>Second largest economy in the world >Largest nuclear arsenal in the world >Largest standing army in the world >SU-27 Flanker just about to come into service, better than the F-15 >Topol-M ICBM in development, most advanced ICBM in the world >Controlled half of the world >Eastern Europe firmly under its boot before 1985 >KGB had deep moles embedded in Western intelligence services >Still able of matching the might of Western forces in Europe as far as 1989 >Murderous, vicious intellgentsia willing to keep power at all costs Why did it collapse Veeky Forums? It's one of the weirdest events in history.
And before you give me the usual bullshit explanations... >It was falling behind technologically! >Communism doesn't work! >Muh Reagan! >Muh oil slump! >Muh Star Wars! >Muh arms parity!
May I remind you North Korea faced all these problems, and even worse with widespread famine in the 1990s, and it's still standing.
So what the fuck happened? Why did nobody try to stop Gorbachev in the entire Soviet intelligentsia?
>North Korea faced all these problems, and even worse with widespread famine in the 1990s, and it's still standing. They are in the 1950's in technology and like 90% of their budget goes towards nuclear weapons.
To answer your question, the US outspent the USSR. They were at their limit, and we could still throw money at out military. That's why spending increased in the 80's, as Reagan increased "defense" spending.
Justin Mitchell
I have no idea desu. The answers don't seem to make much sense.
They spent to much on the arms race and due to its communist nature couldn't balance production/food/consumer goods with the defense budget and thus rather than facing internal revolt that comes with hunger they simply an hero'd.
But that's really just the normie understanding of history.
It seems almost too easy to bait them in to financial trouble.
I don't have the understanding of this that I do with napoleon-1945
Nolan Robinson
>the entire Soviet intelligentsia The intelligentsia were the ones who welcomed glasnost because it meant peeling back the overt censorship of the soviet regime.
It's also important to consider that huge chunks of the USSR wanted to be politically independent and the only way to keep them in line was direct military confrontation. When Poland decided it was going to be free and Gorbachev didn't bring down the hammer to stop them it set off a chain reaction to the rest of the soviet republics that they could follow suit.
Gorbachev was unwilling to hold the Union together at all costs and he probably made the right decision in the end.
Aiden Young
Cause people were fed up and when nobody wants to defend a rotten system the system collapses like a house of cards pix related
Jaxson James
>Why did nobody try to stop Gorbachev in the entire Soviet intelligentsia? They did try, and that was exactly the problem. Then when Boris Yeltsin fucked everything up there was no one left to stop him.
Nathaniel Cook
you think you're really clever don't you
Charles Clark
>May I remind you North Korea faced all these problems, and even worse with widespread famine in the 1990s, and it's still standing.
PRC is keeping them on life support
Jeremiah Robinson
Because ultimately, the Russians were tired of subsidizing half of the Warsaw Pact.
Liam Reyes
Oil and Jews.
Russia is dependent on Oil. The biggest producer of Oil today is the Russian company Lukoil, when you see the Arabs making their oil dirt cheap, it is to bankrupt the Russians.
Don't believe the American lies, the Arabs and Americans are allies.
Camden Wright
>Muh oil slump! But that really is the reason you fucking troglodyte.
>North Korea faced all these problems No it didn't. North Korea never based their entire budget on oil exports.
Julian Peterson
>The biggest producer of Oil today is the Russian company Lukoil You mean Saudi nationalized oil company Aramco
Grayson Stewart
Sorry, I meant revenue.
Julian Myers
>The biggest producer of Oil today One of the biggest revenue streams from Oil is LukOil,
Jordan James
It was actually the other way around.
Aaron Phillips
>North Korea is still standing Really fried my fries.
Joseph Rogers
Because with Israel secured, America at their heel, and Western culture thoroughly dechristianized, the Learned Elders of Zion decided that they no longer needed Judeo-Bolshivism as a controlled opposition to implement their New World Order, and so decided to sacrifice the Eastern Bloc to Judeo-Capitalism as a scapegoat for the tribe and to raise up Muslims as the new controlled opposition. They then proceeded to the next phase of their plan, the systematic elimination of the European nations as potential threats to the New World Order through demographic genocide.
Cooper Martinez
Jews were actually abandoned by the USSR in the late 1930s - this is mainly who the Stalin's purges targeted. I have no idea why this isn't a part of common knowledge. Then it's no coincidence that Israel allied with America (still a Jew controlled country) rather than the USSR after it got created.
party members got tired of calculating product quotas and realized they could live fat by letting the free market fix it by seizing all the state owned enterprises
Parker Garcia
>North Korea faced all these problems North Korea is not an Empire.
Gabriel Rivera
because vatniks don't think like people
Levi Baker
>USSR was destroyed by Russian Trumps
Huh really makes you think.
Levi Garcia
moron it was an overgrown turd
Connor Hill
>ctrl + f >afghanistan >No matches.
From the 60s the USSR's attempts to expand their influence ground to a halt. Most of their ventures resulted in pointless civil war in the undeveloped world rather than new allies like Cuba and their new allies didn't confer many economic or strategic benefits. However the military hardliners were still ostensibly in control, depending on their nationalist/communist cause for political support.
The failure in Afghanistan removed this, it was too close to home and it was seen as a sign of weakness in eastern Europe. This combined with "tear down this wall", the Poland uprisings, the black market in western goods and the apparent tech boom in the west leaving the commies behind made them look like a liability, the dream was never going to succeed and too costly to maintain.
Luke Cox
It didn't
Caleb Campbell
Why Spain only 9000?
Brody White
because might is just might ppl want to live
do you think Ivan and Natasha wanted to march into eastern yurop or launch nukes, or get nuked or launch a full scale assault of europe because comrade whatever orders it?
you cant control populations (of todays size) with brute force
North Korea is still standing yes but its one country in isolation. Not a web nationalities.
Lincoln Gray
>>SU-27 Flanker just about to come into service, better than the F-15 in what possible way
Adrian Hall
In every possible way, the SU-27 was built to counter precisely the F-15.
>In 1992, a long awaited dream came true for both sides when after negotiations, the Su-27s made a friendly visit to the USAF base in Virginia for mock combat with their nemesis F-15s. It was decided that there would be 2 rounds of dogfights in which the Su-27 would be the tail for one round and vice versa for the other round. First, the Su-27 tailed the F-15 in a mock dogfight, but the Eagle failed to break the tail and disengage the Flanker. In the second round, the F-15 tailed the Su-27. The flanker pilot managed to rapidly reduce speed and did a one and half turn which made the F-15 to shoot past and put the flanker on the tail of the eagle. This meant that the Su-27 clearly won both the mock dogfighting rounds and showed its worth. The America general flew in a 2 seat Su-27 and later on indicated that its maneuverability was better than that of the F-15. It was a sweet victory for the Su-27 of the now Russian Air Force.
The USSR was never truly a competitor to the U.S' unchallenged primacy after the War. Most of your points sound like misleading propaganda from the period.
They tried to outspend a modern, industrialised world power while relying on a populace who until 70 years ago were pretty much all rural peasants who are still unable to comprehend anything other than domination by a strong leader.
Grayson Peterson
>was
Jayden Williams
I remember a line a USSR bureacrat said in a documentary about the fall of the soviet union. Paraphrasing: "We had to choose between making missiles or sustaining and advancing socialism. We chose to make missiles".
Nathaniel Butler
Then why is Venezuela still a thing.
Parker Watson
Literally Communism. Just because you say "muh Communism" isn't a valid answer doesn't change the fact that it is.
USSR collapsed because they couldn't keep up with the US economically plain and simple. Communism is a shitty idealistic philosophy that has always lost to Capitalism because anybody with any kind of talent, intelligence, and work ethic would much rather be rewarded for their gifts than get paid the same as a lazy stupid fuck who is doing half the quality of work as you in more than double the time. The US siphoned so many bright minds from USSR countries precisely because of this.
Adam Thomas
...
Julian Kelly
It's just an antisemitic conspiracy
Too much military spending Too much subsiding of foreign allies Not enough optimisation of planning Restoration of capitalism by the nomenklatura
Nathaniel Roberts
Have you even been reading the news in the past year? Venezuela is in a desperate financial state right now, and tons of people are starving. Their socialistic government finally collapsed with the global drop in the price of oil because that's the only thing that has been propping up their shitty petrostate for years.
For as long as any Communistic regime has ever maintained even momentary stability is basically always purely due to an abundance of natural resources. Socialism can't even work temporarily unless it can sell off some type of resource.
Julian Davis
>Why did nobody try to stop Gorbachev in the entire Soviet intelligentsia? They did.
>The 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt, also known as the August Coup (Russian: Aвгycтoвcкий пyтч, tr. Avgustovsky Putch "August Putsch"), was an attempt by members of the Soviet Union's government to take control of the country from Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev.
The USSR was never at any point capable of surpassing the USA when it came to missile capabilties. But they played along, largely because it was good for the psychodrama of US "politics" to believe the Russians could send us a pre-emptive and totally decimating nuclear strike. So the Cold War was reduced to a competition over advanced missile systems, and capitalism thrives on competition.
Benjamin Gutierrez
>Have you even been reading the news in the past year? Venezuela is in a desperate financial state right now, and tons of people are starving. Their socialistic government finally collapsed with the global drop in the price of oil because that's the only thing that has been propping up their shitty petrostate for years.
This is complete and utter rubbish conjured up liberal capitalist media.
Venezuela is welfare-capitalist at the very best. State ownership does mean socialism; otherwise Saudi Arabia would be socialist given that its oil is state owned.
Isaiah Gray
>North Korea is still standing
I don't know what you mean by standing, starving probably, Russian Federation is 10 times better than North Korea.
Cameron Powell
It's like clockwork with these people.
>"Wasn't real socialism!" >"It's those damn American's that infiltrated our government!" >"People aren't starving, it's all lies!"
Literally that entire article summed up.
Also Saudi Arabia basically is a Socialist state and will absolutely collapse eventually if they don't quickly diversify their economy and get people weened off the social programs.
Luke Torres
>military equals of the west American disinfo gone too far, desu....
Grayson Hughes
>starving Veeky Forums's ignorance of what 25 years is works both ways. >Trumps presidency happened 25 years ago >The Arduous March is happening now.
Bentley White
Saudi Arabia is literally an illiberal socialist monarchy
Luis Rivera
I know Venezuela is in a very dire situation, but what I meant was why hasnt it collapsed like a house of cards, as you put it, Maduro is still there, his government is still there and Venezuela is still the revolutionary bolivarian republic or whatever the fuck they call themselves
Adrian White
It's really unfair to compare the USSR to North Korea, OP. The USSR was a superpower with a legitimate, if propagandizing, education system. People had some basic human dignity and although the state and communism were priorities, they were given luxury goods and had reasonable standards of living and a sense of self.
That's why for all of these reasons ( ), the economic and financial strains on the USSR took a toll greater than in North Korea. The higher Soviet leadership was not as dominant over the Politburo, especially after Brezhnev, so political dissent within the state as a reaction to the economy in the form of Gorbachev's Social Democrats and Yeltsin's federalists led to the downfall of hardcore commies. Popular discontent made Western-style institutions somewhat attractive to politicians and citizens and the Soviet government was unable to control information well enough to keep people locked in a propaganda fueled time-warp like in North Korea.
>pic unrelated
Cooper Gray
>North Koreans don't have a sense of self You need to lay off the Western propaganda, son.
Gavin Gomez
They aren't literally a hivemind, but it's hard to deny that the North Korean state has been much more successful than the Russians ever were at separating and controlling the population. Obviously people won't totally believe in the Kim dynasty God-king thing, but there's absolutely a different mindset there than in the USSR, especially in the state, that makes political change difficult.
Colton Morales
Apparently you are unable to tell the difference between other Soviet Republic and Warsaw pact countries, faggot. Czechoslovakia and Hungary got absolutely shafted by the USSR thanks to mandated imports and fixed currency exchange rate.
William Turner
It is to drive make shale non-competitive.
David Carter
They decided communism didn't work
Julian Jackson
No it is not
Also, the US and SK provided more to NK 1993-2006
Ethan Jenkins
[Citation needed]
Joseph Butler
Lol Trump
Connor Russell
I really doubt he targeted the jews because of their ethnicity.
More likely he just purged all the educated intelligentsia that comprised the "old guard" with new, more following and a loyal breed of peasants.
Brayden Foster
purged and replaced*
Anthony Jones
Dude Stalin fucking hated Jews
Justin Diaz
>Communism doesn't work!
But OP, that's literally your asnwer. It fell behind economically. An authoritarian state with central planning can not match the productive capabilities of a functioning free market economy. Story ends here. After it was clear they were not going to nuke each other, there wasn't really a Cold War. It was more like a Cold Waiting For the USSR's Inevitable Collapse.
The Russian Federation is going to collapse just like that, for same reason. The freer the people, the stronger the economy. They just can't develop with their model of governance. Accordingly, every penny they spend goes not into the development of life and the market in Russia but into instruments to keep everyone else from developing so they can keep their relatively powerful position.
Mason Harris
>implying it was ever not behind
I remember reading a book by Roy Medvedev saying that the USSR under Stalin had less agricultural production than was produced under the Czars. I think the book was Krushchev: The Years in Power.
Liam Ramirez
Most the Soviet income was from oil, and the Saudis (under strong American support, obviously) sold oil at a much lower price, thus competitively bankrupting the Soviets, and incurring huge bureaucratic failure. EVERYTHING else is secondary
