Superior in that the workers were empowered, superior as the distribution of wealth was more equitably, easily superior as there were more Soviet scientists, engineers, physicians, and technicians who were better paid, you were just as likely to be jailed in the US, life expectancy was just as good, educational standards were superior, corruption was no worse than any other countryy.
Causes of the Collapse of the Soviet Union
- Thread starter Karalysia
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Superior in that the workers were empowered, superior as the distribution of wealth was more equitably, easily superior as there were more Soviet scientists, engineers, physicians, and technicians who were better paid, you were just as likely to be jailed in the US, life expectancy was just as good, educational standards were superior, corruption was no worse than any other countryy.
Hmm, 3, 5, and 6 clearly demonstrate that you are from an alternate timeline. I think we should work to determine just when and how your timeline diverged from ours. Please list the U.S. Presidents in your timeline backwards from the present so we can see if it matches ours. Does your timeline have flying cars or robot maids? Also, do you know how you were able to cross the barrier between universes?
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
Yeah, that's not always a particularly useful distinction to draw in this context. Most socialist revolutionary movements adopted a nationalist position to some degree; even in Latin America and Africa, pan-continentalism was a common, if less explicit, position to hold. The only real exceptions seem to be those that emerged in Europe during and after the First World War, most notably in Russia, which adopted an admirably internationalistic position.
LightSpectra
me autem minui
They were not, by virtue of the fact that they had to do what the Kremlin ordered. There were no real elections.
Even if this were true, that's not a very great thing considering that the average worker in a Western democracy had a far superior life than that of their equivalents in the Soviet Union.
Yet the Soviet Union's technology sector was clearly inferior to that of the U.S. The time when the USSR was at its relative peak in R&D was when they essentially kidnapped scientists from Germany. See, your only standard appears to be "if things were more socially equal than in America." I've never understood why socialists were so obsessed with equality, to the denigration of quality; nevertheless, it's irrelevant in this matter. Suppose I showed you some African country where teachers were paid five times as much as in both America and the former Soviet Union. Would you even care if the country's literacy rate was 5%?
Prisons in Western democracies are generally undesirable; nevertheless you aren't turned into a literal slave, deprived of all jurisprudential, medical and other human rights.
Fascinating -- because I can't seem to remember a great many people getting accepted to Harvard or MIT and choosing to go to a school within the Iron Curtain instead.
Pretty general statement given that there are quite a few countries in the world, no?
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
Would I be amiss in suggesting that the language gap may have has as much to do with that as any political differences? Most Western European and East Asian nations have a standard of education equal to if not higher than the United Kingdom, yet the flow of international students is largely into, rather than out of, Britain, for the simple reason that many Europeans and Asians speak English, while few Britons speak anything other than English. Those Brits who do study aboard, temporary exchanges aside, almost always head elsewhere in the Anglosphere, or to one of those nations with a commonly taught language, which is to say Germany, France and occasionally Spain and Italy.
Not that I'm disagreeing as such, just observing that it simply doesn't matter if Moscow University is utterly perfect for you if you don't speak a word of Russian. Whatever political system they may entertain is ultimately a secondary concern.
LightSpectra
me autem minui
This is true, though I don't know many people in their right minds that would look at a list of Warsaw Pact/Soviet universities, compare them with the top American universities, and leap towards the former, which was the point I was making.
ParkCungHee
Deity
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Aside from the fact that Chiang did loads of things to alienate actual nationalists (not the least of which was working hand in hand with the Japanese and Collaborationist forces beginning in 1945), the Government in China now is obviously very, very diferent from the one of 1949.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
And you are quite right. I just don't think it's a particularly relevent point, given that it tells us almost nothing about any of the nations involved.
The Soviets generally did have a good education system all the way through. The big difference with the West being that the communist nations were way more concentrated on theory rather than application, mostly because it doesn't cost anything to invent a math formula but building say, a laser, is very expensive. This did end up having some major benefits later of course. While the American university system was backlogged with flashy but essentially useless expensive projects encouraged by the military-industrial complex, the Soviets were making some real headway, even if it didn't seem they had much to show for it.
From what I've heard, while health in the USSR was better at certain points, by the time of the end, alcoholism and infant mortality rates were terrible. Also, tell the people in Chernobyl they had good health.
As for worker equality, while there probably wasn't nearly as big a gap in standard of living as there was in the West, it certainly had some disparities. I remember hearing that one of the things most shocking to Moscowites and Leningraders with the glasnost reforms was discovering that there were still people living at essentially pre-1900 levels in some of the distant corners of the country.
From what I've heard, while health in the USSR was better at certain points, by the time of the end, alcoholism and infant mortality rates were terrible. Also, tell the people in Chernobyl they had good health.
As for worker equality, while there probably wasn't nearly as big a gap in standard of living as there was in the West, it certainly had some disparities. I remember hearing that one of the things most shocking to Moscowites and Leningraders with the glasnost reforms was discovering that there were still people living at essentially pre-1900 levels in some of the distant corners of the country.
It wasn't remotely true. The Party's inner circle were much more equal than the average worker. Ever heard of any party chief having trouble getting Cuban cigars? Or luxurious condos? Or had to walk to work? The inequality in Soviet Union was worse than the US, because the rich were just as rich, and the poor were much poorer. The supposed increase of inequality in post-Soviet Russia was partly due to the existing inequality being made explicit. A factory manager used to be able to order cigar via his secretary and send the check to the factory's accountants; technically he did not have the money to buy the cigar, hence he did not appear particularly wealthy in an inequality meter. Today he owns the previously state-owned factory outright. On paper he is much richer. In reality he might not be.
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
This is one of the most horrendous lies in history. The disparity of wealth in the USSR; that is, the gap between richest and poorest person, was ten to one. In the United States for the same time period, it was ten thousand to one. Government bureaucrats weren't luxuriously paid, their reward was a nice condo in a nice part of town. It wasn't as if they had some Beverly Hills mansion down the street from the Khrushkovas, or like they made millions compared to the toiling steel worker; the difference was very nearly marginal.
As opposed to the glorious capitalist West, of course, where everyone had everything they could ever need and then some, no matter what job you worked.
Cheezy, you utterly and completely fail to understand how life in USSR worked. You might start by trying to accommodate the idea that money as such was near worthless - because it was just barely convertible into any actual goods or services.
Like I said, government bureaucrats didn't buy their luxuries with their salary. It wasn't necessary for them to technically have millions to enjoy the same kind of luxurious life of a filthy capitalist millionaire. Their wealth was hidden in their implicit power in doing anything they want. To use salary on paper to compare equality is misguided at best, and dishonest at worst. You don't seriously think the life of a bureaucrat was only marginally different from the life of a worker, do you?
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
He said the rich were richer and the poor were poorer than in capitalist countries. My comment was directly specifically at that comment about disparity of wealth, not at anything else, like access to any kinds of services or anything.
At any rate, I would rather have been a poor person in the USSR than a poor person in the United States or Britain. Some things are worth the security of life; Maslow's heirarchy and all.
ParkCungHee
Deity
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But access to goods is precisely what matters. Actually, by using your standards, the poor were, much, much poorer then in America, because you'd measure it by their salaries after exchange rates.
Still, comparing the "disparity of wealth" as you do it is misleading, because money in USSR simply did not have the power/function it had in US. Rubles couldn't buy one an apartment, they couldn't buy a car, or a travel abroad, or imported "quality" goods, or entry to prestigious stores/restaurants. You could buy basic necessities/services with money, but availability of these was not guaranteed for you simply by virtue of having enough money to buy them either.
Mind that I am not saying "the rich were richer and the poor were poorer than in capitalist countries", firstly because due to above there is no obvious way to make a comparison, secondly because there are great differences among "capitalist countries" as well, however you can not suggest that disparity was thousand times smaller in USSR, as your numbers would seem to indicate at face value.
To interject in this discussion somewhat, Frederick Forsyth wrote during the Cold War that the world had two types of currencies; capitalist countries had money, which were used to purchase goods ad services; communist countries had power, which was used to obtain goods and services. Everything I have ever read - and despite what Cheezy and Karalysia will claim, not everything I read is based upon capitalist manipulation and lies; I've actually been reading several books recently recommended to me by Cheezy himself, though it's hard to find them here - leads me to believe Forsyth was right.
innonimatu
the resident Cassandra
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Indeed. Power and money, money and power, in capitalist countries one usually leads to the other, no matter what the order. In the old soviet block (and outside, for example in Yugoslavia - see Djila's complaints about Tito and the rest of the yugoslav CP) it was power alone, but the inequalities also existed. Perhaps the power-money type is worse, because that mutually reinforcing process is easier to defend against criticism ("everyone can become rich", "this is a democracy", and other such smokescreens) than the plain accumulation of power (that one shocked plenty of socialists). But both try to defend accumulation with some kind of "meritocratic" argument.
Plus, and because this is about the Soviet Union, the problem of privileges acquired by the politically powerful there was quantitatively small, compared to certain other countries of the socialist block, and insignificant compared to what was then (1980s and later) happening in the "west". It is no accident that the criticism, by anti-communists, of the privileges enjoyed by the soviet "nomenklatura" is always constructed in an anecdotal way, never statistical. From the 1960s onwards, statistically the Soviet Union was, among developed countries, the one which citizens enjoined greater economic equality and, possibly, also greater power in the workplace (managers did not live like some upper caste, but side by side with workers; workers, through unions, could propose or veto managers). And while the soviet state was paranoid (but is it paranoia if there are other out to get you?) and persecuted dissenters, but so did and do all other states. One thing the soviets did not do was crush the local specif cultures inside the union, instead they supported them - and paid a high price when nationalism contributed to destroy the Union.
Zardnaar
Deity
Cheezy while you are probably pissed off you work in a restaurant in the capitalist system you are still better off than a worker in the USSR. You at least have access to consumer goods and things like a computer. In the USSR you didnt get [ayed more to compare better with a doctor.
The doctor got payed less to compare favourably with the factory worker. Essenbtially you are at the bottom of the system because from the sound of it you chose stupid degrees with very little use/worth in the real world.
The doctor got payed less to compare favourably with the factory worker. Essenbtially you are at the bottom of the system because from the sound of it you chose stupid degrees with very little use/worth in the real world.
Cheezy while you are probably pissed off you work in a restaurant in the capitalist system you are still better off than a worker in the USSR. You at least have access to consumer goods and things like a computer. In the USSR you didnt get [ayed more to compare better with a doctor.Not to menton your chances of getting 5 years of Gulag labor because of unauthorized absense from work, not fulfilling production quota, telling a joke about your employer or accidentally breaking dozen plates are quite small...
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