# Was the Soviet Union good in some aspects? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 25, 2005, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-soviet-union-good-in-some-aspects/296244 "2005-03-25T19:48:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2005, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-soviet-union-good-in-some-aspects/296244/21 "2005-03-25T22:30:27Z")
> [@Ryan\_Liam](#): > > What I want to know is when theres an upheaval from totalitarian society to democracy (of some sorts in Russia) is always so bad? > > Did Russia and the former territories it ruled really have to privatize and sell off most state assets? Why not follow the French example, of industries being owned by the state, yet with democracy for the people? A much slower way but however it provides stability and rules out some abject poverty for their civilians. There are other alternatives, as well, such as the Chinese model. But I think you’re mistaken in assuming that French is some fully socialist country where all the industry is owned by the government. American conservatives often like to bash France as some socialist experiment, but France has many, many more similarities to the US than it does to the former USSR whether you look at it from a political perspective or from an economic one. ---
**Author:** ![laigle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ce7236/32.png) [@laigle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/laigle)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2005, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-soviet-union-good-in-some-aspects/296244/22 "2005-03-25T22:38:18Z")
> [@John Mace](#): > > Of course it’s hard to say. But the Nazis could have been bogged down trying to supress a HUGE insurgency in the USSR. Trying to “rule” that empire might just as easily have made the Nazis more vulnerable to attack from the West. > > I’m just saying that net/net the world might have been better of fif the Nazis HAD defeated the Soviets. But it’s a grizzly calculation trying to determine which scenario would have resulted in fewer innocent deaths. As I said, both regimes were despicable. It’s unlikely there would have been an insurgency. Hitler had no more regard for Slavs than for Jews or Gypsies. By that point in the war it’s likely the Reich would have turned to a mass eradication campaign rather than trying to subdue the populace. At best the Soviets could have hoped to be enslaved en masse to the German war machine, which certainly wouldn’t have been good for our side either. ---
**Author:** ![laigle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ce7236/32.png) [@laigle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/laigle)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2005, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-soviet-union-good-in-some-aspects/296244/23 "2005-03-25T22:47:40Z")
I think it makes perfect sense to view the Soviet Union as an improvement over the Tsars, albeit a mild one. Tsarist Russia was a totalitarian regime in which a tiny elite enslaved the vast majority in a system of subsistence agriculture (yes, enslaved, this was a serfdom after all). Soviet Easter Europe was a totalitarian regime in which a tiny elite enslaved the vast majority in a system of industrial mass production. So not much changed except for the fact that the economy moved to a model capable of supporting a much higher standard of living, and one which also promoted improvements in scientific education. Propaganda fueled literacy education, much as the vulgate bible translations did in Western Europe. That’s not to say the Soviet Union was a good place. It was horrid, and no sane person would have wanted to live there. But society is evolutionary, and the USSR was a middle step between monarchial primitivism and populist modernism. It’s not at all rare that societies playing catch up will do so through a totalitarian state. Then once they’ve caught up, that’s when you typically see those societies trend towards freedom again. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2005, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-soviet-union-good-in-some-aspects/296244/24 "2005-03-25T22:55:06Z")
> [@laigle](#): > > It’s unlikely there would have been an insurgency. Hitler had no more regard for Slavs than for Jews or Gypsies There were large partisan forces in most of the Soviet Union that the Germans had occupied, largely because the German government had almost no regard for Slavs. This likely would have continued, even if the Soviet government had surrendered. ---
**Author:** ![laigle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ce7236/32.png) [@laigle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/laigle)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2005, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-soviet-union-good-in-some-aspects/296244/25 "2005-03-25T23:11:15Z")
> [@Captain Amazing](#): > > There were large partisan forces in most of the Soviet Union that the Germans had occupied, largely because the German government had almost no regard for Slavs. This likely would have continued, even if the Soviet government had surrendered. I think you misunderstood me. I didn’t mean the Soviet populace wouldn’t have resisted. I meant they wouldn’t have been left alive to resist. ---
**Author:** ![Icarus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/icarus/32/72_2.png) [@Icarus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Icarus)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2005, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-soviet-union-good-in-some-aspects/296244/26 "2005-03-25T23:15:49Z")
On the purely anecdotal level - I’m currently working with a woman who emigrated to the US from Russia in the early 1990’s. She grew up in the old USSR and lived through the changes there. She often expresses her frustration with educating her children here in the US. In her estimation, the USSR did a better job. I can’t help but think that this has more to do with “old world” vs. “western” values. In the old USSR, children were raised to be more respectful of their parents and teachers, etc. Whereas in the US, well… So, I would hesitate to say this is evidence of the Soviet Union doing good, instead I would give them a neutral on this subject. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2005, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-soviet-union-good-in-some-aspects/296244/27 "2005-03-25T23:21:28Z")
But they wouldn’t have allowed themselves to be killed peacefully. Besides, the plans for the Slavic Soviets wasn’t extermination. It was slavery. Obviously, this might have changed if they caused too much trouble. But even if they did try to exterminate the Soviets, partisan groups still would have fought back. ---
**Author:** ![HPL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3da27b/32.png) [@HPL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HPL)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2005, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-soviet-union-good-in-some-aspects/296244/28 "2005-03-25T23:41:53Z")
> [@MGibson](#): > > Without the Soviet Union we never would have had Yakov Smirnoff. > > Marc [Yakov Smirnoff] In America, you make fun of the state. In Soviet Russia, State makes fun of you! [/Yakov Smirnoff] I’m sorry. I couldn’t help it. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2005, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-soviet-union-good-in-some-aspects/296244/29 "2005-03-25T23:50:45Z")
> [@John Mace](#): > > Of course it’s hard to say. But the Nazis could have been bogged down trying to supress a HUGE insurgency in the USSR. Trying to “rule” that empire might just as easily have made the Nazis more vulnerable to attack from the West. You’re not thinking like a Nazi. That kind of problem only emerges when you want both to rule a subject population and to keep it alive and productive. But Hitler’s principal war aim was to destroy both Poland and Soviet Russia – not just to rule them and exploit them as a European power might exploit a colony in Asia or Africa, but to utterly destroy them as nations, and build a Greater Germany on their bones, by colonizing them with Germans. (Much like what our nation did to the Indian nations, only much faster and with a much higher body count.) Those Slavs who survived the conquest might have been allowed to live as slaves or second-class citizens, but any active resistance would have been crushed mercilessly and from a point of view that the rebellious peoples were vermin, not economic assets. > [@Sam Stone](#): > > The Bolsheviks destroyed the Russian economy. Economic output in Russia collapsed to 1/10 of its previous levels in the first ten years of Communist rule. That’s why Lenin had to plunder the churches, wage war on the Kulaks for their wealth, and eventually starve millions of people to ship food to the cities. The Ukraine used to be known as the breadbasket of Europe, and by the time the Commies were done with it the people were starving in years of good agricultural weather. > > Yes, the Soviet Union eventually became an industrial power, but there’s no evidence that it became an industrial power because of Communism. Don’t forget, **Sam,** that much of the Russian economy – that is, what little industrial capacity Russia had before WWI – was destroyed by that war. And even more was destroyed by the protracted Civil War. The Whites are as much to blame for that as the Reds. (But the Ukraine famine of 1932-33 is all on Stalin, of course.) Furthermore, there **is** evidence that Communism made Russia an industrial power, and it’s hard to see how a free-market system could have industrialized it at nearly the same pace or scale. That’s one good thing about the USSR, in retrospect: At least it gave the world an object lesson in both the strengths and the weaknesses of a centrally planned economy, neither of which was really understood before the Soviet experiment was tried. Stalinism, it turns out, is extremely good for heavy capital formation but inept at anything that requires fine-tuning. From _Economics Explained,_ by Robert Heilbroner and Lester Thurow (Touchstone, 1994): > [@](#): > > The reason it [the Soviet system] did last [as long as it did] is that in the beginning the system very much resembled a military operation. After the Russian Revolution in 1917, Lenin confronted an almost totally disorganized society, and tried at first to build a “socialism” that was partly capitalist – private farming and private small enterprise – and partly socialist, in the form of state-owned banks and large centers of production. Russia staggered along under this mixed system for a few years, without either great success or great failure, but after Lenin’s death in 1927, Stalin took command and rapidly instituted the highly centralized system we have sketched in. > > Stalin’s methods were ferocious and bloody, but they were successful in bringing about an immense accumulation of wealth, much as did the ruthless ways of the ancient pharoahs of Egypt and emperors of Rome or China. The difference was that whereas the latter built palaces and cities, Stalin built factories, stell mills, hydroelectric plants, and railway systems – the ingredients of an industrial economy. The fact that Stalin’s Russia was strong enough to resist Hitler’s armies – and efficient enough, after its reconstruction following World War II, to impress the world with its industrial and military capabilities – shows that Soviet central planning was by no means a failure in its initial years. That is why “military socialism” may yet be a model for development efforts in the future. China is today a semi-military socialism which appears to be successfully negotiating the early stages of industrialization, much aided by a carefully supervised free market sector attached to the planned core. Hence the collapse of the Soviet system should not lead us to the snap judgment that centralized socialism is no longer on the agenda of the coming century. That is indeed likely to be the case with the North, but it is not a foregone conclusion in the troubled countries of the South. > > **THE COLLAPSE** > > But we are ahead of ourselves. After so successful a beginning, why did Soviet socialism finally break down? The answer is that it is a great deal easier to design and run the skeleton of a might economy than to run it. Building a steel plant requires good industrial draftsmanship, but running a steel plant requires good industrial management. Management, in turn, depends on the ability to adapt flows of production to ever-changing conditions – the unforeseen contingencies, mistakes, mismatches, shortages, and overruns that are inescapable in any complex undertaking. > > In a market system, these mistakes are repaired and remedied as soon as possible because they cost the factory or store money. Hence suppliers are told to hurry up, or to hold back on shipments, unprofitable items are canceled and profitable ones run overtime, the Yellow Pages are searched for last-minute necessities. None of this can happen in a society planned from top to bottom. When mistakes are made, they bring about a kind of gridlock in the flow of production, so that the pace of Soviet economic life production was a never-ending sequence of feast or famine, too much or too little, with no way of remedying the errors other than recasting next year’s plan or seeking the semi-illegal channels of “tolkachi” – fixers. ---
**Author:** ![dangermom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e274bd/32.png) [@dangermom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dangermom)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2005, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-soviet-union-good-in-some-aspects/296244/30 "2005-03-26T00:04:39Z")
> [@Icarus](#): > > On the purely anecdotal level - > > I’m currently working with a woman who emigrated to the US from Russia in the early 1990’s. She grew up in the old USSR and lived through the changes there. She often expresses her frustration with educating her children here in the US. In her estimation, the USSR did a better job. My SIL grew up in the USSR, and got a very good education; it probably was better overall, academics-wise, than your average American education (definitely better than mine!). She also got to train on AK-47s in war class and is a good shot. I don’t know if I should be jealous or sort of horrified by that. ---
**Author:** ![laigle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ce7236/32.png) [@laigle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/laigle)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2005, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-soviet-union-good-in-some-aspects/296244/31 "2005-03-26T00:10:44Z")
> [@Captain Amazing](#): > > But they wouldn’t have allowed themselves to be killed peacefully. Besides, the plans for the Slavic Soviets wasn’t extermination. It was slavery. Obviously, this might have changed if they caused too much trouble. But even if they did try to exterminate the Soviets, partisan groups still would have fought back. I think you’re not giving the Nazis enough credit in the genocide department. They didn’t have to go from house to house shooting people. A mass Soviet genocide might have significantly spurred their WMD development programs. The Chinese fought back against the Japanese, but that didn’t help the folks at Nanking vrey much. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2005, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-soviet-union-good-in-some-aspects/296244/32 "2005-03-26T00:18:28Z")
> [@laigle](#): > > I think it makes perfect sense to view the Soviet Union as an improvement over the Tsars, albeit a mild one. Tsarist Russia was a totalitarian regime in which a tiny elite enslaved the vast majority in a system of subsistence agriculture (yes, enslaved, this was a serfdom after all). Nitpick: Russian serfdom was abolished in 1861. (Of course, the former serfs remained peasants working somebody else’s land, which is one reason why the revolution(s) of 1917 happened.) And I read in _Modern Times,_ by Paul Johnson, that while the tsars’ regime was absolute and arbitrary, it was not wantonly cruel. Executions were relatively rare. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2005, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-soviet-union-good-in-some-aspects/296244/33 "2005-03-26T00:19:57Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > You’re not thinking like a Nazi. I’ll take that as a compliment. 🙂 > [@](#): > > That kind of problem only emerges when you want both to rule a subject population and to keep it alive and productive. But Hitler’s principal war aim was to destroy both Poland and Soviet Russia – not just to rule them and exploit them as a European power might exploit a colony in Asia or Africa, but to utterly destroy them as nations, and build a Greater Germany on their bones, by colonizing them with Germans. (Much like what our nation did to the Indian nations, only much faster and with a much higher body count.) Those Slavs who survived the conquest might have been allowed to live as slaves or second-class citizens, but any active resistance would have been crushed mercilessly and from a point of view that the rebellious peoples were vermin, not economic assets. This wasn’t done in any of the Slavic countries that the Nazis DID conquer, and there were many. Hey, I’m not saying that the Nazis were benevolent towards the Slavs, but killing 200M people is not an easy enterprise, no matter how hard one tries. It is entirely unclear how successful the Nazis could have been in trying to rule all of the Soviet Union plus the future sattelite countries. ---
**Author:** ![HPL](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3da27b/32.png) [@HPL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HPL)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2005, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-soviet-union-good-in-some-aspects/296244/34 "2005-03-26T00:29:00Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Nitpick: Russian serfdom was abolished in 1861. (Of course, the former serfs remained peasants working somebody else’s land, which is one reason why the revolution(s) of 1917 happened.) And I read in _Modern Times,_ by Paul Johnson, that while the tsars’ regime was absolute and arbitrary, it was not wantonly cruel. Executions were relatively rare. That’s the impression I had. Life under the tsars wasn’t wonderful by any means, but you didn’t have to worry about being arrested/executed for no reason at all, just starving because nobody gave a damn. It’s better in the sense that neglect is better then outright abuse. ---
**Author:** ![AdmiralCrunch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/6f9a4e/32.png) [@AdmiralCrunch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AdmiralCrunch)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2005, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-soviet-union-good-in-some-aspects/296244/35 "2005-03-26T00:49:06Z")
[hijack] > [@](#): > > **LonesomePolecat:** > Had the Nazis defeated the Soviets, I’m skeptical that the British and Americans would later have been able to defeat the Nazis. Of course, there is no way of knowing that for sure. I’m no military scholar, but I’m pretty sure the US would have nuked the holy hell out of the Third Reich had the war gone on long enough, regardless of their success with the Soviets. [/hijack] On a lighter note, who can really say that a future without Yakov Smirnoff is any worse than all the atrocities the Soviets committed? ---
**Author:** ![laigle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ce7236/32.png) [@laigle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/laigle)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2005, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-soviet-union-good-in-some-aspects/296244/36 "2005-03-26T01:08:43Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Nitpick: Russian serfdom was abolished in 1861. (Of course, the former serfs remained peasants working somebody else’s land, which is one reason why the revolution(s) of 1917 happened.) That’s a pretty minor nitpick. You’re talking about centuries of enslavement weighed against a half century of nominal but by no means practical empowerment. But even with the reforms towards the end, the tsarist monarchy was every bit as much of a benighted farce as the Bourbons, the Pharoahs, or (to be topical) the Soviets. Certainly there was a lessening of central state authority before the collapse, but then there was Glasnost too. > [@BrainGlutton](#): > > And I read in _Modern Times,_ by Paul Johnson, that while the tsars’ regime was absolute and arbitrary, it was not wantonly cruel. Executions were relatively rare. Unless you were, for instance, Jewish. In which case the national sport was scapegoating you for the problems of the week and killing you and a bunch of your friends. Modernist scholars tend to mistake not being wantonly cruel with not having access to machine guns and nerve gas. The fact that a Robespierre killed thousands while a Hitler killed millions is a measure of industrial advancement, not intent. Never trust a megalomaniac in a seat of power, no matter what ideology he happens to be spouting. ---
**Author:** ![rfgdxm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c0e974/32.png) [@rfgdxm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rfgdxm)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2005, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-soviet-union-good-in-some-aspects/296244/37 "2005-03-26T01:53:01Z")
> [@Lobsang](#): > > Some would say suppression of Religion is a _brilliant_ thing. Some would say it’s most harmfull part of human society so removing it the most obvious and sensible thing for an ideal that seeks to improve existence for every human being. (I’m talking about Marxism here) The problem is the Soviet Union abandoned Marxism early on. I oppose suppression of religion. Better to point out the silliness of religion than force atheism on people. ---
**Author:** ![Ryan\_Liam](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ryan_liam/32/3965_2.png) [@Ryan\_Liam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ryan_Liam)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2005, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-soviet-union-good-in-some-aspects/296244/38 "2005-03-26T01:57:30Z")
> [@rfgdxm](#): > > The problem is the Soviet Union abandoned Marxism early on. I oppose suppression of religion. Better to point out the silliness of religion than force atheism on people. Ok weighing the experience of life before Soviet Russia to Tsarist Russia, which is better politically, economically and socially? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2005, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-soviet-union-good-in-some-aspects/296244/39 "2005-03-26T01:58:37Z")
> [@dangermom](#): > > My SIL grew up in the USSR . . . 😕 “SIL”? ---
**Author:** ![rfgdxm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c0e974/32.png) [@rfgdxm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rfgdxm)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2005, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-soviet-union-good-in-some-aspects/296244/40 "2005-03-26T02:01:06Z")
> [@Ryan\_Liam](#): > > Ok weighing the experience of life before Soviet Russia to Tsarist Russia, which is better politically, economically and socially? Sound like arguing whether being in the frying pan or the fire is better. I’d argue Soviet Russia was better. The Soviets moved Russia from a backward state to a world power. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-soviet-union-good-in-some-aspects/296244.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-soviet-union-good-in-some-aspects/296244.md?page=3)