Did this nation really emerge from WW2 as a global superpower? Events before and during WW2 make me really skeptical of such a view.
>Have a feudal political system up until 19th century
>Industrialise much later than other established powers
>Lose most of your navy in the Russo-Japanese War
>Experience years of political turmoil
>Undergo a revolution
>Lose WW1
>Undergo a civil war
>Lose millions on the Eastern Front and have much of your infrastructure destroyed
Nah. It was a meme to scare Americans into everything their powerful people wanted.
People pretend like Russia pre-revolution was some kind of irrelevant backwater but that's pretty much just a meme. It was a top 5 great power easily.
>It was a top 5 great power easily.
Based only on the sheer size of its army. Russia was way behind western Europe in just about every way.
"Western Europe" is not a monolithic entity. Fucking Portugal is mot the same thing as Britain.
You are citing events before the Great Patriotic War.
The Red Army, prior to the terror, was one of the most advanced in tech and operational theory.
Once the Soviets had absorbed the punch of Barbarossa, and the top generals rose to the top, these new commanders reached back to the deep battle doctrine and turned it on the nazis.
The overwhelming victory of Red forces over Hitler, left the Soviet Union heavily damaged, but with the most powerful land army on earth.
The cold war didn't really get into full sway until 1948.
The Soviets built their own nukes in the early fifties.
With power comes not just responsibility, but also legitimacy.
OK, what's your point?
They were a super power the same way a stone thrown in the air is a bird.
That Russia might've been behind UK or Germany but it sure was more relevant than Portugal or Spain.
I didn't know his was debated. Yes it was, first in space, virtually ended homelessness, low crime, high quality of life, world leader in science and still a scientific power, nuclear missiles, etc.
If they hadn't killed Jews and intellectuals by the millions, they might have succeeded in the Perestroika and Glasnost and actually continued to open their society and develop the people. But the west and Russian oligarchs had other plans.
What is debatable is the definition of a superpower. Now they are not, but they are a strong regional power.
>killed Jews
>the USSR
Nigger are you on crack
They did kill a decent amount of Jews because lol bourgeoisie,
A lot of Jews inadvertently had their lives saved by Stalin when he sent them to Siberia, just before Operation Barbarossa.
The Jews were the ones orchestrating the revolution you retard.
And those oligarchs you mentioned, also Jews.
>stalin dindu nuffin
He built a country upon the ruins Lenin left him with
And starved millions of peasants for political gain
A lot of Jews got killed in pogroms during the civil war. Not always by the Bolsheviks, but it was frequent. Jews were also discriminated against in the Soviet bureaucracy and school system well into the 70s.
>le jew boogieman meme
the ussr was a worker's state and not a nation
>the Jews were persecuted .... by Jews
You're right. Iron fist communism transformed a backwards agricultural, quasifeudal country of ~90% illiterate peasants into an industrial, scientifical, first into space superpower in the span of ~30 years, in spite of enduring the destruction of the most productive part of the country and millions of dead in a massive brutal war.
Same can be said about China.
Based Communism.
China
They were absolutely a superpower. The basis of international affairs from WWII until the 90s was essentially USSR vs USA.
Mao cemented the transition from le happy boxer chinaman to the nuclear chinaman that learnt and adapted to the white devil to become powerful and beat them in their own game with their own tools. Deng did the rest.
Stalin hated juice though.
He also killed most of the original revolutionaries.
the USSR was a superpower mainly because they were one of the only 2 powers to come out of World War 2 in a stronger position than when they entered. the other being the US.
When the war was over, Germany was ruined, France's infrastructure was shattered, Britain was on the verge of total economic collapse from the weight of the war, and Japan saw their largest cities cease to exist between the firebombings and the atom bombs.
In 1945-49, it was a challenge for European powers to even sufficiently house and feed the survivors of the war, which is known as the greatest refugee crisis in human history.
But the US and Soviets were the best off. Both were sufficiently able to provide housing, employment, and enough food for their people. The US had an exuberant excess of course, but the Soviets still managed to feed and house their citizens to avoid actual hunger or have people die out in the cold.
between their stronger postwar position, and the strength of the Red Army, which moved from the steppes of Ukraine to the Elbe River banks, it was undeniable that the Soviets were among the greatest powers in the world still standing after a war that absolutely shattered every other empire.
>you know what would be funny
>if we implemented economic policies that actually caused more death and destruction than the Japanese
>Great Leap Forward happens
>huh
>people don't listen to me any more
>could it be all those dead peasants?
>oh well, better start a minor civil war so people pay attention to me again
>Cultural Revolution happens
There's a reason Mao's successors were purged immediately after he died, and it isn't so they could keep on going with his policies.
For a country like China, it wasn't just about being able to manufacture toasters to western standards. There was some cultural and mentality change needed as the first step before everything else.
Without Mao shattering the foundations of the chinese traditional civilization all the toasters produced and scientific method adaptation in the world would have meant jackshit.
Which is why the Republic of China, which started with the toaster thing, is so much poorer than the PRC.
>comparing it to an island-country propped up with american $$$$$ as a propaganda showbusiness and known for being the place where big companies from elsewhere (not home grown ofc) moved their low-skilled manufacturing.
Kek.
>propped up with american $$$$$
That seems to be a pretty common excuse, isn't it.
Why didn't Cuba become a superpower from all the commiebucks then?
For that matter, Japan is a huge country, why are they so much better off than China?
How about South Korea, they're both a very large country, and the war there ended later than the one in China did.
>Hint: Macroeconomic policy>all
What is a pogrom
>the world of you:
>Why am I not allowed to make linear comparisons between 2 completely different economic systems!!!??!?!
>Why people insist on free ameridollars + free access to amerimarkets as a primary reason behind Japan's economic success?!?!? They would have done it without either anyway for sure!!!
Also, Japan had already done this mentality transition in the Meiji, and Korea was a shithole until the 80s.
>USSR
>pogroms
That was Russian empire. In fact USSR made anti semetism a crime.
Superpower as in there was nobody else left to compete, colonial empires were dismantled so France, Britain and Netherlands got REKT.
They just swarmed over the dying carcass of Europe and set back development and progress over half of Europe. They sucked at power projection so they used Eastern Europe as their playground.
> People pretend like Russia pre-revolution was some kind of irrelevant backwater but that's pretty much just a meme. It was a top 5 great power easily.
Except there were only 3 great powers at the time.
WWI begun because Germany and Austro-Hungary wanted to become fourth.
> Stalin hated juice though.
He hated Trotsky (who was a Jew) and his friends (many of whom were Jews as well).
He also started hating Israel after it went full Capitalist.
> He also killed most of the original revolutionaries.
He survived the original revolutionaries. That's a different thing.
I'm talking about right after WW2 though. All the stuff you mentioned came much later.
The USSR came out of the war a lot worse then when they came into it. The only thing they gained from the war was the Eastern Bloc.
It's a meme.
They've built potemkin villages during interwar period. When it came to war, Germans discovered that they're literally using sticks instead of rifles, only then Americans sent them weapons so they could win the war. It's also likely that all their claims about having nukes or anything advanced devices like hammers or sickles after the wars are false, or it was something left from Tzardom era.
Communism can only destroy, so it can't build superpower.
Well they weren't as bad as Austria-Hungary and it's likely that they weren't as bad as Italians(since those had troubles with A-H) but to say that they were top-tier is 'little bit' overstatement.
You can do anything if you're willing to disregard human suffering.
Pic related.
> they weren't as bad as Austria-Hungary
What are you talking about?
Russian Empire was bigger, but it was worse than Austro-Hungary.
I agree soviets wasn't a superpower and they couldn't really influence world like some anti-communists imply.
Still less relevant as the EU as a whole, which included Spain and Portugal after '86.
I didn't know that there were so many stalinists on Veeky Forums
The only sane worldview, comrade. Unless you are worth a few million, of course.
Tsarist Russia was economically on par with Portugal
It was the worlds first pauper power
>queues for food
At least we have r-rockets right?
Cuba was a welfare state, living off Russia's money. Till the 90's when they were forced to part liberalise. In 2011 (I think) they proposed reforms, today only 1/5 th of those have been carried out
>it's a communist pretend the ussr was communist when it's convient and deny it when it's not epidode
>He survived the original revolutionaries
yeah, because he purged them you dense fuck
It had the most powerful conventional army the world has ever seen, sure it was devestated by world war 2, but in terms of power they were un par with US sometimes stronger, even if their living standards suffered for it sometimes aswell.
USSR was a useless kid trying to play with the adults.
It literally couldn't handle civilization and collapsed from its own stupidity.
Rome wasn't built in a day, niggers, and that's exactly why the subhuman mongol USSRetards failed. Not even 50 million dead Soviets was enough, Hitler should've rolled over straight to Japan.
Anyway, it's all over now, thank Gott.
This sounds like bait
USSR was literally built on maxim: "everyone should be equal"
I think you're an idiot, OP, are you one of those people who thinks that Europe getting fucked didn't have anything to do with the US's rise after WWII?
Yes.
When you embrace the power of socialism there's no limit to how much you can accomplish. If they had a more efficient bureaucracy they would have crushed the western world eventually.
Germany was already a great power. They managed to solo the French and were one of the most industrialized countries on the planet.
The only way France and Russia could even compete was by teaming up.
Too bad they didn't follow that maxim
They more or less did, tbqhwy.
That's the biggest lie the commies pull off.
Except the Pyramids were built by people willing to built them user.
Just look up Heit el-Ghurab
It's no wonder the West, and particularly the Murricans, a bunch of idolaters that worship the $ and freemason icons, were shit scared of a nation that through communism and the will of the people had defeated poverty, illiteracy, homelessness, sickness, inequality, and basically all social scourges since the dawn of time in addition to becoming the greatest military superpower ever and an industrialized nation in the vanguard of technological advance and space exploration. It was literally Enligtment v2.0 only that a gorillion times faster and stronger.
Please be bait
They adhered to "everyone should be equal" so hard, it looped around turned into a discrimination for some
it was hard to be employed as a jew in intellectual job, like newpaper or something.
why
For everyone to be equal, every given cell of society should represent the entire society demographically. But there is a disproportionate amount of jews in certain professions, which is an obvious inequality for other ethnicities. So they added quotas for jews so that demogrpahical stat doesn't look so lopsided.
The biggest source of inequality by far is obviously gender one. Soviets institutionalized years long maternity leaves with keeping job and longevity bonuses and wide infrastructure of free kindergartens and that has largely destroyed the idea of housewife, not working woman as an idea, at least in the cities.
But that kinda turned out wrong as well because HR (in most cases -- themselves female) would be less eager to hire women in fear that they will just get pregnant and leave work while firm will be forced to pay for them for the entirety of that time.
Uh, what tech?
They were behind in radar, ship building, small arms manufacture (the PPsH was great but it took them about four tries to actually design it well and the AK didn't come until post war), manufacture and industry techniques were also behind the West and refinement technology was crude comparatively. I do agree on the strategic level the Societs were mostly ahead, but Russia and in turn the USSR has always been technologically behind it's competition. Not horribly so, but certainly not more advanced.
The Soviet Union was a super power after ww2 for two reasons. 1. A big army 2. Getting access to nuclear weapons by means of espionage and building their own massive arsenal out of it. Those two things were what made them a threat, and once the comparatively borked Soviet economy finally shit the bed in the 1980s those two things could no longer be maintained.
This. Soviets weren't even comparable to the U.S economically.
...
That's just a bad analogy to attempt to make
>Mao shattering the foundations of the chinese traditional civilization
The 1800's already did this.
The mentality produced under Mao was a step backward that still has effects to this day.
western technology
lol no
>1913 GDP
Russian empire - 230 000
Portugal - 7 500
source: Maddison project