The Fall of the Soviet Union. (WW2, Russian, origin, kings)
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Look around you and make a note of how many Hammer & Sickle banners you see fluttering from the flagpoles, then get back to us with your answer.
Answer:
There are plenty of red hammer and sickle banners flying over a nation that has 5 citizens for every American and by some measures a larger more successful economy growing more than twice as fast as that of the USA. The Chinese COMMUNIST Party is not making the same mistakes as the Communist Party of the Soviet Union!
A big one certainly but arguably there just doesn't seem to be too much of that success trickling down to average Russians. At bottom plutocrats run the country, corruption is rampant and autocracy is the order of the day.
There are several reasons for the fall of the Soviet Union, not just one reason. The original post emphasizes the nationalities question, which was certainly a factor.
The leaders themselves, notably Gorbachev, had deluded themselves about the strength of the nationalistic feelings; under severe repression people didn't dare raise that banner. But Gorbachev was ultimately naïve about the real nature of the system (having been raised under it and having known nothing else) and didn't realize that gradually easing the repression would let that cat out of the bag. He seemed genuinely surprised at the lack of loyalty to the Soviet system and at the strength of the desire of Lithuanians (as an example - they weren't the only ones) to throw off the Soviet yoke.
Economic pressures were another reason. The sclerotic Soviet economy could not support both their military spending and their spending to prop up Soviet client states such as Cuba. (Cuba suffered massive hardships when the huge Soviet subsidies were discontinued). Consumer goods for the people were always on the back burner, feeding a growing discontent as the information age made it harder and harder to hide the realities of world-wide comparisons. Yeltsin underwent a painful epiphany when he visited a large supermarket in the United States and noted the variety and quality of goods available to the average person here.
When there is a system as irrational and ideological as the Soviet brand of communism, only massive and brutal repression can maintain it in the long run. Gorbachev's mistake was to believe such a system could be reformed; the reforms only unleashed the euphoria of the taste of freedom as the people rejected half measures. I see Gorbachev as a tragic figure - an essentially decent man caught in a web which he only partially understood.
The usual nonsense from Comrade John, the America bashing Anglophile that has never given the USA one bit of credit for winning the wars against freedom's foes. The USA had a great deal to do with the end of the Evil Empire, as Reagan so aptly named it. Unlike leftists in the USA and around the world, the Reagan Administration and American Conservatives determined that the Cold War was winnable, and that communism could be checked and the USSR ended as a major threat. Liberals have never forgiven Reagan for this, since for decades they have cooed and gurgled at what their communist masters have done. There is no longer such a thing as an anti-communist liberal, that term is an oxymoron. The last one died in 1983. That was the year the nation lost Herry Jackson, the Democratic Senator from Washington. Scoop was pretty liberal on social and fiscal issues, but he was an absolute hardliner on national defense, and had no illusions about the Soviet Union, and detested the Russians.
In no area could the USSR compete with the USA; economically, socially, or militarily, and the Reagan Conservatives knew and exploited these weaknesses. Communism is a failed unworkable system that could be and was defeated, not only politically, but also economically, by simply outspending the bastards.
Let me introduce you to some "usual nonsense" in your own post.
I am an anti-communist liberal, as is my wife. So you are completely wrong when you make that silly claim and bring everything else you post into question.
Cooed and gurgled? Do you honestly believe this pap or is this just noise for the other posters?
A big one certainly but arguably there just doesn't seem to be too much of that success trickling down to average Russians. At bottom plutocrats run the country, corruption is rampant and autocracy is the order of the day.
Long before it became the Soviet Union, Russia controlled an empire. It was the last stand for true serfdome, and its form extreme by even early standards. The wealthy spent extravagantly and there were frequent years where the poor nearly starved. It was the last medieval nation. When 'enlightenment' came, centuries later than in Western Europe, there were reforms, but not enough and not for everyone. The communists won because the pesanty hadn't seen much gain from anyone else. And then the pattern reformed with communist leaders of the Party replacing the aristocrats and the pesants still pesants.
Money was part of the Party system too, with them able to get what they wanted, things which other 'citizens' were not going to have a chance at. When it failed the players change and the play goes on, with those with the most, in this time the most wealth, running the show.
Other western european nations had centuries of growth and change while the Russian empier stayed back in the middle ages, and so while they have grown away from it, Russia just is drawn back to the only system it has ever had.
^
Re: 'drawn back to the only system it has ever had'..
You know when we look at Russia today we can see that her government history was a bit more changeable than the one in the US. When the Civil War ended that kind of put to bed the bed the concept of 'Revolutionary' governments in the US. From a government perspective, it appears Russia has had more on her plate. Curious to know what's in the offing there for the future. Will she change again?
Answer:
There are plenty of red hammer and sickle banners flying over a nation that has 5 citizens for every American and by some measures a larger more successful economy growing more than twice as fast as that of the USA. The Chinese COMMUNIST Party is not making the same mistakes as the Communist Party of the Soviet Union!
You're going to be awfully shocked when the Chinese economy goes into the biggest tailspin in world economic history. It is a Potemkin Village, one held together by shadow lending, cronyism, cooked books, and a brutal, authoritarian regime. It says a great deal that, according to a recent poll, a large majority of Chinese millionaires are wanting to emigrate.
The USSR had devoted a much larger percentage of their economy than the west into military production, yet they were falling behind the west on all levels. Had they been able to use their military for what it was designed for, expansion, they would have conquered the world by setting up puppet states everywhere, and gained control over the Middle East, Western Europe, Africa, Central and South America, ect ect. How difficult would it have been for them to run the same game in England as they did on Hungary, Poland and all the other countries they had designs on ? They send in communist agitators to gain control of the government little by little and kill off the opposition. They could have done that just about anywhere without US opposition and the marshall plan, such as France, Italy, Greece, Canada, Australia, NZ, SE Asia, who was going to stop them ?
There were many contributing causes but I think the straw that broke the camel's back was the Gulf War. The Soviet nations were oppressed and feared what the Russian military would do to them if they did not cooperate. They also felt Russia was superior to the US in conventional power and that allying with the West would not be wise. After the US failure in Vietnam, our military looked weak and ineffective. When the US easily shredded Saddam's mostly Russian supplied equipment and Russian trained military, they realized Russian military strength had been overestimated and US military strength had been underestimated. Granted, Saddam did not have Russia's top-line equipment and his troops were not as well trained but the conventional power of the US was quite apparent. I'm not saying the US would shred Russia as easily but the ability to put 600,000 troops along with thousands of tanks, hundreds of fighters, and a naval fleet in a region 8000 miles away in a couple of months was easily the largest and most efficient military deployment in history.
As a corollary, that war also demonstrated that the Soviets could no longer contain us with threats. They were adamantly opposed to the Gulf War and tried to bail out Saddam. We basically said we're going to do this, get over it. They couldn't deter us, they couldn't stall us, they had to choose to either fight us or back down.
Last edited by oceangaia; 01-05-2015 at 09:36 AM..
Ray McGovern has an interesting article up. Consider how Gorbachev was
either a) lied to by the US or, b) not lied to, but promises made by the Bush
administration were non-binding in the Clinton and subsequent administrations. Rebuilding the Obama-Putin Trust by Ray McGovern -- Antiwar.com
There were many contributing causes but I think the straw that broke the camel's back was the Gulf War. The Soviet nations were oppressed and feared what the Russian military would do to them if they did not cooperate. They also felt Russia was superior to the US in conventional power and that allying with the West would not be wise. After the US failure in Vietnam, our military looked weak and ineffective. When the US easily shredded Saddam's mostly Russian supplied equipment and Russian trained military, they realized Russian military strength had been overestimated and US military strength had been underestimated. Granted, Saddam did not have Russia's top-line equipment and his troops were not as well trained but the conventional power of the US was quite apparent. I'm not saying the US would shred Russia as easily but the ability to put 600,000 troops along with thousands of tanks, hundreds of fighters, and a naval fleet in a region 8000 miles away in a couple of months was easily the largest and most efficient military deployment in history.
As a corollary, that war also demonstrated that the Soviets could no longer contain us with threats. They were adamantly opposed to the Gulf War and tried to bail out Saddam. We basically said we're going to do this, get over it. They couldn't deter us, they couldn't stall us, they had to choose to either fight us or back down.
Good points about the Gulf War, and I might add another deterrent HW Bush laid on the USSR was a show of unity among western nations. Bush was able to show that under the right circumstances other western nations will make a financial contribution to a war led by the US, in taking down an aggressor like Sadam, or perhaps even the USSR if it should show aggression. Bush1 played it right however, in not antagonizing the USSR while they were making up their minds to break up. He did not push them hard or rub it in while they were thinking it over, no cold war rhetoric on the public stage.
HW Bush is a very underrated president IMO, he helped set the stage for the prosperity that was to come later in the 90's, HW was steering us in the right direction, we just didn't know it at the time. His only mistake was domestic economic policy in the short term, you can't fight wars without raising taxes, and you must be able to convince the American people they are better off now than they were 4 years ago, even if on the surface they were not, you have to convince them why they are, lol. The deficit was not under control, HW wanted to follow Reagan's economic policy to the letter, the problem was that policy worked good for Reagan, so he promised to not raise taxes like Reagan wanted, and altho that worked good for Reagan, HW should not have promised something like that, it was not sustainable. And Reagan did raise taxes later in his second term, so that was a big error on HW when he had us read his lips like that.
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