When Did the Soviet Union Fail?

[aelf]

In the last 40 or so years China has moved hundreds of millions out of poverty and made more hundreds of millions of people feel rich. that goes a long way in keeping folks content while being oppressed. I think the USSR failed in its attempts to create or sustain prosperity for its people.

North Korea failed too and its regime is still there.

 

[Birdjaguar]

What is your point? NK is a very small, very poor country; and guns and camps and little contact outside the borders can have a chilling effect on people.

 

[aelf]

My point is what I already made. Economic success or lack thereof is not a complete predictor of the political strength of a regime.

It's not like the collapse of the Soviet Union was due to economic riots.

 

[Birdjaguar]

My point is what I already made. Economic success or lack thereof is not a complete predictor of the political strength of a regime.

It's not like the collapse of the Soviet Union was due to economic riots.

Yes every case is different, but the larger a nation is, the more important it is to keep the people content. Tight control is much easier when the scale is smaller and economic success less relevant except for those in power.

 

[Lexicus]

It was too big.

In one of those ironies the population - apart from the Baltic states - had voted against dissolving the country

These statements seem contradictory

 

[aelf]

Yes every case is different, but the larger a nation is, the more important it is to keep the people content. Tight control is much easier when the scale is smaller and economic success less relevant except for those in power.

There are really no rules, only 'rules of thumb', and that's one.

The question in the OP is like asking when the death of someone in a traffic accident really began. Was it when he worked too much and became too tired? Was it when he started drinking and became a bit of an alcoholic, which affected his health and energy levels? Was it when he decided to pursue a major that later led to him taking jobs he didn't like, which then motivated him to start drinking?

 

[Birdjaguar]

There are really no rules, only 'rules of thumb', and that's one.

The question in the OP is like asking when the death of someone in a traffic accident really began. Was it when he worked too much and became too tired? Was it when he started drinking and became a bit of an alcoholic, which affected his health and energy levels? Was it when he decided to pursue a major that later led to him taking jobs he didn't like, which then motivated him to start drinking?

I guess my answer might be then: it began when Marx started writing his political philosophy down....

 

[aelf]

Going for the college major answer, I see.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Going for the college major answer, I see.

No, just trolling the Marxists....

 

[innonimatu]

These statements seem contradictory

And they were, for the circumstances. All things considered people were right, the breakup of the USSR was very traumatic, as in damaging really. The USSR could have endured if someone who wanted to keep it together was in Yeltsin's place at the time. The proximate cause was his choices.

What I meant was that the fuel for trouble was already there. The tools for someone like Yeltsin. It still is within the large countries, Russia included. The ones that have "imperial" features: complex layers of political power creating room for opportunists to exploit crisis, cultural divisions and historical divisions, different regional interests. Though truth be told even the smaller ones after the breakup had such troubles.

I have this bias against the risks inherent to such large polities. This is not to say they can't last for a long time, I must admit. The USSR did for some 70 years. The Russian Empire before, and Russia now do. What is now China broke apart and got back together periodically. As that british guy said, in the long run we're all dead.

 

[innonimatu]

No, just trolling the Marxists....

Marxists don't bite trolls easily
One learns patience when the idea is that there are long social processes going on.

Marx, I must say, got it wrong when he thought that the progress from aristocracy to capitalism was going to be one-way. This rentier capitalism we have now is basically aristocratic economics. Competition, what's that? The goal is to control some area and then extract as much rent from it as possible. Inheritance taxes, what's that?
This ain't the 19th century anymore when monopolies got busted and big companies could go bankrupt. Ain't (part of the) the 20th either when social democracy and high taxes gave the would-be business aristocracy a good fight.

Now we're in the age when even all kinds of ideas (aka "intellectual property") are for the first time in history turned into rent-extraction monopolies.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

It chose death at #1. The rest was how the process plays out when making that choice so far. In USSR and elsewhere. Unless China proves that kind of dystopian oppression is viable now.

 

[warpus]

Failed in what way? The Soviet Union failed my people a long time before it fell apart. We fought the Soviets back in 1920 even, and kicked their butts out of Poland. Unfortunately the allies handed Poland back in the hands of the Soviets after WW2. Lots of failing going on all over the place really...

 

[Lexicus]

The Soviet Union also saved the Poles from being exterminated by the Germans, just for perspective

 

[FriendlyFire]

The Soviet Union also saved the Poles from being exterminated by the Germans, just for perspective

Soviet also helped pave the way for the war, by allying themselves with the Germans, just for perspective
It reminds me of a qoute. "Russians had to choose between two ruthless tyrants, we prefer the one that spoke Russian"

 

[innonimatu]

Soviet also helped pave the way for the war, by allying themselves with the Germans, just for perspective
It reminds me of a qoute. "Russians had to choose between two ruthless tyrants, we prefer the one that spoke Russian"

Going down that hole, it was the poles who blocked a Soviet-polish-french-czech alliance that could have stopped the germans on their tracks. Leading to the dismemberment and annexation of Czechoslovakia without a fight. On which Poland was happily an accomplice.

Failed in what way? The Soviet Union failed my people a long time before it fell apart. We fought the Soviets back in 1920 even, and kicked their butts out of Poland. Unfortunately the allies handed Poland back in the hands of the Soviets after WW2. Lots of failing going on all over the place really...

On another of those ironies of history Poland might have fared better if that war had gone worse. The new polish state took too much land east and guaranteed that the russians-turned-soviet would be out to get it back and that trust could not be rebuilt between the two countries to stop Germany.

Is this stuff one can away keep digging. The poles were reacting to russian annexations centuries past, the russians to polish expansion still before, etc.
Wise victors know what to concede to get a lasting peace. Unwise ones get to live in a permanently dysfunctional situation like today Israel. Or Armenia which may this year have switched position on that with Azerbaijan.

 

[FriendlyFire]

Going down that hole, it was the poles who blocked a Soviet-polish-french-czech alliance that could have stopped the germans on their tracks. Leading to the dismemberment and annexation of Czechoslovakia without a fight. On which Poland was happily an accomplice.

The soviet version of those events.
There was no chance of that alliance happening given the demands of Soviet. The Irony is Germany would be happy to give Soviet demands for such an alliance

 

[innonimatu]

The soviet version of those events.
There was no chance of that alliance happening given the demands of Soviet. The Irony is Germany would be happy to give Soviet demands for such an alliance

Can you retell here the versions in which Poland didn't annex a piece of Czechoslovakia? I'm a fan of alternative histories
Or at least one in which the soviets didn't offer the option of a military alliance to defend Czechoslovakia if they were but allowed to get there?

The soviets demanded transit rights to get the the theater of war. How else could they enter it? Poland, as I did mention above, was due to the outcome of the previous war not at all willing to accept it because they had reasons to fear some soviet betrayal and attack. That trap which caught the winner of the last war in it is the irony I talked about.

Notice that I am not blaming the poles for refusing that transit. I'm saying they were in a tragic position, locked into refusing the thing that might have saved them a worse fate. It would take an extraordinarily capable government to both foresee the destruction that Poland would suffer during WW2 and persuade the poles that an alliance against Germany in 1938 that included the USSR was a better bet than sticking with France/UK and letting Czechoslovakia be dismembered.
The only thing we can argue about is whether the soviets were serious in the offer.

Poland 1920-39 is one example of a recurring problem that victors of a war have suffered throughout history: having grabbed a lot they put themselves in a position where a lasting peace cannot be made. The home front would destroy anyone willing to concede land for better relations. And the defeated neighbors will bid their time for a new fight.

Prussia-France, Bismarck wasn't particularly interested in Alsace and Lorraine but had to take it and then WW1.
The still ongoing tragedy in the southern Causasus.
Germany after WW1.
Israel and the occupied territories.
etc.

 

[FriendlyFire]

Can you retell here the versions in which Poland didn't annex a piece of Czechoslovakia? I'm a fan of alternative histories
Or at least one in which the soviets didn't offer the option of a military alliance to defend Czechoslovakia if they were but allowed to get there?

The soviets demanded transit rights to get the the theater of war. How else could they enter it? Poland, as I did mention above, was due to the outcome of the previous war not at all willing to accept it because they had reasons to fear some soviet betrayal and attack. That trap which caught the winner of the last war in it is the irony I talked about.

Clearly it was impossible for any alliance to exist ever in the entire history of the universe without free passage of armies and just send military aid like the Alliance OH WAIT
Soviet bombers and warships would be welcome to do boom boom on Nazi Germany.

It is more the real threat of a two front war that would have been a check on Hitler launching another world war. Instead Nazis divided and conquered
Also managed to back stab Soviet which everyone except soviet saw coming.

 

[Ajidica]

Clearly it was impossible for any alliance to exist ever in the entire history of the universe without free passage of armies and just send military aid like the Alliance OH WAIT
Soviet bombers and warships would be welcome to do boom boom on Nazi Germany.

Czechoslovakia was land locked, facing a land invasion. You sort of need troops there to defend Czechoslovakia from the Nazis.

It is more the real threat of a two front war that would have been a check on Hitler launching another world war. Instead Nazis divided and conquered
Also managed to back stab Soviet which everyone except soviet saw coming.

France and the UK stood by as Czechoslovakia was occupied. I think we can forgive the Soviets for not being too trusting of Allied intentions.