Economic Degradation in the USSR and Eastern Bloc

[Illegalitarian]

In all of my years reading about former-Socialist states (we'll call them socialist/communist states for the sake of discussion, please spare me "BUT STATE CAPITALISM" :glare: ) there have always been a few questions that I never quite found any satisfying answers to with regards to the economies of these states, so I'm going to bounce a few of these questions off of you chaps and see if I can get some more insight:

1. Homelessness.. the communist world of old boasted literally no homelessness, but seeing as how these states made up a sizable portion of the world's population I guess I just find this one kind of hard to believe. Was there truly no homelessness, and if so, to what extent did it really exist?

2. Collectivization. From what I have gathered over the years, collectivization and other methods of land distribution were pretty successful in the eastern bloc due to the fact that it was paced well, but it's no secret that collectivization in both the early Soviet Union and China hit major snags, and by major snags I mean.. well, a lot of people biting the dust.

What I have never been able to gather, however, is whether or not this was due to any sort of inherent problems with collectivization as a whole or mere peasant resistance to Stalin and Mao's rapid process of collectivization.

A big problem here seems to be a huge shortage of livestock after attempts to implement these policies, yet I've never seen anything indicating why? Did the animals all die during the process somehow? Did they get together and say "fuck this" and leave? Is this what Animal Farm is based on?


3. Wealth disparities: I understand that money didn't actually play a big role on the micro level in these nations since the state provided most basic needs to people, and I am also fully aware that, clearly, these countries were not classless paradises, but what was the wealth gap actually like in the former USSR, eastern bloc and Mao's China? Did most people live relatively the same sort of life, or was there an abundance of upper-class people living the good life just as there was/is in the US? I can't imagine inequality was even remotely close to what it was in the west, but again, obviously not a utopia.

4. Why, exactly, were there such restrictions on freedom of movement? "If no such restrictions existed everyone would have left, because freedum" seems a bit too simplistic, though plausible I suppose.

5. Consumer Goods shortages: We've all heard the stories of people standing in huge lines to get basic goods and those who pined after western items such as jeans, etc, but how bad was this problem in these nations? From my understanding this wasn't really an issue at all up until the 80's, but just how severe was the issue? Was it due to the massive amount of military spending going on in these nations and the over emphasis on industrial output over consumer goods, or was it some problem inherit to economic planning? Did being cut off from trade/aid with the west have anything to do with this?

6. Economic disparity with the west: Why did these nations lag so far behind the west in standards of living and general economic growth? I understand that it's pretty disingenuous to compare the economy of a part of the world that had *just* started to industrialize in the 30's and was then ravaged by war in the 40's to be anywhere near the levels of growth of countries who had previously existing, extensive industrial bases, especially considering that these countries were barred from trade and receiving aid from the majority of other nations on earth for all of those years, but is that it? I think that's a fair assessment of Euro-socialist states, but what of, say, the disparities between South and North Korea? Or East and West Germany?

7.The Great Collapse: What exactly brought it all down? I've heard everything from "Gorbachev was an anti-communist in league with the west" to "the USSR out-spending itself in the arms race combined with civil unrest caused it to fall apart", but it surely seems more multifaceted than that? There are plenty of nations that do extremely poorly economically, far more so than the old USSR/Eastern bloc did, and you don't see them scrapping their entire socioeconomic system. I expect western influences were at play, but to what extent? How exactly did the west coax a sizable chunk of the world into scrapping every single institution it held dear for the past 70+ years? I can't imagine that most people in these nations were happy with such reforms.



I wrote this in a hurry and it's not very uniform, I realize this, but some of you lot have a several year leg-up on me when it comes to studying and analyzing these nations and your input would be great appreciated!

[tuwix]

1. Homelessness.. the communist world of old boasted literally no homelessness, but seeing as how these states made up a sizable portion of the world's population I guess I just find this one kind of hard to believe. Was there truly no homelessness, and if so, to what extent did it really exist?


Besides it was not communist at all, there homelessness was only matter of choice. This problem was solved by getting from bourgeoisie their excessive flats and dividing it to the rest and then successive construction.



2. Collectivization. From what I have gathered over the years, collectivization and other methods of land distribution were pretty successful in the eastern bloc due to the fact that it was paced well, but it's no secret that collectivization in both the early Soviet Union and China hit major snags, and by major snags I mean.. well, a lot of people biting the dust.

Actually there was no collectivization but nationalization. Even cooperatives made there for agriculture production were controlled and ruled by state. It was state capitalism.




A big problem here seems to be a huge shortage of livestock after attempts to implement these policies, yet I've never seen anything indicating why? Did the animals all die during the process somehow? Did they get together and say "fuck this" and leave? Is this what Animal Farm is based on?


It is simple. Authorities wanted to increase a level of life. So they were increasing salaries. In classic capitalist countries this would effect in higher production and higher prices. But not in central planned economy. Greed is not any incentive there. Then you have shortage...




3. Wealth disparities: I understand that money didn't actually play a big role on the micro level in these nations since the state provided most basic needs to people, and I am also fully aware that, clearly, these countries were not classless paradises, but what was the wealth gap actually like in the former USSR, eastern bloc and Mao's China? Did most people live relatively the same sort of life, or was there an abundance of upper-class people living the good life just as there was/is in the US? I can't imagine inequality was even remotely close to what it was in the west, but again, obviously not a utopia.



There were really more egalitarian societies than classic capitalist ones. There were a completely different class structure. The lowest one were workers. The upper ones were composed of real owners of state - bureaucrats and a black market traders. And the black market traders seem to be richer but they definitely had less power and they were pursued by police which was called a militia.



4. Why, exactly, were there such restrictions on freedom of movement? "If no such restrictions existed everyone would have left, because freedum" seems a bit too simplistic, though plausible I suppose.


Actually it was only a dead law. It was easily avoidable because it was not controlled very much tn the most of the time. But it was an remnant of Stalinism that was rule of psychopath.



5. Consumer Goods shortages: We've all heard the stories of people standing in huge lines to get basic goods and those who pined after western items such as jeans, etc, but how bad was this problem in these nations? From my understanding this wasn't really an issue at all up until the 80's, but just how severe was the issue? Was it due to the massive amount of military spending going on in these nations and the over emphasis on industrial output over consumer goods, or was it some problem inherit to economic planning? Did being cut off from trade/aid with the west have anything to do with this?



As I wrote previously:Authorities wanted to increase a level of life. So they were increasing salaries. In classic capitalist countries this would effect in higher production and higher prices. But not in central planned economy. Greed is not any incentive there. Then you have shortage...



6. Economic disparity with the west: Why did these nations lag so far behind the west in standards of living and general economic growth? I understand that it's pretty disingenuous to compare the economy of a part of the world that had *just* started to industrialize in the 30's and was then ravaged by war in the 40's to be anywhere near the levels of growth of countries who had previously existing, extensive industrial bases, especially considering that these countries were barred from trade and receiving aid from the majority of other nations on earth for all of those years, but is that it? I think that's a fair assessment of Euro-socialist states, but what of, say, the disparities between South and North Korea? Or East and West Germany?


These countries were not oriented on growth very much due to their bureaucratic nature. The classic capitalist were not oriented too, but they had too find a way to compete with state capitalist ones. And they applied Keynesian economics that allow a growth in more egalitarian way. Then they were growing faster.




7.The Great Collapse: What exactly brought it all down? I've heard everything from "Gorbachev was an anti-communist in league with the west" to "the USSR out-spending itself in the arms race combined with civil unrest caused it to fall apart", but it surely seems more multifaceted than that? There are plenty of nations that do extremely poorly economically, far more so than the old USSR/Eastern bloc did, and you don't see them scrapping their entire socioeconomic system. I expect western influences were at play, but to what extent? How exactly did the west coax a sizable chunk of the world into scrapping every single institution it held dear for the past 70+ years? I can't imagine that most people in these nations were happy with such reforms.


It is complicated issue. But I think the most significant was the Gorbatchev factor. The soviet economy was in stagnation due to bureaucracy ruling over an economy. Then Gorbatchev was elected to reform it. But he was not able to control effects of the reforms. However, I think that this kind of economy had to collapse sooner or later.

[The Red Star Rising]

From what I understand from my father and my own understanding of the subject, a great deal of the increasing corruption, mismanagement, and general idiocy that would lead to the Soviet Union's demise can be traced to Brezhnev. He redirected the focus of the USSR's economy away from Kruschev's attempts at gearing the traditionally Heavy Industry ladened Soviet Union right back towards the already overmassive military (one does not need a military with a manpower count in the eight digits when they already have enough nuclear weapons to make any hypothetical NATO assault on the Warsaw Pact suicide by atomic fury!) He firmly entrenched the increasingly geriatric bureacracy and his administration greatly slacked off in purging corruption. And he made a great many diplomatic missteps that helped seal the Union's eventual fate.

In the 70s, America was at a low point. It had just lost the war in Vietnam, it's military's morale plummeted, recruitment was at an all time low and drug use was rampant, people were seriously starting to have doubts about America's supposed might, and was likely one more Vietnam grade blunder away from ruin (had the civil rights act failed, maybe not even that). We're talking "if America decided to invade Iran over the embassy incident, and proceeded to lose another assymetric war (which it probably would have), the country had a very good chance of not living to see the 90s" level precarious.

This by all rights should have been the Soviet Union's time to surpass the United States but the administration was not up to the task of taking the USSR from a middle income to a high income society. It was not up to the task of keeping corruption from rotting the core of the Soviet Union, it was not up to the task of reining in the Red Army's hunger so that Civilian oriented Light Industry and Service industry (this was the transitory point from the Industrial to the Information age after all, the famous shift from manufacturing to service in developed capitalist nations). And it sure as hell was not up to the task of selling it's ideology to the rest of the Warsaw pact or controlling the rising sentiment of ultranationalism that's done so much to make Eastern Europe a hotbed for Neo-Nazis (why Eastern Europe I'll never understand, didn't they read their beloved Fuehrer's General plan Ost?) these days.

When Gorbachev got the country he got a country that was standing on the edge of collapse while America got a fanatic hellbent on ending the cold war in America's favor by any means possible. And he did try to reform it, but he couldn't control where the reforms went, or rather wasn't able to harness the genie in the bottle he unleashed.


How the Soviet Union rates as a communist society is described in better detail above. This post is just from my understanding of why the Soviet Union went from a nation with a very real chance of being there to bury America in the ashes of history and standing triumphant at cold war America's nadir to being the one getting buried.

Had more capable administrations been in place instead of Brezhnev, the second world would probably still be here. And had America tried one more for one more war over a diplomatic incident, the first world would either be nonexistent or lead from Europe.

But now I'm getting into alternate history and if I wanted that I'd probably just play hearts of Iron some more or discuss it in more appropriate venues.

[Illegalitarian]

And it sure as hell was not up to the task of selling it's ideology to the rest of the Warsaw pact or controlling the rising sentiment of ultranationalism that's done so much to make Eastern Europe a hotbed for Neo-Nazis (why Eastern Europe I'll never understand, didn't they read their beloved Fuehrer's General plan Ost?) these days.

Classic grass is greener on the other side syndrome coupled with the Nazi's tendency to appeal to the complacent and conservative nature of people who were not happy to say the least about the USSR's rapid social and economic changes, that affected the landed peasantry most of all




Had more capable administrations been in place instead of Brezhnev, the second world would probably still be here. And had America tried one more for one more war over a diplomatic incident, the first world would either be nonexistent or lead from Europe.



The cold war didn't really end, honestly, it was just put on hold for a few years.

The USSR was no different than any other country goaded into neoliberal policies by western-controlled world finance over the years. They were in a bad spot and were promised the world if they ushered in reform, so they took the deal. Only difference is their society was too unstable to survive rapid liberalization, and fell apart in the same way Yugoslavia did, dismantled by the IMF and other such groups operating under western political influence.

And then what changed? No more extensive social systems that helped millions, no more top-notch health care or education, no more emphasis on state-driven industrialization and progress in the fields of science and engineering, and most devastating of all, no more economic system geared towards basic needs above all else.

Everything that was good about the USSR, everything that worked, was stripped from it, leaving all of its inefficiencies and aspects of its oppressive nature intact. State enterprise was divided up between a handful of old party members who had all of the right connections to become successful oligarchs while the average citizen, who lived relatively well in the USSR, saw an unreal drop in standards of living, having to fend for themselves in an economic climate they could not survive in forced upon them by a new regime they did not want, leading to massive spikes in unemployment and homelessness, huge drops in life expectancy and a huge wealth disparities. Which started the saying "everything they told us about communism was a lie, but everything they said about capitalism was true".


Russia still hasn't recovered, socially or economically, from the dismantling of the USSR by Yeltsin and his neoliberal reformists - who came to prominence because of pressure by the west and the many organizations that represent its interests - but it's now back to a point where it can successfully rival western imperialism and legitimately threaten the growing hegemony of the west since the late 80's.



This is why true change cannot come in the form of shady top-down reform from the same people that have made change necessary. They almost always change just enough of society to make it seem as if true reform has been implemented while holding onto all of their power in reality.

Real change can only come from the bottom up, through honest grassroots efforts.

[consuming negativity]

A big problem here seems to be a huge shortage of livestock after attempts to implement these policies, yet I've never seen anything indicating why? Did the animals all die during the process somehow? Did they get together and say "fuck this" and leave? Is this what Animal Farm is based on?

:lol:

---

For 5/6, I think that can be chalked up to just what the economy was based on. Simply put, the economies of the USSR et al. were smaller, had less to work with, and focused a larger percentage of their resources on competing with the US. From the standpoint of the US, it is simple tactics. Strategically, an invasion would have been much too costly with or without the nuclear arms race. The USSR devoted way too much to making sure that that was never an option. So why hit them where they're strong when you can hit them where they're weak? They're skimping everywhere else, so simply starve them out and force them to keep spending too much of their money on not being invaded.

And, eventually, it worked. Over time, the relative living standards in the West began to rise at a faster pace than those of the Soviets and their satellites. The kicker is that they thought by bringing capitalism to their countries, they could mend the gap. Nope. All they did was prove how capitalism works in the first place: it takes wealth from one area and siphons it up the corporate ladder. Call Putin what you will, but he understands that. Which is why he's busy trying to regain the economic hegemony of the Russians over the rest of the former Socialist Republics. He has to regain the ground they lost unless he wants to see the communists take back over again, because otherwise, Russia would end up just how it was before the communists took over the first time... playing second fiddle to the rest of Europe as an economically backwards dictatorship.