Question on USSR

[Subversive Pessimist]

Why did the USSR fall apart? Why couldn't they kept going? Did they really need a new government? Wouldn't that just be to hand the problems over to other persons, creating a new government? Wouldn't they have the same economic problems?

[Hate Is Art]

Well, the fall of the USSR is quite complex. It was almost destined to fail right from the start.

Russia was in no way ready for the huge undertaking of a Socialist society. It was backwards, huge ammounts of the population couldn't read or write, only 15% were industrial proles who were targetted by the Bolshevik party. They had spent 4 years fighting a disastarous war, 9/10 of the Russian soldiers had been killed or injured. They were economicaly suffering, bread prices were soaring and hygiene was a crazy idea only imaginable to dreamers and sci-fi writers. It a word the population were in no means ready, barely willing, to undertake the huge Socialist dream of Lenin and Trotsky.

Russia is geographicaly, huge, making the governing of it almost impossible. Stretching halfway around the globe, it has huge culture differences. The peasents in the south, the Mongols in the east, the Europeans in the west. Communism was not suited to the social conditions of nineteen hundreds Russia.

The climate also causes a problem with very poor conditions for almost everything, the growing and production of crops was often resting on a needle point of failure. One slip and there would be famine.

These huge problems faced the Bolshevik's as they took control, Communism was not completly doomed to fail though, Stalin's control of the CCCP was what really sealed it.

Stalin brought fear and a swift industrialisation to Russia. Killing millions and dragging Russia kicking, screaming and often bleeding into the 20th Century. The fear and dictatorship he set up, killing oponents and ruling with a style to match his name, was to haunt the CCCP for the rest of it's pitifull "Socialist" future. A back-drop of lies and re-written history, a fear of the knock on the door in the night, siberian work camps for the "counter-revolutionarys"

Everything was deciet, no one really understood Socialism and no one feared to speak up. Russia was always doomed, it's pro-longed miserable existance just shows the fear of authority Stalin (and Lenin to a lesser extent) imbued upon his population.

[Subversive Pessimist]

I see what you mean. However, I still don't understand why the USSR had to fall. The problems the people in government had, would still be problems the new government had to deal with, right?

[Hate Is Art]

Ever heard the phrase "the grass is always greener on the other side" well to the people, after years of stagnation and moving sideways, Socialism was not creating the kind of society they had dreamt of.

Post 1960 real advances ceased to be made because the Socialist infa-structure couldn't cope with the flaws in the system that had been set up.

Russia had had to watch the West get very rich over the past 40 years whilst the huge improvements in living conditions under Lenin and huge industrial gains of Stalin led to no progression under Kruschev and Breznev. Capitilism and the end of the USSR seemed the way forward to a better quality of life for the ordinary Russian population.

[Subversive Pessimist]

Post 1960 real advances ceased to be made because the Socialist infa-structure couldn't cope with the flaws in the system that had been set up.

Could you a few examples, please?


Russia had had to watch the West get very rich over the past 40 years whilst the huge improvements in living conditions under Lenin and huge industrial gains of Stalin led to no progression under Kruschev and Breznev.

Does this prove any of these?

1. Socialism is flawed
2. Implementing capitalism in a socialist system is not wise
3. Improvements in a socialist system stagnates, over time

[ComradeRed]

Does this prove any of these?

1. Socialism is flawed
2. Implementing capitalism in a socialist system is not wise
3. Improvements in a socialist system stagnates, over time Socialism is not flawed, where it was put into "practice" was flawed. You see, insead of going from a capitalism to socialism it went from feudalism to "socialism". It was a state capitalism.

Yes, implementing capitalism in socialism is bad!

Improvements in a socialist system, like that in a capitalist one, if not improved in a great length of time, fail becoming an improvement.

[Subversive Pessimist]

What do you mean by state capitalism? That the officials are the ruling class, while the workers are... the opressed?

[ComradeRed]

That's leninism, state capitalism is in the che lives dictionary, one of the stickies in this forum.

[ComradeRed]

State Capitalism

1. Any form of capitalism is which the state plays a significant role beyond protecting private property. 2. Term used by some anarchists, Trotskyists and others to refer to the economic policies of the USSR (State monopoly capitalism), either during it's entire existence or a subset of it's existence 3. A welfare state 4. Government policies which redistribute wealth upwards (corporate welfare) such as the military-industrial complex in the United States.

Further Reading

State Capitalism in Russia - Tony Cliff
Against the Theory of State Captialism - Ted Grant

[Louis Pio]

The theory of state capitalism is greatly flawed. But Ted Grant wrote about that as we can see from your copy paste.

No, Leninism is not oppressing the workers. Actually it's building on the workers, in opposition to for example maoism that builds on the most backward layers ie. the peasants.

[Hate Is Art]

could you give a few examples please?

Post Stalin Krushchev entered the period known as the cold war, unless you count Stock Piling and advancing nuclear weapons as an advancement on society?

The only major breakthrough was the space race, which was mainly fuelled out of rivalry with the USA and the testing and development of the important first strike capability - The first strike capability being who could effectively launch and destroy the other country's major cities and nuclear bases before they got the ability to retaliate - so by putting orbiting satelites and men into space the USSR and the USA aimed to have the ability to effectively destroy each other. 1949 - 1990 was a time of nuclear weapons, who ever had the biggest had the upper hand.

Does this prove any of these?

1. Socialism is flawed

Not at all, Socialism is either a fully fledged form of government on it's own or the transitionary phase in between Capitilism and Communism. Socialism, with a vangaurd party, is particulary hard to do correctly, the Leninist notion that the state will wither away when it is no longer needed is a strange one as one of the main prioritys of the state is to perpuate itself and keep its self in existence.

I myself condone the transitionary stage but without creation of a state, if you want more details on this feel free to ask.

2. Implementing capitalism in a socialist system is not wise

100% correct, introducing something like profit or property in a system like Socialism or Communism is ridiculous. This kind of process is often called reformism and was in practice in the USSR from Kruschev onwards. Altering slight parts of the system to allow more freedoms. Reformism is particulary dangerous in conjuction with the Leninist notion of a state as it just leads to a reform and appeasement policy which in turn leads to the re-instation of the Capitilist system.

3. Improvements in a socialist system stagnates, over time

Not at all, bear with me for a while if this get's a bit long winded but it should [hopefully] help you understand a bit better.

What do the Romans, Greeks and Chinese all have in common? Well their societys produced some of the most amazing advances ever, the Romans produced running water, effective drainage, government. The Greeks had philosophers and early medicine and education. The Chinese invented gun-powder, the printing press and alphabet. These societys were fantastic and eons before their time. But up to a point they stagnated and could no longer support the splendour they had built. Revolution ended these societys because they had failed to be able to maintain their own existance. This was the first step.

To simplify Marx's writings society progresses thus;

Fuedalism -> Capitilism -> Socialism -> Communism

As each stage cease to expand and maintain itself it is replaced via a revolution.

Fuedalism -> Capitilism (e.g. The French Revolution) involves the bourgeois over-throwing the aristocrats and royals and introducing a Capitilist system.

Once Capitilism ceases to be able to uphold and maintain the society it has spawned the workers will take control of society and the means of production to create a new, completly different society. This would be socialism, a phase in between Communism and Capitilism to allow us to progress.

Socialism to Communism is trickier and the method of which is highly debablte and is in fact the source of the major division in leftist ideology.

Socialism can stagnate, but when it does it will move on thus stagnation won't exist. It will be progessive towards Communism, which in itself in a utopian society in which progress will like nothing anyone has ever witnessed before.

[kami888]

USSR could possibly be going for much longer time, the main reasons for the collapse were:

1. No motivation among the people. the new generations prefered to work less but recieve as much.

2. The lose in the Cold War: The new western technologies began breaking the iron curtain and people started seeing how much better (materialistically of course) the people in USA lived.

3. The failure of propaganda. People were promised democracy but got ended up with totalitarian rule.

4. Poor Gorbachev's policy. DO NOT BELIEVE IN WHAT WESTERN SOURCES TELL YOU. Gorbachev was not a super nice and clever human, ask any Russian and he will tell you: gorbachev was an idiot. The largest communist party in Russia still believes that gorbachev was the only reason for USSR to collapse.

5. Millions of other small and not-so-small reasons like explosion at chernobyl and war in afganistan.

Digital nirvana, you should not have so negative opinion about russia neither before, certainly nor after it became USSR.

I don't agree with any of the sayings that USSR had something of capitalism. Not at all. How can it be capitalism when the wealth is distributed as equally as possible among the people? USSR was totalitarian communism, which is - stalinism.

[Hate Is Art]

The points raised in the first post, apply to most Russian government, I am a supporter of the USSR but I am very critical of it. Russian was never going to be the model workers state by itself, world revolution was all that could have saved it.

In reference to point 2, the system's technological improvements had stagnated, they couldn't keep up, Socialism in Russia was always a dream.

[CubanFox]

I'm going to assume that you mean the why and when of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

When Konstantin Chernenko kicked the bucket in early '85, Mikhail Gorbachev took power in the USSR. He was committed to perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness). However, unlike Boris Yeltsin, he wanted to preserve the USSR while making it freer, from a civil liberties point of view.

With glasnost, the KGB had many of its powers taken away, and freedom of speech and press (hell, the Komsomol newspaper was banned in Czechoslovakia!) was allowed. Gorbachev wanted to make the peoples of the Soviet Union happy, so that he could preserve the country. Sadly, he did the exact opposite,

He opened the can of worms that is nationalism and anti-Russianism, particularly in the Baltic republics (the Estonian, Lithuanian and Latvian SSRs), which Stalin had annexed in 1940. A faltering Soviet economy provided a scapegoat for the nationalists, the exact thing they wanted to blame all their woes on: Russians.

And then, he opened an even bigger can of worms. Nationalism in the Eastern Bloc. With the Sinatra Doctrine that Gorbachev issued promising that the Red Army would not interfere, East Germans, Hungarians, Poles, Romanians and Czechoslovakians rose up against their governments and ended socialism in Eastern Europe. This sparked a "hey, if the Poles/Romanians/East Germans can do it, why can't we Turkmen/Estonians/Armenians?" mentality.

The proverbial ideological screws that were keeping the Soviet Union together were shot to pieces when the press announced the crimes of previous leaders. The peoples of the Soviet Union were losing faith.

In the face of a growing political maelstrom, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union gave up its monopoly on politics on February 7, 1990. On March 11, Lithuania declared independence. Within a year, the other republics declared independence, and the Soviet Union fell like a house of cards.

Today, 25% of Russians live below the poverty line, and the GDP has halved since the USSR's collapse. Many people in former republics like Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan still live as if it were 1400.

Though many terrible things collapsed with the USSR, many good things fell too. Education and healthcare being hit especially hard. So, in the end, the event was neither a great victory nor a great defeat for anybody.