Well, they did endure the greatest hardship a country has ever had to suffer, and ultimately prevailed. Really, on a grand time scale, one of the most amazing collective feats in human history. The suffering and the sacrifice are beyond anyone’s comprehension. And their totalitarian nature, having total fear of, and dedication to the state, most likely played a critical role.
I would like to hope that there’s not really a lesson to be learned there, though.
I can think of at least one other federal state where an attempt to leave was met with military force…
Russia had China-like levels of economic growth rates on the eve of the First World War, and Stalin practically gutted the Soviet army officer corps in his purges not to mention his blind refusal to see that Hitler was going to invade. True, industrialization might not have been as rapid without Stalin’s ruthless methods but on the other hand there would be a far more loyal population (there were countless Russian collaborators and defectors along with Ukrainian and Cossacks nationalists) and a far better army.
Hmmm…
One wonders what some of our more Confederate-sympathizing brethren would think of that ;).
The AK-47 was a freaking brilliant assault rifle design. Not the product of Communism, per se, but a brilliant Soviet designer, but they DID deploy it. And the T34 tank was a brilliant design as well.
I do remember reading that even though the Soviet Union couldn’t match the US economically, the system did prevent people from being homeless, hungry, etc. … more than you can say for capitalism in the US. If you didn’t get caught in Stalin’s web, you had a certain amount of freedom from want.
That’s bullshit. Very few people in the US are actually starving or dying the poor have welfare programs and food stamps and so on and most of them are well enough to own a car and a TV and most homeless people in the sense of hoboes, beggars, and the like have intentionally chosen that lifestyle. Millions of Soviets starved to death in the Holodomor and similar famines caused intentionally or by Soviet stupidity.
I have often thought that the GOP learned all the wrong lessons from the cold war. State intrusiveness into private lives; effective propaganda; use of party discipline; demonizing political opponents; corruption; militarism; voodoo (Laffer) economics; the list goes on. I suspect that “Only Nixon could go to China” was true in part because birds of a feather can communicate well. Unfortunately, we let them get away with it.
Sure. A home-vodka distiller is pretty much the epitome of awesome.
I guess the Soviets invented medical tourism (because the domestic system was so poor). Latin America is still benefiting from a continuing flow of Cuban doctors resulting from the synergy of Castro’s social dreams and Soviet support.
The Soviet Union’s society was about as unfair as you can make it.
All the country’s money and wealth was owned by an extremely small percentage of the population then there was a huge gap to the majority of the population (who were all pretty much equal) with no one in between.
Everything was owned by Stalin (or one of his successors) and his close associates.
I don’t understand where you are getting the idea people in the Soviet Union were not hungry? There were lines for everything because there was a shortage of everything.
The government made prices cheap which meant there was a great amount of demand but no supply. (Price ceiling caused a shortage) It was illegal to even pay more for something so there was never a surplus (the exact opposite of the U.S.)
People in the soviet Union may not have been poor relative to others in the country but that is only because everyone was either wealthy and powerful because they were high up in the government (very small amount of people) or they were just a normal citizen. There was really nothing in between.
On the other hand, people in the Soviet Union were very poor when compared with people in the United States.
In the U.S. if you want something you can get it if you work for it. In the Soviet Union that was basically impossible, if you weren’t born in the right place to the right parents or related to the right people you couldn’t get what you want.
People in the Soviet Union had just as much want as people in any other country except they could not act on it. Instead they were forced to wait in line and pay set prices.
There is a reason why Russia experienced so much economic growth after the fall of the Soviet Union. The artificial price’s were abolished and people actually had a reason to work. Farmers got paid based on how much of something people were demanding not on what the government felt the price should be.
If this were not the case the Soviet Union would still be around and/or it would have been just as powerful (economically) as the United States or even more so.
Instead, the USSR doesn’t even exist anymore and Russia experienced economic growth after the Soviet Union ended (though it did take time to change from socialism to a more capitalist society). The Soviet proved that manually controlling an economy really does not work, especially on a large scale.
I mean, it’s a fact that the small private farms owned by the farmers were extremely more efficient than the collect farms owned by the state. People just don’t care when there is no reason for them to and that is one reason the Soviet Union failed. When you get paid no more for your good work and you have no reason to work hard because you are guaranteed a job by the government then why would you? That is not and never was the case in the United States and the American worker is more productive than any other in the world.
I will agree that Russia does design military equipment pretty well though.
What, you mean if the Tsar had still been in place? Or under some potential democratic state? Because the tsar had his chance to run Russia in a world war, and having a good army and loyal populace turned out to be beyond his grasp.
Ukraine would never have been loyal anyway, they always tried to gain independence if an opportunity presented itself. No lack of Stalin could have changed that. What might have changed would have been the industrialisation of Siberia, and therefore the availability of T34s. Or the presence of a high ranking ring of Commie spies in the Nazi high command, you get a lot more ideological communists willing to spy for you than ideological Tsarists.
Also, thrust vectoring.
But did they teach us anything beyond what we already knew ourselves in these areas? Space exploration was also occurring in the US, and better because they weren’t doing it uphill with inferior technology.
Your post is very vague with regard to these positives. I’d genuinely like to know what they are before I can make any assessment of whether there is anything to be learned from them, although I’m willing to be they can’t outweigh the negatives I listed (not to mention the ones I probably forgot or don’t know about).
If I understand your post correctly you’re saying “the Russians created one of the most horrible places in the world to live through their own blind ideology and/or stupidity, but people were stoic enough not to commit mass suicide when faced with it. Gotta pat them on the head for that”. Surviving the negative effects of terrible choices isn’t an achievement.
I was with you until this, because no you’re not. If you’re going to pursue this unsubstantiated position then I’d argue that you’re a victim of your own state’s propaganda in a way not dissimilar to the Soviet’s population.
Believe me the parallel was not lost on me. In the United States’ defence, there were larger issues here than states wanting the right to secede, it was why they wanted to as well.
I recall the USSR developed some industrial processes for titanium that we picked up on, and maybe some welding techniques for steel. I think we took a little bit of information and ended up perfecting the techniques they initially developed, but maybe they get credit for the assist.
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Your post is very vague with regard to these positives. I’d genuinely like to know what they are before I can make any assessment of whether there is anything to be learned from them, although I’m willing to be they can’t outweigh the negatives I listed (not to mention the ones I probably forgot or don’t know about)
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Sorry, I’m on the road this week and composing long posts on the iPad is a bit of a trial.
Well, the US started WWII both behind in military technology and also woefully behind tactically. As far was warfare went, I’d say that Soviet military technology certainly pushed the US in directions we wouldn’t have gone in had there been on Soviet Union. Another poster mentioned the AK-47, which while not the first of it’s kind (an assault rifle firing a shorter cartridge, somewhere between a submachingun cartridge and a full up rifle cartridge) was certainly revolutionary (heh) and forced the US to look at our own battle rifles. Up to that point, long range accuracy was the main emphasis in a battle rifle (with short range firepower coming from our own submachine guns, and volume by the various light machine guns and heavy machine guns available). The introduction of the AK-47 and the additional firepower it gave troops using it (a gun that could be fired on full automatic with ranges and firepower greater than a submachinegun, but lighter than a light machine gun) pretty much forced the US to start developing the same thing (starting with retiring the M-1, an attempt with the M-14 and eventually the M-16). Soviet jet fighters (like the MIG 15) pushed US jet fighter development (granted, the Soviets got the initial designed and a working example from the Brits, and probably some of the rest from captured German examples and engineers…but the thing is so much like a farm tractor that it was their own beast, and quite an effective one). We also learned quite a bit about Soviet battle tactics…and it scared the hell out of us, which is why we were so paranoid about a massive Soviet invasion of Western Europe, pretty much until the SU collapsed.
I’m not sure how POSITIVE all that is, but it certainly did a lot to push the US, and a lot of the technology that came out of it is stuff we all use every day. Stuff like satellite TV (or satellite anything). Granted, folks like Author C. Clark had thought about it before the Soviets launched the first one, but without the Soviets pushing things it might have been years or decades before anyone gave it a shot. The internet is another thing that came out of this rivalry.
Space exploration was something the US was doing as we do all stuff in peacetime when we feel we aren’t under threat…slowly, without any sense of urgency and with funding poised to be cut at any time because a politician can score points by showing their voters how efficient they are. I have no doubt that eventually we’d have launched satellites (IIRC, we were set to do so a few months after Sputnik, though even getting that far was because of the budding rivalry between us and the Soviets), but I doubt we’d have tried to send someone to the moon, or sent out robotic explorers as widely as we have. We did all that because we were in direct competition with the Russians. What they ‘taught’ us, though, was that there were other ways to do stuff in space, and high tech wasn’t absolutely the only thing. They managed to achieve a lot in space with much lower tech than we had…in some cases they managed to outstrip us, even with that lower tech.
-XT
Plus, they were apparently so ignorant that they didn’t understand the concept of serial dilution and couldn’t dilute a one milliliter aliquot to one liter.
You know what? If Norway, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands is the best counterargument you can make, I’ll just slice out Washington, D.C. and compare it to the rest of the world. Then we can argue about what ‘productivity’ means in the context of a city like D.C., or a high-wage petroleum-based economy like Norway.
Here’s 2010 OECD data on productivity. For 2010 it was Norway, Lux, and Ireland. But compare the US to the Euro area (which employ nearly the same number of workers), and the Euro area has 85% of the productivity of the US. American workers worked about 17,000 more hours and generated about $3 trillion more in GDP.
So I’d rate the statement “the American worker is more productive than any other in the world” as more true than not, and certainly not indicative of any government brainwashing.
As for positive lessons from the Soviets, most of their actions were a product of their recognition of the need to modernize their industry and military in order to compete within Europe. They had lots of work to be done, but mainly uneducated peasants and potential reactionary elements (in their paranoid view) to do it with, so the results often weren’t pretty. But there was a certain pragmatism to how the Russians solved problems that I think Americans can appreciate.
I’d say their most important positive was the willingness of their government to involve itself in big scientific research initiatives. It really forced the US govt. to step its game up and involve itself in projects that the private sector would find it very difficult to pull off on its own. Aerospace and weapons research has spurred the creation of lots of useful stuff.
Reckless development. The USSR became an industrial power via brute force-this meant establishing factories where they made absolutely no sense, squantering energy, and polluting the environment. Acquiring nclear weapons at enormous cost in human lives.
Basically the entire system was evil.
Reagan had it right when he dubbed the USSR “an evil empire”.
Quite true. OTOH, no one but Stalin – that is, no system but Stalinism – could have saved Russia by shipping its entire moveable industrial plant east of German-occupied territory, and rebuilding a whole new industrial capacity and a whole new army from scratch
And, if the Bolshevik Revolution or something like it had never happened, Hitler – assuming he comes to power in this timeline, without any triumphant Communism to provoke fascist reaction, and assuming he still wanted to expand the Reich eastward – would have been able to invade a substantially agrarian country with hardly any industrial plant at all. Stalinism works, if only the purpose of heavy-capital-formation – gets that done much faster, at any rate, than a free market would under similar circumstances.
That is why we cannot expect the developing countries of the world, planning their futures, to dismiss out of hand the Stalinist (or some form of state-socialist/state-capitalist) option. Despite all the dismal history mentioned in the OP.
Oh, and BTW, socialism or whatever you call what Hugo Chavez is trying out in Venezuela also seems to be working, at least to the extent that the people like it enough to keep re-electing him and his party, freely and fairly according to international monitors. FWIW.