I think not all those inefficiencies attributed to the Soviet's political system. Some of the same inefficiency still exists today. One person one vote didn't help their economy as expected. But at least one could argue under the Soviet's control, there were enforced laws and rules, society was stable and there was international prestige. Maybe USSR could have followed China's footsteps to reform economy and avoided the inevitable collapse.
It was more than just the economy though. Given all of the different ethnic tensions and its sheer size the Soviet Union always had the potential for instability.
That's a rather simplistic view. First off we didn't win. They lost but it wasn't like we forced them to their knees. Second consider that we haven't had much of a peace dividend, the US taking more of a role in global security, Islamic extremism is now present in several parts of the former Soviet Union, a lot of the Soviet WMD stockpiles have never been secured, along with arms races among states that at one time were held in check by Cold War alliances the end of the Cold War as been a mixed blessing. Think about it that since the Cold War ended we have been in three wars, four counting the Balkans, as opposed to 2 during the Cold War and it doesn't seem like the end brought us increased peace and security. And FYI. the threat of nuclear annhilation still exist.
It's unfortunate that as the world celebrates the fall of the Berlin Wall, it turns a blind eye to Israel's apartheid wall.
Yeah, but those were not the main factors that effect the collapse. Well, I do agree with JV that during the 80s, Soviet's economy was brought to halt and compounded by the urge to keep up with US (thanks to Regan). Well, I just wish Russia did not change so drastically by ridding of all of its foundations in one night.
If you saw my earlier post I attributed the collapse mostly to the failure of the economy and its inability to compete with the US in the arms race. What I was adding though is even if its economy could have reformed and it could keep up with the arms race there were many other problems that put the longterm survival of it in doubt.
CCP's China is alive and well. Arguably China didn't have less problems than USSR had. Vast size, ethnic tensions, etc, etc all exit in China too. China had resource problems which USSR didn't have.
OK, we've been here countless times over the years. The Soviet Union collapsed under it's own weight. The Arms Race did not stretch the Soviet economy to the breaking point. Star Wars did not do the things the mythologizers of Saint Ronny claim it did. There must be a double digit number of posts in the history of this forum that document this using facts and sources.
The PRC though has a much larger population of Han Chinese than the Soviet Union did of Russian and related Slavic people. So like in Tibet the sheer number of Han settling in are a far more effective control than just military domination. The Russians never had enough people to settle much of the Soviet territory and its questionable how long the people of the caucasus and central Asia would be willing to stay under Russian domination. Also just to add that the PRC itself experiences ethnic and regional tensions to some extent and considering how paranoid the CCP is of so-called "splittest" the cohesion of the PRC is something that they are concerned about. That said the situation in the Soviet Union was very different than the PRC in regard to ethnic and regional tensions and when you throw in trying to keep the Warsaw Pact together it was somethign that was bound to be unsustainable.
Maybe. But I still suspect USSR would have lasted if it had patience to reform its economy first. The problems you mentioned weren't new. USSR had been be in existence for 80 years by then. If those factors were to implode, it should have imploded already. I think Economy was the cause, and other problems could have been taken care of temporally at least by a growing economy.
I'm not trying to lessen the economic reasons but you also have to consider that the maintenance of a giant empire also has a strong affect on the economy especially when you don't have a very productive population to begin with. YOu are right the USSR existed for 80 years but during much of that time it was either made up of ethnically related Slavs and some sparsely populated 'stans or else controlling countries that had been shattered by WWII. The problem that we saw at the collapse of the Soviet Union is what happens when those populations recover enough from the wreck of WWII to start asserting themselves? Even if their economy could've reformed many of the most productive areas of the Soviet Union and the ones most likely to embrace economic reform were ones that also resented Soviet rule, the Baltic States and Western Ukraine for example. At the sametime once radical Islam figured out how to use the information revolution to spread its message there is no certainty that the Islamic people of the 'stans would want to continue under what they saw as an atheistic regime. As we saw happen in Chechnya even without the Soviet Union.
The resentments from the republics had always been there. I don't think beating Germany or grieving from WWII somehow put away the resentments. They were controlled by the iron fist of Soviet for 80 years in sort of the same way as what China is doing. I am not convinced that those tensions would topple USSR's control even if the Economy improved vastly. And even if say USSR couldn't have controlled the republics, that doesn't mean Russia would necessarily change its fundamental political system. What you pointed out are all true, but my view is that maybe Russia would have been better off if she let the Economy improve first and deal political problems along the way.
Russia certainly would've been better if they had reformed their economy but at the sametime how they reformed it would probably be their undoing. Unlike the PRC the Russian population wasn't as dominant in the USSR as the Han Chinese are in the PRC. For that matter historically some of the people they dominated have done better economically than they did. Consider if the Soviet Union and by extension the Warsaw Pact undertook free market economic reforms and open trade policies. Its possible that very soon Warsaw Pact countries outperform the USSR while Baltic nations outperform Russia. How tenable is a situation like that going to be? In the end yes Russia might be better off but that doesn't mean that the USSR survives as a union.
Yes, inefficiencies remain (some being a legacy of Soviet neglect), but the difference is that the machinery for change was outlawed under communism. They could not operate a free market. Now, they can. They are burdened with corruption and by monopoly, but they expose themselves now to market forces that can incentivize improvements. They didn't have a system for making themselves better. I think that is the difference. They couldn't follow China's footsteps at the time, because China wasn't yet changing their ways. China is taking the tack they are now (economic reform within a dictatorship) because of the example the USSR had set. For Gorbachev, reforming the system was uncharted territory. He went for the hat-trick, trying to change their political, economic, and international behavior all at the same time. As it turns out, they couldn't handle that much change at once. China learned that lesson and is profiting from it. Finally, the big complaint many have about the collapse of the USSR is their loss of international prestige. I think it was fool's gold -- they were a bit of a paper tiger. They had an empire, they had a wealth of natural resources, and they had nukes, but they were not as strong as they had looked. If the USSR stayed on track till today, would they still look stronger than China? Not to me, they wouldn't.
