Help with a paper?

[Nolan]

The question I want to answer with this is: Why did the Soviet Union collapse?

I need to come up with a thesis statement and outline.

[The Ben G]

Because revisionists took over.

[Spawn of Stalin]

It didn't collapse, it was pushed, that's pretty much your answer, even throughout revisionism, perestroika and glasnost, the SU remained incredibly strong, granted it had its fair share of problems, but superpowers don't just collapse, so yeah, it was pushed.

[h0m0revolutionary]

Economic bankruptcy, it couldn't compete with market capitalism.

State capitalism has always showed itself incapable of doing so.

Yeah i said it! ;)

[Psy]

Economic bankruptcy, it couldn't compete with market capitalism.

State capitalism has always showed itself incapable of doing so.

Yeah i said it! ;)

Close but it was more that the USSR could not paper over the global crisis in the falling rate of profit like the market capitalist nations (this reduced revenue the USSR made off exports). Perestroika simply made things worse as it exposed producers to market forces directly in a time when the world economy was in decline and the USSR domestic economy was weak.

So while market capitalists were displacing the crisis through time through creating debt and the USSR was simply telling its producers to sink or swim.

[scarletghoul]

I wish I knew more about this. Does anyone have links to some good pieces of writing on it ?
It didn't collapse, it was pushed, that's pretty much your answer, even throughout revisionism, perestroika and glasnost, the SU remained incredibly strong, granted it had its fair share of problems, but superpowers don't just collapse, so yeah, it was pushed.
Surely revisionism was a big contributor to this, as it alienated the party/state from the workers

[Nolan]

Economic bankruptcy, it couldn't compete with market capitalism.

State capitalism has always showed itself incapable of doing so.

Yeah i said it! ;)

Ok, I'll just go to Mises.org and ask them.

[Proletarian Ultra]

Ok, I'll just go to Mises.org and ask them.

The bankruptcy part is true. There was a rolling debt crisis across the East Bloc. Same thing that happened to the Latin American juntas earlier in the '80's.

[MQDuck]

You'll find no consensus answer to your question even from a group that isn't so ideologically mixed like the folk on this forum. Here are three important factors in the fall of the Soviet Union:

1) Economic Cold Warfare. The arms race with the United States restricted the industrially inferior Soviet Union from using its resources for non-military purposes, like bettering the lives of its citizens.

2) Bureaucratic inefficiency. There was no true workers' control of the means of production in the Soviet Union. Instead, there was a gigantic bureaucracy that was both inefficient and run by people who tended to look after their own interests.

3) Class consciousness. The bureaucratic elite desired to finally put a rest to this socialist nonsense and reconstitute themselves as the outright ruling class. Contrary to popular belief, capitalism was restored by these sorts, not by the masses demanding that industry be taken from them and put in private hands. The masses wanted civil liberties, the elite gave them wage slavery.

[MQDuck]

Also, though it probably won't do you much good before your paper is due, I highly recommend reading The Soviet Century by Moshe Lewin if you want to understand the Soviet Union.

[Nolan]

Any good web sources or articles?

[AK]

State capitalism
Some plain ol' capitalism
bureaucracy
power not in hands of the working class


Because revisionists took over.
What are you, some kinda Stalinist now?

[Q]

Any good web sources or articles?

Socialism Today (http://www.socialismtoday.org/133/index.html) had an issue about the subject last November, given the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall and all that. Maybe it helps.

[Sir Comradical]

Look for 'Liberman reforms'. This might help.

[Sir Comradical]

The transformation of the Soviet Union from an underdeveloped peasant society into an industrial superpower was because production under Stalin involved allocating resources for large projects such as the production of power plants, steel mills and tractors for mass agriculture. Under this regime, factories didn't have to worry about revenues minus expenses equalling profits, all they had to do was reach their quota with the raw materials provided to them. Ordinary citizens were making huge sacrifices in this period by living austere lives as food was rationed (also the famines) and consumer goods were not given much of a priority.

This system changed with Krushchev (see Liberman reforms), the primary goal of production shifted from meeting quotas to making profits - a kind of internal liberalization. Resource allocation changed and priority was given for consumer production which gave consumers more choice in being able to buy better clothing, alcohol, musical instruments etc which they didn't have as much of before, but it slowed down the development of big projects.

Something like that.

When I go to the supermarket, I think to myself how much better it would be if the resources wasted to meaningless choices (look at all the consumer crap in the shopping centres) could be spent to fixing the big problems like investing more money into research for a new energy source or whatever. Ultimately the economy boils down to how resources are allocated and how much we decide to spend on short term consumption as opposed to long term investment. As much as I consider Stalin a neurotic despot, one lesson we can learn from his regime is that it's much easier for a society to produce what it needs by planning production.

[The Inquisitor]

I'm sure you'd get a better grade if you just turned in a slip of paper saying "Reagan single-handedly did it". :p

[CartCollector]

I think Gorbachev played a large role in the fall of the Soviet Union. Imagine if there was anti-revisionist hardliner elected General Secretary in 1984 instead of someone willing to play nice with capitalists. It's possible that the USSR would still be around and the Cold War would still be going on today. Or maybe one or the other side would get impatient with the stalemate and start a hot war. Who knows. But a West under Reagan and Thatcher and the USSR under an anti-revisionist would be a very tense world to say the least.