Sgrig wrote:
quote:
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Originally posted by Vrylakas
I don't think the Soviet Union can be compared to China. First of all, the Soviet empire was far more external [...]
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Well, I don't agree with all of this. For a very long time Russia was dominanat in the area which was then the Russian Empire and even later Soviet Union. It should not be forgotten that the first Russian state, Kievan Rus, was based in Kiev and extended through most of what is now Ukraine, Belarus and Western Russia. At that time, in the 10th-11th centuries, there was very little distinction between the people who lived throughout Kievan Rus - they were all 'Russian'. It was much later, that western regions of Ukraine and Belarus were occupied by Poland, and Polish influence led to the differences between Russians, Belorussians and Ukrainians. However, eastern Ukraine and Belarus voluntarily joined Russia in the 17th century to be protected from Poland's expansion. The parts which were forcefully annexed were western Ukraine, Belarus and baltic regions, in the 18th c. In the 19th century, Georgia and Armenia also voluntarily joined the Russian Empire, to get protection from Turkey and Persia. What is now Azerbaijan was ceded by Persia to Russia in 1828 after a war. In late 19th century, all of central asia was annexed, but by that time, those places were very undeveloped, and in civ3 terms 'had much lower culture rating' than Russia. After the collapse of the Russian Empire, the communists basically gathered together most of the territories which formed part of the Empire.
First of all, I included in my definition of "Soviet Empire" all the nominally independent states involuntarily held within the Soviet orbit, like Poland, Hungary, Mongolia, etc. not just those physically within the Soviet Union's borders. The communist governments of Eastern Europe and Mongolia were imposed from without and people like Honecker, Gomulka or Zhivkov were merely imperial governors pretending to be national leaders. Even in the very lax 1970s, with detente and Brandt's Ostpolitik, no major decision could be taken in these countries without prior approval from Moscow. It was the Soviet Imperianum, and the Soviet border effectively stretched to Austria, West Germany and Italy in reality if not in name.
Secondly, Ukraine and Belarus did not join Russia in the 17th century; they were seized. Poland-Lithuania was not expanding eastward in the 17th century; it's apex had since passed and they were only interested in retaining what they already had. Ukraine and Belarus weren't countries yet and were barely even peoples. The name "Ukraina" is a general Slavic expression used by medieval Poles and Russians to describe the vast lands that lay between them; it means "frontier". Both Ukraine and what is now Belarus were awash with many different peoples, mostly but certainly not exclusively Slavs. The Poles refered to the various Slavic groups of modern Belarus as Ruthenians (i.e., "White Ruthenians", "Black Ruthenians", "Red Ruthenians", etc. - each speaking a different Slavic dialect). The first time a Bjelorussija ("White Russia") was organized was under Lenin in 1920, but even by then the majority of Belarus' population were immigrant Russians (c. 60%).
A rebellion in 1648 by the Cossacks (and later the Slavic peasantry) in Ukraine got fairly nasty on both sides but ended with a Polish-imposed settlement in 1658 over the Cossacks, but they'd been secretly negotiating a protectorate status with Moscow and the Russians and Swedes invaded in 1659. By 1667 Poland-Lithuania had succeeded in driving out the invaders but was so weakened in the effort that it couldn't refuse a Russian seizure of eastern Ukraine (Treaty of Andruszow/Andrusovo). The Russians threw Kijow (Kiev) into the deal and annexed the Ukraine (breaking their treaties with the Cossacks) and eventually destroyed the Cossack seches and any independent Ukrainian peasant organizations. This series of wars against first the Poles, then the Russians helped create the first Ukrainian national identity.
Well, travel was allowed within the Soviet Union, but not outside it. It is also not fair to deny that there were any categories in which USSR was top in the world. Of course, in terms of car ownership per capita and average salary, USSR was far behind Western nations, but other things were actually at a high level. For example, the education system - it was fully free and very good - producing some of the world's best scientists who now flood Western universities. Actually Soviet restrictions on travel abroad played a very negative role - in the late 80's the Soviet Union was swamped by myths about the wonderful, carefree life in the West, so obviously people were angered that they were being denied that. However, now that Russians can travel more, many have realised that many things which people took for granted in the Soviet Union, simply do not exist in many Western countries, even though those countries are much richer. Again, a good example is free quality education and healthcare. Things like this are dispelling myths about the West. Unfortunately, in post-Soviet Russia, these things have also disappeared.
Even within the Soviet Union travel was - and to a certain extent, still is in modern Russia - restricted. Soviet citizens required residency papers for where ever they lived, and had a sort of internal visa system that said which regions in the country the holder could travel to. Peasants, as usual in Russia, were almost nailed to the land they stood on. However, again the problem here with your understanding is my definition: I mean by the expression "Soviet Empire" the Soviet states and all its satellite states. Soviet citizens were only rarely allowed to travel to Poland or Hungary, for instance, because these "pupils of the Great Socialist Fatherland" actually had far higher living standards than Mother Russia herself. On one of my quiz threads for example I pointed out that Soviet citizens were only very rarely allowed to visit the graves of their own fallen soldiers from World War II scattered all throughout Eastern Europe. But even within the Soviet Union, there was a great disparity in living standards between the Baltic states and western Ukraine and Russia itself. As for the healthcare and education; I'll agree with you to a certain extent about the education, but with reservations. Communist citizens were taught to memorize massive amounts of information, just incredible volumes of information - but they were never taught how to process it all, or what it means. They were never taught critical analysis or how to think - skills a dictatorship doesn't want tis citizens to develop, naturally enough. This all became evident with the fall of communism when entire generations of people in Eatsern Europe suddenly were forced to learn how to function in a Western-style society when they didn't have the skills to act or think indepenedently at all. As fpor the healthcare; have you ever actually seen a Soviet-era hospital? Let me assure you that while it may look good on paper to claim that a state offers universal and free healthcare, you should look into the quality of that healthcare first. The very uneven quality of healthcare and the massive amounts of accompanying bureaucracy forced everyone to bribe doctors to make sure they wouldn't do a shoddy job on you. There was actually an informal and discreet but universally-acknowledged system of bribery depending on what you were having done, involving food, medicine, money, gas, luxury items, etc. A Spanish friend and I once had a momentary chance to see inside a Party hospital in late 1980s Hungary - Party hospitals having the best care of course - and we were both shocked; me because I was amazed how advanced and well-staffed it was, she because she thought it looked like a medieval torture chamber. Soviet healthcare was nothing to get too excited about...
By the way what do you mean "internet showed Russians they lived in one of the poorest states in the world"? As far as I know internet was available hardly to anyone even in the US in the 1980's!!! It is also a terrible exaggeration that Russia is one of the poorest states in world. It is (and was) one of the poorest European countries, but by far not one of the world's poorest. I will take this as a misprint.
You cut my original phrase in half and took it out of context. It was: "There was very real rage with the dawn of Gorbachov's reforms and the internet showed Russians they lived in one of the poorest states in the world." I suppose I should have put "internet age" or something to that effect, but Russians did indeed have large-scale internet access by the very late 1980s and early 1990s. I don't know when it started in the U.S. but it spread fairly quickly actually; I was using it at my university in then-communist Hungary by the late 1980s.
As for Russia being poor; it is a typical Third World-style state with elite islands of industrial and cultural development that can often match the West but is surrounded by mass swaths of impoverished lands. If you drive just a few miles outside of Moscow, you'll leave behind modern shopping facilities and suddenly find yourself in areas with a living standard very much like the 18th century - and I'm not exaggerating. Once in 1989 or so I was on an overnight train in Romania going from Timisoara in the northwest to Bucharest, when I fell into broken conversation with my compartment mate, a travelor from then Soviet Moldavia. Large parts of Timisoara, a city of about 200 000 where'd I'd just left, did not have any plumbing and the electricity was sporadic. Some roads in the middle of the city were not paved, or were so badly damaged that they were almost unusable. I recall a building off one of the main squares had collapsed, and people had just piled the rubble into a side street. Shops were usually empty (especially food shops), and the people simply looked haggard and unhealthy. Even for me, coming from Poland and Hungary, this was a shock. Well my companion from Kishinjev (Soviet Moldavia) exclaimed to me his amazement at how modern Timisoara and Romania in general was! He declared himself to be in the West. That should give you an idea about Soviet poverty.
The reforms have been a disaster because too many things were being done at once. The political system was fully overhauled and the economical system was also being overhauled. It is impossible to do these things at once. To change the political system it is necessary to have a solid economical foundation. To change the economical system, it is necessary to have a stable political situation. Otherwise it is easy to descend into chaos. As I said before, it is my belief that the changes took place too quickly, without proper agreement as how to make them. Especially the very act of dissolution of the Soviet Union was extremely rushed- no agreements have been made on how the successor states will function independently, how assets will be shared etc.
You certainly can make an argument about how the reforms were carried out anywhere - it is after all a form of social engineering to transform from a dictatorship to a democratic government - but every case was different. Jeffrey Sachs' "shock therapy" worked well in Poland, while the more gradual reformist model worked well in Hungary. Both are moving along quite well. Russia's problems I think involve a lack of social experience with a de-centralized political and economic model, and a popular resistance to some of the free market's and democracy's most basicx tenets; property rights, free association, freedom of speech, individual responsibility. These are not just anathema to communist belief but to traditional Russian peasant social systems as well (where the collective ruled). As for how the Soviet Union dissolved; well, I think it was inevitable. Yes, Yeltsin and Co. essentially dissolved it by simply creating a replacement sovereignty structure but no one resisted them - no one could. The empire was dead.
Just one example: the Soviet Navy had elite special forces detachments, similar to US SEALS; one of these brigades was stationed near Odessa (now in Ukraine). When the Soviet Union was dissolved, there has been no agreement on to which country this unit will belong. The commander of the unit was Ukrainian, most of the officers were Russian. The commander decided to swear allegiance to Ukraine, while the Russians refused, so they all were sacked and sent back to Russia, in effect completely disbanding the unit. Or the issue with the Black Sea fleet... Again, due to hurriedness, such issues weren't decided and the result was complete chaos.
These types of things always happen when new states are born or old ones die. Very few are well planned. Look at the squabbling between the U.S. and Britain that went on for decades after the American Revolution. The Soviet Union collapsed of its own dead weight; it was bound to be messy.
Beammeuppy wrote:
I enjoy reading all the posts here, yet also try to stick with the original topic (please do NOT read this as an off-topic message) and include some speculation on the mid eighties when some major internal SU events happenend.
D'oh! Ok, back to topic... Although these details Sgrig and I are arguing are important to the topic, because they establish the environment and context for any "what if...?" scenarios.
and the Warsaw Pact who were advocating a "Chinese- style solution" to growing unrest had triumphed?
