Was their fall inevitable?

Was their fall inevitable?

They didn't do THAT bad right? At least they weren't third world. Their accomplishments were impressive, they even had a space station. Not even China has that shit and the crime, drug-, and other rates were far lower.

Why did they collapse so quickly like a house of cards?

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>they weren't third world

also, the division was imposed, it is normal that when you lose a conflict of these magnitudes you are Balkanized

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union_referendum,_1991

Neither of you even know what third world means.

By the definition they can't be third world. Third world meant "neither aligned with the USA nor the USSR". And yes, this implies that states outside either coalition were worse off than even those aligned with the USSR.

>They didn't do THAT bad right?

Well, to answer that question you can ask yourself another question, which is 'why was the Berlin Wall erected, to stop people from flooding into the USSR or stop people from flooding out?' Read 'The Gulag Archipelago'. Up until the mid 1950's a good chunk of their economy was based on slave labor, and slavery continued even after then, sporadically. They were a bunch of tyrants running an inefficient economy and controlling their population through thought control and fear.

>Was their fall inevitable?
>Why did they collapse so quickly like a house of cards?

Yes, because the second people found out through an unfiltered lense about any modern alternative to the Soviet system, they immediately began to agitate for them. Think about what glasnost and perestroika really did: all it did was make information more widely available and cut away some of the censorship. When the second someone finds out about the truth regarding foreign countries and their standards of living + their own government's crimes they start calling for their leaders' heads, it's a pretty indictment of a shit government. Even Yeltsin was affected by this. Apparently the thing that turned him from a reformist commie to a 'burn the system to the ground' anti-commie was making an unscheduled visit to an American supermarket in 1989 and seeing that the abundance the US seemed to enjoyed wasn't just a series of propaganda photo ops to show to the USSR (unlike the reverse), it was actually real.

>Their accomplishments were impressive, they even had a space station.

The thing is that this was in SPITE of the Soviet system, not because of it. Russia was filled with brilliant people; always has been, likely always will be. If you research the history of their space program you'll find that far from fostering and aiding the growth of the Soviet space program, the government hindered it by rushing deadlines, persecuting scientists etc. Look up Komarov's death

>At least they weren't third world
by definition they couldn't be third world

>The Gulag Archipelago

it had no economic implication at all, it has just come to mean "africa"

Frankly I hate the Soviet Union but the one thing they did right was civilizing these central Asian shitholes, which were pretty much medieval tier backwaters between the collapse of the silk road and the USSR.

First months of the war with Germany were probably fatal. Having retarded leaders didn't help. Or retarded political and economic system. So yeah.

If anything the war with the germans showed the soviet leadership that change HAD to happen.

>Read the Gulag Archipelago

The USA had a better system that allowed for more rapid exploitation of resources and people. The USA also inherited the British colonial system and invented their own system of imperialism based around finance which allowed for more complete control over the world's resources. The USSR also had to overcome the significant number of people who were killed in WW2 (as well as the large number of purges "required" to cement the rule of the Communist Party).

Look at what happened under Yelstin though, everything went to shit and Russians gained new respect for Stalin (this isn't an endorsement of that psychopath just a condemnation of that idiot Yeltsin). The cause of their trouble was the rapid extraction of wealth by Western powers, stopped only by Putin cutting a deal with rich oligarchs to prevent the mass looting (by foreigners, the Russians are being swindled by Putin and his masters).

An massive economic reform (in essence a continuation of Khrushchev's policies) and reshuffling of the political elites under Brezhnev would have made the USSR survive until today. But 40 years of political incompetence and precious time lost, made the Soviet hardliners like Brezhnev and Andropov continue the decline.

Had the economy been more competitive and they kept up somewhat with the west's communication technologies, with the exception of E.Germany,Poland,Romania , Bulgaria, Georgia, Moldova and the baltics all the other countries would have voted to remain in it.

Gorbachev's perestroika was inevitable, it was that there was very little to salvage along with it.

Stalin really eviscerated the spirit of Communism.

After him, no one could look at things idealistically.

>The cause of their trouble was the rapid extraction of wealth by Western powers

"No"

They just lacked "rule of law", right? ;^)

This is Stefan Molyneux and I SEE NO ARGUMENTS HERE

>spend generations destroying every institution capable of protecting society from criminal behavior
>be surprised when your society is ruined by criminal behavior

> The cause of their trouble was the rapid extraction of wealth by Western powers

Dude what

Meh. They had a poor economic system with obvious flaws. In fairness they were eventually toppled by Reagan spending so much on the military that the US has never recovered and is still in massive debt, the USSR tried to keep up and collapsed.

I find the reference to "Third World" a bit weird however. It's a Western term from the Cold War. The developed countries aligned to the US were 'First World', the Gommie countries aligned to the USSR were 'Second World' and the remaining shitholes were 'Third World'.

Socialism will always fall, just like every other ponzi scheme.

Not just that, but yes, the lack of rule of law was one of the major factors that contributed to the collapse of the economy of Russia. But there were plenty of other factors, such as the lack of trade openness, excessive government spending and regulation and, most importantly, the politicization of privatization.

This is exactly the case, yes.

>Gulag Archipelago

I've only just now heard of this book. What's so bad about the author's methodology?

>The thing is that this was in SPITE of the Soviet system, not because of it.

That's such a flimsy arguement you made. The same could so very easily be said of the USA during the same period surely. How can you say all the great achievements that the soviet scientists achieved in spite of these different conditions to their American were inevitable?

Well according to Yegor Gaidar's Collapse of an Empire the Soviet economy basically worked out like this:
-1930's, heavy subvention of mechanical industry on the price of heavy taxation of agriculture actually grew their GDP by a ton until late 1950's
-however, at the end of 50's the productivity of both heavy industry stopped advancing, same with agriculture and from this point onward grain has to be imported
-1960's they discover oil in Siberia, which becomes the basis of their economy
-1970's oil crisis spikes up the international price of oil, bringing large surplusses and effectively blinding the leadership from the need of economic reforms they very much needed ever since late 1950's
-1980's, price of oil dips leading to deficits and growing inflation
-economic reforms are too little too late, whole shebang falls to pieces in the 1990's

That's the economic side in a nutshell. The sudden fall came as a surprise to the CIA since they thought that the USSR was entirely disconnected from the world economy, but economists that studied the grain and oil trade were aware they in truth weren't. They got foreign loans for a somewhat deflated rate for a while in the 80's because their gold reserves were systematically overestimated since no one knew they were net importers of grain for decades.

Nothing. That's why is was such an important book; attempts to discredit it by the Soviets and western apologists failed due to the ridiculous amount of primary source evidence.

>The same could so very easily be said of the USA during the same period surely.

How?

No nowadays it means poor places which includes the majority of Africa.

>Read 'The Gulag Archipelago'
Read 'Enemy at the Gates' aswell while you're at it, fucking retard

>haha I'm being retarded but only ironically xDD

>socialism is a ponzi scheme
t. libertarian