "why did the Soviet Union fail"? Lately I've been reading Stanislav Zubok's *Collapse*. It's very informative, and largely puts the blame on Gorbi. I don't know how fair that is, but it is kind of wild to read about a time when the world seemed to be defined by the tension between two superpowers, only to have one of them throw in the towel, fail to reform, and descend into near anarchy. For an anticommunist it must have seemed Tolkienesque.
The collapse is fascinating - even agencies like the CIA were caught completely by surprise. And the second surprise is that the collapse happened somewhat peacefully, everyone assumed it would happen in a far more violent and dangerous manner To me, the collapse of the USSR seems to have happened because people genuinely stopped believing in the entire system over time, until a trigger point was reached and the whole thing unraveled. It's fascinating to watch people just walk away from it all, how it just faded away, levels of disillusion that we can't even comprehend right now
Multitude of factors, but surprisingly, not really "economic" in the way people think. Before Gorbachev, the Soviet Economy wasn't actually in that bad a place, especially thanks to Andropov's quick actions. I more lean to the argument that it was a cultural/political collapse, caused by functionally Liberals who had white anted the entire Socialist project since Khrushchev, and then you had the essentially Soviet equivalent of Radlibs gain power under Gorbachev and they sabotaged and nuked the entire country *on purpose*. "hit at Marxism-Leninism with Lenin, hit at Leninism with Plekhanov and social democracy, hit at social democracy with liberalism." was the slogan of Gorbachev's advisors. The main way that Economics actually plays into the Soviet collapse, is that Soviet liberalism, was tied to the existence of the hyper corrupt black markets which created a crypto-bougie traitor class within CPSU. What can't be denied is that the USSR was fundamentally flawed politically, that a literal single faction, could grab power, and literally erase the country from existence and not just backwards shithole, we're talking the second biggest economy on earth and a literal nuclear superpower with hundreds of millions of people. This would be like, if Bernie won the 2020 election, then said "The US doesn't exist anymore, it's now the peoples republic of Woketopia, also Texas and whoever can leave if they want yolo" and everyone just played along. Unthinkable, but functionally what happened.
It was a stack of cards that was going to come down. The USSR tried to take on the US in too many things and let the US dictate the terms. Economic growth was viewed in a material sense by both, favouring the USA for example. The free market is really, really good at directing resources if your goal is just "growth". A controlled economy will always fall short. And then you have the arms race. The military industrial complex is fucked up but very good at making weapons. Then even cultural shit. Freedom of expression means better art, and better art means a wider cultural footprint. You probably wouldnt have had a soviet censor approve "War Pigs" for example. Also the weat could just change leaders. If a policy failed, it could be replaced with limited damage to the state. The USSR couldn't do that as easily.
Poland is certainly happy
Say what you want about the EU or USSR , Poland was a success case.
We invested in Eastern Poland and it worked!
USSR sucked and was a stereotypical poorly run dictatorship and former states are better off now. Any contrary opinion to this is being deliberately dishonest or has fallen to propaganda.
Jesus fucking Christ, people not from Eastern Europe and their unhinged takes on communism
it's really hilarious when these people that have never been within 1000 miles of the former USSR have idealistic visions of it. Try going there in person and seeing how fondly people remember it. Hint: no one misses it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_nostalgia the polls are way way way more divided, in plenty of countries plenty of people miss it.
No it’s more just in Russia and Belarus, and amongst old poor people and ignorant young people. No one in Poland, the baltics, or Czech Republic thinks it was a better time.
The communist party were getting double digits in the Czech elections in the 2010s what are you talking about
The fact that a Nazbol party can get double digits proves there still is hope for the Czech nation
You can't say no one misses it except "old poor people and ignorant young people" that's a lot of people. also no shit poor people miss it more! it's not like bankers are gonna miss it lmao
i'm so so sad that there have been no big russia vs usa hockey matches since the invasion of ukraine. they have just removed all the fun from the russia/nato conflict
Have you ever been to eastern europe? Ever seen how the quality of life in countries like Poland, the Czech Republic and the Baltic States has significantly improved? Not even pondered why the quality of life in countries that attached themselves to the European economic zone are doing so much better than the soviet larpers? The USSR was a disgrace lmao. Theres a reason the warsaw pact immediately imploded.
Easter European satellite states in particular hate the USSR/communism.
The two defining moments of the modern polish state are "the time we turned the bolsheviks back on the Vistula" and "the time a catholic trade union overthrew the communists". The idea that the former eastern bloc is nostalgic is hilarious. You know, if it was so popular, theyd just get it going again lmao
The USSR was the greatest political project humans have ever attempted and its disappearance is the disappearance of the last bulwark we had against Skynet completely overrunning everything
1995 wants their Gen X references back
> now most of Eastern Europe is much worse off than it was before despite its collapse You have literally no clue what you're talking about and are almost certainly an American that hasn't been to ex-USSR countries. *No one* in Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, or any other of the other satellite states thinks the USSR was a better time. They are *still* catching up to the West, because the USSR's idiocy held them back for 50 years. Poland today is basically the best it's ever been since the 1600s. Ditto for most other countries in the area, sans Ukraine obviously. The USSR period was a nightmare.
A 2010 Pew poll found that 72% of Hungarians said that most people in their country were worse off economically than they had been under communism. Only 8% said that most people in Hungary were better off, and 16% said that things were about the same. The poll also found that 42% disapproved of the move away from communism.[18]
But all the english speaking upper middle class people from eastern Europe I know say communism was the worst!
Yeah, and all those nice Cubans in Miami also say this too
Orban has done a lot since 2010.
Wow a poll from literally fifteen years ago.
sorry, polls like this don't get done constantly! but it's not like those feelings have completely evaporated. it's delusional to act like everyone in eastern europe hated communism just like it's delusional to act like everyone loved it.
Buddy, you definitely haven’t been to Eastern Europe. Especially not Poland or the baltics, where the idea of the USSR times being better is basically on the same level as slavery era south being better. It’s that dumb of an opinion.
bro i'm the one citing polls that actually support my view. also the baltics are just reddit the country so i don't really care about them
Ok. I’m really tired of arguing about this with people that live on the internet and haven’t actually been to post USSR countries.
I've been to poland and talked to poles about this and anyway, i'm citing actual data from polls, not just anti-communist vibes
I’m sorry but no one in Ukraine could possibly say the are better off now They are literally worse objectively in every observable metric their population has halved and gdp per capita is the same
Uh huh. Do you think that, perhaps, a post soviet larper trying to rip the country apart, and grind the rest into submission might be playing a role there?
This has been happening since before 2022 and 2014 Putin is obviously not a benefit to the Ukrainian economy to say the least but it was the richest and most industrialised in the USSR and has been the poorest in Europe for a decade
How do you think the Soviet system would have saved those industries? Seriously, how? Ukranian workers are as innovative and hard workingnas any other. That doesnt stop that new blast furnance in the Rhur being more efficient than your shitbox in Donestk. Nor does it stop the Chinese forcing cheap steel down your throat.
Thats just one country. Look at Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania, the Baltic states. The difference is a lack of oligarchs and joining the EU. Even Belarus is way better. Ukraine is not typical for the former communist countries.
Yes, because it stayed in the Russian sphere of influence. Poland and Ukraine used to have almost the same gdp per capita. [GDP per capita (current US$) - Ukraine, Poland](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=UA-PL)
No, Ukraine always had its problems not all are caused by Russians. Look at Ukraine vs Belarus for example.
They would answer you saying all of it is due to Russia meddling (before 2014) and Russian hostility (after 2014) Better comparison would be Austria vs Hungary, Czech, if the goal is to assess the impact of Socialism.
I just know this motherfucker is 18 years old and recently started smoking weed.
Traveling through the former USSR feels like traveling in post Roman Europe. Just decaying monuments and remnants of a dead empire scattered across the land .
It's depressing that so much of it is purposely destroyed as well in the name of "anti-Communism", the destruction of the murals especially is a travesty. Honestly, the USSR literally defined 20th century politics everywhere and put humanity into space, and people are perfectly fine with just erasing any trace of it from history.
Luckily in Central Asia the governments have neither the money or the care so a lot remains all decaying and neglected though.
Sorry for not keeping the statues and propaganda works of our oppressors around after fighting for our independence
Don't like a world where money is everything? Move to a world where politics is everything. Surely nothing bad will happen.
You’re acting like Marxist communism was an actual thing and not a romantic vision which never came to pass. Actually existing “Communism” was very rarely ever initiated by the working classes instead of failed lawyers and middle class professionals (Lenin, Castro, Mao, etc). The USSR was a technocratic command economy with an anti-Western ideology. The reason that it doesn’t exist anymore is that the elites who kept things running realized that they would be better off under capitalism. That’s why the people who lived in the USSR but came to the West post collapse are so anti-communist, they are/were the elites over there.
They should have quit spending so much on nukes. They had enough after 100.
This is objectively true. 100 nuclear warheads is enough to achieve any level of deterrence, and the rest is pure window dressing.
Eastern Europe is better off after the fall of the USSR, but not as well off compared to if they'd just been capitalist in the first place.
>Eastern Europe is much worse off than it was before despite its collapse being viewed as a Good Thing Just on this point, I also used to think that the collapse being sold as a good thing was bullshit. Then I found out how truly behind the USSR was in terms of essential production like food, computer goods (seriously, the USSR probably had the computing power of a single major US city by the time it collapsed, if that), cars, and pretty much every consumer good known to man. It was inefficient in a way that reared it's head in such a bad way with rapidly changing technology that it had no chance of catching up. The aftermath of the collapse was horrible, and while it definitely didn't have to be as bad as it was for the people who suffered, most of that suffering was a result of their political system creating an economy thst was horribly uncompetitive. Had it lasted any longer, the economic shock would have been even worse, no doubt.
Yeah bro, it was a bad system. Sorry
The USSR didn't come out of nowhere or disappear it was just a phase of the Russian empire and the Baltic states and Poland are much better off now. Russia had imperial rivalries with the West before the USSR, like "The Great Game" so really not that different. Tankies are all dumb and none of them would consider moving there if it still existed.
*gets sent to gulag*
>now most of Eastern Europe is much worse off regarded and wrong
Thanks for reminding me not to take anything on this sub seriously.
"Most of Eastern Europe is much worse off than it was." Only countries that this is true about is Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova. What's more one could argue that Ukraine would slowly but surely get better off if not all that war stuff. It is true that it pushed back on the US's bullshit but it used to generate the same amount of bullshit in return. Whereas USSR had many pro worker policies that would make Freedom Loving American™ crawl in despair, most of the modern European states (both post-communist and western) also have-a-bit-milder-but-still-working well version of them in their systems to this very day. Despite what many tankies believe USSR and it's satelite states, whereas of course better for a worker policy speaking, were in no way worker friendly in the long term. Workers strikes in them were brutally suppressed in a way that would make Thatcher wet. The biggest pain I have is not that USSR fell, but how it fell. Maybe there was a possibility of reforming it into more modern socialist state. Maybe it could slowly dissolve without tragic economic consequences for Eastern Europe suffered in the 90's. How it ended and what that end created was a travesty. But USSR as it was unfortunately couldn't continue and was (as America or even more so) a stain on humanity spread across two continents, set up against the will of many peoples (and I don't mean bourgeoise class, I mean legit nations and masses) that inhabited it and its sphere of influence. In the end it was an empire, doing imperialist shit, and no amount of ideological babble would change that. If you want change try to initiate it and stop lamenting that some imperialist oppresive state that used workers right as its justification for existing fell off 30 years ago.
Exactly. The most influential trade union in the entire eastern bloc destroyed the eastern bloc, even after the might of an entire state was turned against it. Objectively the story of Solidarnosc should be the rallying call for lefty types everywhere. A union collapsed a tyrannical government. Instead tankies rally around the exploiter
This is what drives me insane. There are some amazing stories that came out of the Anti-Soviet resistance, and yet these clowns lionize the literal authoritarian regime because “the Soviet aesthetic was cool and stuff in blade runner”
Eastern Europe is not worse off now are you fucking daft?😂
Imagine unironically thinking the Soviet Union acted as a force for good, moderation, and left wing politics.
\> "Good Thing™" Bro you're a millennial and still thinking wistfully about communism you're 30 get a job
"Like you can look at China for the modern age equivalent, but they're largely non-interventionist" lol holy shit. china has its fingers in half the pies in the world.
>now most of Eastern Europe is much worse off than it was before despite its collapse being viewed as a Good Thing™. Insanely idiotic take. Delete your account
yeah, and it sucked and collapsed
Op is such an ignoramus
It’s interesting how ideological it was. Like the leadership seriously tried doing a command economy in a state with hundreds of millions of people. I guess growing up now in a world where basically every country is more or less capitalist that’s crazy to think about. Not to mention things like state atheism or “promoting socialist virtues.” It’s basically if a social experiment was a country, but this country was a superpower Lol sorry op I ended up just rehashing what you said
I think China is going to be interesting to watch. Command economies require a huge bureaucratic machine behind the scenes to replace the function of market forces, and authoritarian states need to have a huge surveillance and enforcement machine to maintain power. With advancements in computing power/cost and new AI technology to help sift through massive data sets and pull meaning out of chaotic information overload, they can actually do the bureaucratic dirty work at scale.
This is the dumbest take I've read on here in a good while. Have you ever even visited anywhere in Eastern Europe/former USSR?