There was a slump, but not a crash. The dissolution of the USSR was avoidable even up to the very end, though reforms from Gorby, Corn-cob, etc. did ultimately weaken the socialist economy and began pitting the system against itself.
I am not so sure if the dissolution was really avoidable. I like to use the DDR as a comparison, as it does resemble the USSR post-war pretty well, due to the USSR pretty much dismantling factories in their occupation zone to compensate their own losses only to stop that as they realized the other occupation forces were strengthening their own zones and so reverting their course, leaving the then formed DDR in a similar state as the government that spawned in.
During the time of its existence, the DDR suffered from supply shortages to the point where the Trabant, the most driven car in the DDR had a chassis made out cotton-based thermoset. Yet at the same time government paranoia was at it’s peak, where the MfS (the East German equivalent of the KGB) coerced and blackmailed citizen to aid in the espionage and recruit them as informants against their neighbours, just to collect as much information on their citizen as possible in case they are suspected to be traitors as more and more people tried to flee the extreme poverty they had to live with. Yet the party was riddled with corruption, as the last generation of DDR politicians realized as the old ones resigned and allowed a new wave to take the lead, seeing the actual numbers of the debt of the government and the state of the country had to face with, even though the older generation of politicians were initially against Gorbachev’s Perestroika plan.
I think this level of hidden debt, corruption and paranoia/secrecy was the reason why Gorbachev claimed that the Chernobyl disaster caused the downfall of USSR, as it was the epitome of what plagued the whole nation ever since the war. Nobody wanted to speak out the truth for their fear of their status or even their lives, as they either get painted as a saboteur or gets silenced by those who would be targeted as well if the truth came out. Getting rid of that issue would be nothing less of a government dissolution, because no one could be really trusted.
It definitely could have been avoided, anti-corruption campaigns could have been had, and even without them most people still supported socialism. The economy was slowing, but not crashing. Perestroika was terrible, no doubt, though. Further, you do exaggerate the level of corruption, the USSR had less wealth disparity than capitalist countries while maintaining positive and rapod economic growth.
The dissolution happened for a number of reasons, but it didn’t collapse under that weight, it was killed off while under it.
It might be that my comparison wasn’t the most accurate, since my main insight in the USSR is through the DDR, which was mainly a pawn in the face off between the superpowers at that time, and thus was a hotspot for tensions around that time. And I do believe that the wealth disparity wasn’t as extreme as in capitalist countries, yet it says little about what the actual average living conditions were compared to other countries. Also, corruption doesn’t always have a wealth disparity as a result. After all, people can also get corrupt due to self-preservation, which I think is most evident under Stalin’s later rule, after his wife committed suicide.
Yet I can’t really agree that it was “killed off” during its downfall, as I have my doubts that it would have survived much longer than it did without its subnations separating from it. The only way I could imagine it surviving would have been if they “licked their own wounds” after the war, so to speak, recuperate from their losses instead of its rapid militarisation that it gone through to keep up with the USA in order to win a dick measuring contest.
The USSR was constantly trying to de-escalate tensions on the Cold War. The US actually kept pushing because they knew they had the upper hand in terms of resources in a post-war world, so it was a way to keep the USSR focused on keeping up rather than rebuilding. This led to the USSR using a significant chunk of resources on keeping up so as to not be nuked into oblivion in a first strike attack by the US. I recommend reading Do Publicly Owned, Planned Economies Work? which goes over the actual state of the USSR and what led to its downfall.
There was a slump, but not a crash. The dissolution of the USSR was avoidable even up to the very end, though reforms from Gorby, Corn-cob, etc. did ultimately weaken the socialist economy and began pitting the system against itself.
I was more referring to the shock therapy 1990s where the Russian economy just shat the bed
Ah, fair!
I am not so sure if the dissolution was really avoidable. I like to use the DDR as a comparison, as it does resemble the USSR post-war pretty well, due to the USSR pretty much dismantling factories in their occupation zone to compensate their own losses only to stop that as they realized the other occupation forces were strengthening their own zones and so reverting their course, leaving the then formed DDR in a similar state as the government that spawned in.
During the time of its existence, the DDR suffered from supply shortages to the point where the Trabant, the most driven car in the DDR had a chassis made out cotton-based thermoset. Yet at the same time government paranoia was at it’s peak, where the MfS (the East German equivalent of the KGB) coerced and blackmailed citizen to aid in the espionage and recruit them as informants against their neighbours, just to collect as much information on their citizen as possible in case they are suspected to be traitors as more and more people tried to flee the extreme poverty they had to live with. Yet the party was riddled with corruption, as the last generation of DDR politicians realized as the old ones resigned and allowed a new wave to take the lead, seeing the actual numbers of the debt of the government and the state of the country had to face with, even though the older generation of politicians were initially against Gorbachev’s Perestroika plan.
I think this level of hidden debt, corruption and paranoia/secrecy was the reason why Gorbachev claimed that the Chernobyl disaster caused the downfall of USSR, as it was the epitome of what plagued the whole nation ever since the war. Nobody wanted to speak out the truth for their fear of their status or even their lives, as they either get painted as a saboteur or gets silenced by those who would be targeted as well if the truth came out. Getting rid of that issue would be nothing less of a government dissolution, because no one could be really trusted.
It definitely could have been avoided, anti-corruption campaigns could have been had, and even without them most people still supported socialism. The economy was slowing, but not crashing. Perestroika was terrible, no doubt, though. Further, you do exaggerate the level of corruption, the USSR had less wealth disparity than capitalist countries while maintaining positive and rapod economic growth.
The dissolution happened for a number of reasons, but it didn’t collapse under that weight, it was killed off while under it.
It might be that my comparison wasn’t the most accurate, since my main insight in the USSR is through the DDR, which was mainly a pawn in the face off between the superpowers at that time, and thus was a hotspot for tensions around that time. And I do believe that the wealth disparity wasn’t as extreme as in capitalist countries, yet it says little about what the actual average living conditions were compared to other countries. Also, corruption doesn’t always have a wealth disparity as a result. After all, people can also get corrupt due to self-preservation, which I think is most evident under Stalin’s later rule, after his wife committed suicide.
Yet I can’t really agree that it was “killed off” during its downfall, as I have my doubts that it would have survived much longer than it did without its subnations separating from it. The only way I could imagine it surviving would have been if they “licked their own wounds” after the war, so to speak, recuperate from their losses instead of its rapid militarisation that it gone through to keep up with the USA in order to win a dick measuring contest.
The USSR was constantly trying to de-escalate tensions on the Cold War. The US actually kept pushing because they knew they had the upper hand in terms of resources in a post-war world, so it was a way to keep the USSR focused on keeping up rather than rebuilding. This led to the USSR using a significant chunk of resources on keeping up so as to not be nuked into oblivion in a first strike attack by the US. I recommend reading Do Publicly Owned, Planned Economies Work? which goes over the actual state of the USSR and what led to its downfall.