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From Reform to Ruin in the USSR

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Re: From Reform to Ruin in the USSR

#81

Post by pqtyw »

rahen wrote: post #77
pqtyw wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't a "nation" though. It was an empire that could only be held together by force and oppression.

But isn't China the same? Tibet and Xinjiang are both nations with their own language and culture. I guess it wouldn’t be long until they became independent again if it weren’t for force and oppression.

Not really. The entire Tibet Autonomous Region has less than 4 million people living in it. Xinjiang is 26 million which is of course a lot but still insignificant compared to China's total population (and almost half the people living there are ethnically Chinese anyway).

Those regions might be politically important to China but demographically and economically (besides any potential natural resources) they hardly matter.

Han make up 91% of the population of China, in the USSR Russians were barely above 50%.

I mean China is a nation state that engages in some imperialism. The USSR was an empire first and foremost.

Re: From Reform to Ruin in the USSR

#82

Post by [deleted] »

pqtyw wrote: post #71
Yeul wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gorbatsjov listened to American advisors. The Chinese were watching and never made the same mistakes. Opening up the economy so that Western piggus can take over everything and corrupt the nation with their DMARKS and Dollars? What were they thinking...

It wasn't a "nation" though. It was an empire that could only be held together by force and oppression.

[deleted]

Re: From Reform to Ruin in the USSR

#83

Post by tristramb »

twilo wrote: post #33

I’ve always wondered how the world would look like without the Bolshevik revolution

My grandfather fought the Bolsheviks as part in the Allied Intervention in the Russian Civil War. In 1919 he was on a gunboat in the Caspian Sea. He kept a diary of that time. It is now in the Imperial War Museum.

Re: From Reform to Ruin in the USSR

#85

Post by ido »

fuzzfactor wrote: post #60
ipv6ipv4 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The collapse of the Soviet Union as it was was inevitable. Gorbachev recognized it and tried to do something about it. Given the gargantuan challenge, Gorbachev's odds of success were not great to begin with. At least he was wise enough to shepherd its demise peacefully. In any case, the world without the Soviet Union is undoubtedly a better place.

Gorbachev said that one of the things that shocked and demoralized him was when he visited Houston and took a trip to one of the typical supermarkets, a locally owned one not part of any nationwide chain or anything. When he saw that average Americans were enjoying consumer choices well beyond anything the highest echelons in the USSR could attain, he was never quite the same after that.

I believe you are thinking about Yeltsin (unless both visited a Texas supermarket and were surprised to discover how well stocked it was).

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/trending...

Re: From Reform to Ruin in the USSR

#86

Post by D_Alex »

rahen wrote: post #77
pqtyw wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't a "nation" though. It was an empire that could only be held together by force and oppression.

But isn't China the same? Tibet and Xinjiang are both nations with their own language and culture. I guess it wouldn’t be long until they became independent again if it weren’t for force and oppression.

>nations with their own language and culture

There are few countries where there is a single language and culture. Just looking at Western Europe, there is Basques in Spain, Bretons in France, Welsh/Scottish in the UK, Frisians in Netherlands, Lombards in Italy, Walloons in Belgium etc etc.

>it weren’t for force and oppression.

Nah. That's USAID propaganda.

Re: From Reform to Ruin in the USSR

#87

Post by hackandthink »

"If this view is correct, one lesson for those seeking to understand reforms in China today is that the leader, his competence, and his perceptions of how to enact reform can, at times, prove even more important than the underlying realities of bureaucratic politics or structural issues."

Short version:

"Deng Xiaoping thought Mikhail Gorbachev was an idiot"

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-31/mikhail-gorbachev-met...

Re: From Reform to Ruin in the USSR

#88

Post by Muromec »

watwut wrote: post #74
Muromec wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>After WWII, significant male losses and the effects of the second demographic transition led to continuous population decline. Wait, but this simply isnt true. USSR population grew continiusly until the 90iez. The was the "war echo" in this growth, but it wasn't declining. You cant really beat 3 year maternity leave and free kindergarder from the age of 3. All that really worked and beinf a single mother was normali…

What really worked was that people were not invested in jobs. It was dead end, you dont care, dont have ambitions and try to go home as soon as possible. The 3 year maternity leave stayed after communisms ended, free kindergarten stayed. But capitalism made the work feel less of "sleepy dead end" for everyone. Otherwise said, people stopped having kids when economic opportunities opened up.

I actually lived through the whole thing and I don't agree with your take. The hard drop in 90ies has more to do with the soviet system collapsing and taking away the floor than with capitalism opening up the top. It was a time of struggle where some more adaptable people ripped the benefits, but for everybody else it was a very tough time. Instead of working 9 to 5 and going home a lot of people had to work 2 or three jobs, drastically change their lifestyle and take the burden of care for their parents because the state basically defaulted on their pensions.

If you think that people didn't have ambitions, it's also not true. You could still climb the ladder inside the system, it's just the monetary reward was capped at having middle class-level comfort instead of being unbelievably rich. You could always be a head of something or go by the party route to have more nice things or have friends to bring stuff from the west too.

Re: From Reform to Ruin in the USSR

#89

Post by TwoPhonesOneKid »

rahen wrote: post #77
pqtyw wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't a "nation" though. It was an empire that could only be held together by force and oppression.

But isn't China the same? Tibet and Xinjiang are both nations with their own language and culture. I guess it wouldn’t be long until they became independent again if it weren’t for force and oppression.

It's important to note that in the marxist/sociological tradition (doesn't really matter how actually marxist they are these days), "nation" refers to basically ethnicity. China itself claims to host 56 nations. In this context "nationalism" is considered a threat to the state and to the people. Don't confuse thus with pro-state patriotism, of course, which is alive and thriving.

The soviet union was the same way. Even member states mostly represented multiple nations, which often crossed member state borders.

Here's the relevant work from Stalin: "Marxism and the National Question": https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1913...

I'm pretty skeptical myself that nationalism was the thing that tore the soviet union apart. The most ethnically diverse areas (notably, georgia and central asia) generally benefitted the most from attachment to the soviet union. Surely here in the US we are less bound together by shared culture than the soviets ever were. If the soviets were an empire of nations, we are a prison-ship of them.

Re: From Reform to Ruin in the USSR

#90

Post by TwoPhonesOneKid »

pqtyw wrote: post #81
rahen wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But isn't China the same? Tibet and Xinjiang are both nations with their own language and culture. I guess it wouldn’t be long until they became independent again if it weren’t for force and oppression.

Not really. The entire Tibet Autonomous Region has less than 4 million people living in it. Xinjiang is 26 million which is of course a lot but still insignificant compared to China's total population (and almost half the people living there are ethnically Chinese anyway). Those regions might be politically important to China but demographically and economically (besides any potential natural resources) they hardly m…

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