Fall of the USSR, Yugoslavia...

[Scary Monster]

Yo comrades, Im looking for some good books which detail exactly why the USSR and Yugoslavia collapsed. As I understand so far:

-Both these countries' economies started failing when its leaders began instituting capitalist/"free" market reforms.

-Gorbachev could pretty much be solely responsible for the USSR's collapse with him liberalizing Russia's infrastructure and dismissing government and military officials who were against his policies.

-Tito took out a loan from the IMF, putting Yugoslavia in billions of dollars' worth of debt. This contributed to its downfall- exacerbating ethnic strife (as with any other country during a crisis, such as the US right now and the rise of racism and anti-immigration), and the west invading Yugoslavia (in the 80s or 90s?).

Beyond these basic points, i dont know much else about the subject. I want to be able to show in a debate how capitalism and liberalization is mainly to blame for the failure of socialist countries (socialist at least in a liberal's and right winger's view) in the 20th century. Thanks in advance ;)

[bailey_187]

Bahman Azad - Heroic Struggle, bitter defeat
Keeran and Kenny - Socialism betrayed

However, these are not perfect, much more work needs to be done on this.

[Spawn of Stalin]

If you want a good read on how Gorbachev destroyed the USSR read Perestroika: The Complete Collapse of Revisionism by Harpal Brar, it's an excellent book. Available from the Stalin Society and Northstar Compass

[punisa]

-Tito took out a loan from the IMF, putting Yugoslavia in billions of dollars' worth of debt. This contributed to its downfall- exacerbating ethnic strife (as with any other country during a crisis, such as the US right now and the rise of racism and anti-immigration), and the west invading Yugoslavia (in the 80s or 90s?).

Tito never took IMF loan, this happend after his death (1980.) and west have never actually "invaded" Yugoslavia - unleass you mean in a financial way.
Contrary to some reactionary stories on how Yugoslavia was built into the socialist superpower by taking huge loans from the west, the truth is completely different.

Just for comparison, Croatia (one of the 6 newfound republic) today has almost 10 times larger foreign debt then Yugoslavia had as a whole.


It was built by the working people through huge "worker's actions" - that is voluntary labour, no money involved and no force used.
This was the triumph of the working class.
One picture from the worker's actions:
http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/1901/mavrovo.jpg

I have dozens of great books, but unfortunatlly almost all our in Croatian.
Perhaps you would be interested in learning a bit about how Yugoslavia came about in the first place?
Here's a nice article which also mentions IMF and how Tito's Yugoslavia was devasted after he died:
http://www.oecdrccseoul.org/article/a-history-of-yugoslavia/

[Scary Monster]

Tito never took IMF loan, this happend after his death (1980.) and west have never actually "invaded" Yugoslavia - unleass you mean in a financial way.
Contrary to some reactionary stories on how Yugoslavia was built into the socialist superpower by taking huge loans from the west, the truth is completely different.

Just for comparison, Croatia (one of the 6 newfound republic) today has almost 10 times larger foreign debt then Yugoslavia had as a whole.


It was built by the working people through huge "worker's actions" - that is voluntary labour, no money involved and no force used.
This was the triumph of the working class.
One picture from the worker's actions:
http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/1901/mavrovo.jpg

I have dozens of great books, but unfortunatlly almost all our in Croatian.
Perhaps you would be interested in learning a bit about how Yugoslavia came about in the first place?
Here's a nice article which also mentions IMF and how Tito's Yugoslavia was devasted after he died:
http://www.oecdrccseoul.org/article/a-history-of-yugoslavia/

Wow thanks for the useful info! Im gonna go hunting for these books tomorrow. :thumbup1: The more I learn about 20th century struggles and socialism, the more I see how much ive been lied to all my life by teachers, professors, textbooks and our media, or being told only half-truths...im continually surprised by how much effort goes into demonizing workers' struggles, after I learn about these subjects. At the very least, it's never mentioned how well workers can manage themselves and an entire economy, which is shown when looking at your country's history, or Argentina after its economic collapse, when the corporations and government just left the people to themselves. But yeah i forgot the loan was taken after Tito died. And i called the NATO involvement there an invasion because, didnt they actually have troops in there? And they bombed Yugoslavia also, in the late '90s. Or am i confusing them with another country near them in the Balkans? What was their purpose for being there exactly?

[punisa]

But yeah i forgot the loan was taken after Tito died. And i called the NATO involvement there an invasion because, didnt they actually have troops in there? And they bombed Yugoslavia also, in the late '90s. Or am i confusing them with another country near them in the Balkans? What was their purpose for being there exactly?

NATO indeed bombarded "Yugoslavia" in late 90's (1999) if we'll follow the terminology closely. But that Yugoslavia had little to do with the actual socialist Yugoslavia, basically it was just 2 countries - Serbia and Montenegro.

I know, it tends to get a little bit confusing :lol:
Let me try and give you some breakdown:

1. Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1918–1943)
- basically a monarchy, but built upon the idea that all south Slavs should be united as one.
You see, south Slavic nations (Croats,Serbs,Slovenes etc) were controlled by larger powers (Ottoman empire, Asutro-Hungary,Bulgaria etc) for centuries, a millenia in fact.
Thus in the 19th century a movement for Slavic unity originated, kingdom of Yugoslavia was first attempt at this.
(useful link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Yugoslavia)

2. Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (1943–1992)
- that's the one we usually reffer to when talking about Tito's socialist Yugoslavia.
(useful link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Federal_Yugoslavia)

3. Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (1992–2003)
- With the collapse of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1991 and 1992, only Serbia and Montenegro agreed to maintain the Yugoslav state, and established a new constitution for a new Yugoslavia in 1992. With the collapse of communism across Eastern Europe, the new state followed the wave of change, and did not revive Communist party structure (which had already been dissolved in 1990). It abandoned communist symbolism: the red star was removed from the national flag, and the communist coat of arms was replaced the with a double-headed eagle with the arms of both Serbia and Montenegro within it.
- union was renamed into Serbia and Montenegro in 2003 (they also split later on in 2006 and are now two separate republics)
(useful link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Republic_of_Yugoslavia)

The last one was bombarded in 1999.
Despite still bearing the name Yugoslavia in the late 90's, you can basically think of it as Serbia.
Nato attacked Serbia during a so called Kosovo war (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosovo_War).
Eventually the events led to Kosovo (being a part of Serbia) declaring independence, mostly secured by the US.

These are just basic breakdowns of chronologies, there is a large "collection" of bitter wars fought throughout the 90's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yugoslav_Wars).

Enjoy :)

[Scary Monster]

Excellent. Thanks a lot ;)

[mykittyhasaboner]

Michael Parenti's "Black Shirts and Reds" is a great (and short) book on the overthrow of the Soviet Union and eastern European socialist countries (though he doesn't talk much about Yugoslavia). He goes into considerable detail outlining the kind of "shock therapy" transition to a "free market".

http://www.michaelparenti.org/BlackShirts.html

[Barry Lyndon]

It could be said that in some ways the Soviet Union never fully recovered from the devastation of World War II. Almost immediately after Nazi Germany was defeated, with 27 million dead and most of their major cities in rubble, the USSR was confronted with a Cold War. So in addition to building large parts of its infrastructure up from scratch, the Soviet Union simultaneously got dragged into an arms race with the United States, diverting huge amounts of money and resources into its military(and also aiding anti-imperialist struggles in Korea, Vietnam, Angola, Mozambique, and Nicaragua) that could have been used on domestic needs. This was the last thing it needed. It was a race that they were doomed to lose, because the United States had a gigantic industrial base entirely untouched by a war that had been fought far away from its shores.


Due to its enormous size, its possession of nuclear weapons, and large standing army, the Soviet Union was able to hold itself together for another 45 years. But ultimately the economic and military pressures were too great, and it imploded on itself. I don't buy this garbage about the USSR falling because it went 'revisionist' under Khruschev or Gorbachev or whomeverschev. The material conditions that existed, flowing from the fact that the Soviet revolution had failed to spread to Western Europe in 1917-23 and thus secure an advanced industrial base, doomed the Soviet Union to become a repressive garrison state that would collapse onto itself, just as Trotsky predicted. None of this is to downplay the achievements of the Soviet people, indeed it is a testament to their amazing heroism, self-sacrifice, and determination that they maintained the Soviet Union in the face of the capitalist onslaught for over 70 years, and usually being held hostage by venal, brutal, and corrupt leadership.

[Ismail]

The Soviet Union fell because of its revisionist economic system post-1950's which undermined central planning, coupled with the fact that it had no interest in spreading any revolutions and had infighting in the 1980's between pro-state-capitalist and pro-market-capitalist factions, with the latter enjoying the support of local SSR cliques. By 1991 there was simply no reason to keep the USSR together in the minds of the bourgeoisie of the various Soviet Republics.

See: http://www.oneparty.co.uk/html/book/ussrmenu.html


I don't buy this garbage about the USSR falling because it went 'revisionist' under Khruschev or GorbachevNot even Gorbachev? Really? The guy who said he wanted (http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv6n1/gorbach.htm) the USSR to fall and wanted communism destroyed? The guy who said this?

"By moving towards a market, we are not swerving from the road of socialism. What had collapsed was not socialism but Stalinism."
(Mikhail S. Gorbachev: Report to 28th Congress, CPSU, in: [I]Keesing's Record of World Events, Volume 36; p. 37,615).

The guy who openly liquidated the vanguard role of the CPSU, and thus defacing a vital element of Marxism-Leninism? The guy who became an open social-democrat after 1991?

Of course it is the Brezhnevites who talk about how Gorby came in and ruined everything, but even Maoists and Hoxhaists recognize that Gorby played a large part in dismantling the USSR due to the economic disaster known as Perestroika, which caused many people to question the validity of Soviet "socialism" even in its market form.


... diverting huge amounts of money and resources into its military(and also aiding anti-imperialist struggles in Korea, Vietnam, Angola, Mozambique, and Nicaragua) that could have been used on domestic needs.Let's reword that: "Huge amounts of its money into the military to oppress the Warsaw Pact states and to secure neo-colonies such as Afghanistan and Mongolia, the aiding of rebels in countries as part of the inter-imperialist Cold War, and failing to act as a country under the dictatorship of the proletariat." The only country in that the Soviets didn't try to turn into an outright neo-colony was Nicaragua, because the Nicaraguan Government actually did want to claim some pretense of being "non-aligned."

There was nothing socialist or internationalist about the Soviets in-re sending aid to rebellions. The Soviets generally backed rightist military rulers who used their "vanguard parties" as a cover for rule by juntas, such as in Ethiopia, Mali, Somalia,* Angola, Mozambique, Algeria and Libya.**

* For what it's worth, at least Somalia had a popular, independent-minded government and condemned Soviet social-imperialism after 1976.
** When the USSR fell, el-Qadhafi did say "out of two imperialist superpowers, only one now exists."