Was the Soviet Union good in some aspects?

Great Debates
81

Hmm. The space program/Apollo program is an indirect benefit of the USSR’s existence. We might today be farther along without their influence, but it is unlikely that we would have had manned missions to the moon (or perhaps at all) without the pressure of the cold war space race.

The two superpower system also sort of kept the peace on a grand scale (in terms of avoiding great power conflict). Extremely rough on the little guys caught in the middle.

To what extent the modern olympics was affected by teh eastern bloc factory production of athletes is debateable I suppose.

The USSR also provided about 40 years of villains for hollywood.
John Mace A lot of the Nazi’s “b-list” racial projects weren’t completed due to the complexities of the war. However, there were a number of steps that indicate that the Germans were pretty dang serious about it. IIRC a fairly large quantity of volksdeutsch spent the war in resettlement/refugee camps because the areas they were to colonize were not yet ready. (That the individuals in question might not have wanted to move, or were unable to speak German, were not really issues of importance).

Sebastopol Whether or not the German atomic program, was, in terms of theory, a whisker of an atomic bomb is a matter of some debate. Most of what I have read (The making of the atomic bomb, Heisenberg’s war, various excerpts from the epsilon tapes) are at best ambiguous, at worst, tending to indicate that their grasp on certain issues (why their reactor didn’t, etc) was not as great as it might. On the physical, infrastructure side they were nowhere near having an atomic bomb. They had neither the quantities of radioactive ores nor anything like the scale of separation facilities necessary for a weapon. Certainly the lack of a grasp in the Nazi leadership for the weapons potential of “Jew physics” hurt their chances, as did the German weapons programs rise to almost prominence at a time when the Germans were finally rationalizing their war production/going to a total war economy under Speer (or at least, as much of a total war economy as they were able to muster).

82

to Cuba sometimes exceed $500 million/year. This does not include illegal travel by Cuban-Americans to Cuba (and bringing currency with them). I’d say that yes, the USA is providing (indirectly) a lot of cash to Cuba. And now that Fidel has made posession of dollars illegal , he has gotten his hands on a huge amount of hard currency (which he exchanges to the Cuban people for worthless pesos).
The North Korean fiasco: Bill Clinto gave the regime at least $400 million in oil and food aid. The dictator Kil-Jung Il promised to be good…of course, he reneged on all of his promises.

83

Could have, but probably not would have

Not for the last 50 years. Aactually, Solzhenitsyn had some good evidence that despite all the rhetoric, lack of educaiton, and poverty, Tsarism was vastly beter of in the human rights department.

It was very good for the elites, but it was certainly one fo the huge fiscal and moral drains on the country as a whole.

Ah, no. The German people had no great hatred for the slavs, not like the did for the Jews, and would have had a far harder time killing them. (Hitler’s Willing Executioners) Aside from which, they were not easily taken. Genocide was a huge and economically inensive undertaking. It would have required decades.

Bush cancelled the blood money to Kim Jong-Il. Aside from any cash for Cuba, East Germany has shown that regimes can prop themselves up by exiling the intellectuals who display irritating independence.

84

Ralph, what American citizens do is not the same as what the United States does. And while $500,000,000 sounds like a lot of money, it’s hardly enough to make a difference on a national scale. Cuba’s GDP is about $13,000,000,000 a year. So on a good year, remittances are around 3% of the Cuban economy. Losing that 3% would not end the Castro regime.

North Korea’s GDP incidentally is over $20,000,000,000 per year. The one-time payment of $400,000,000 you mentioned represents 2% of that figure for one year.

85

It was a bit more important than that. US shipments of food and fuel were critical in keeping NK from falling apart in the 90’s.

86

As Little Nemo pointed out, cash remittances from Cuban-Americans account for at most 3% of Cuba’s GDP. (And somehow I don’t think the state gets all of that, or why would Cubans who don’t like Castro keep sending their relatives money year after year?) But it’s the other thing that really strikes a false note. Do you really think Castro’s regime would have gone down in 1980 if the Marielitos (only 120,000, I believe, and not all of them criminals) had not been allowed to leave? Why?

87

It’s not money keeping Castro in power. Cuba isn’t very wealthy, but he has a firm grip on the handle. Having the convenience of Miami for letting steam from the Cuban pressure cooker might be more valuable. Historically, it has proven hard to overthrow or weaken Communist dictators in their own lifetimes, however.

88

But, weren’t there periodic pogroms against certain ethnic groups in Czarist Russia? I’m thinking specificly of Gypsies and Jews. I just rewatched a PBS show about the Anarchists that mentioned this, is why it’s on my mind. Will try to find cites pro or con, anyone else who knows please join in.

89

Interesting. Even the very word pogrom is of Russian origin.

According to this site, the Czarist policies contributed to the massacres, even if not actively involved.

90

I’m not too sure about the Soviet Union back in the depths of the cold war, but I work with a company that is based in Ukraine. [sidetrack] I have been told by my coworkers over there that it is not THE Ukraine, simply Ukraine. [/sidetrack]

During the recent hoo har over their elections, we chatted to them about what the results mean for them (and us, since we work with them). It seemed that the result of the election would decide whether they became closer to Europe, or closer to their previous Soviet existence.

We were finding it hard to see why anyone would vote for the Soviet side - you’re nearly part of Europe, companies like us are flocking to employ people like you, surely the populace want to enter our economy?

But they explained that most people were happy before the coming of capitalism. There’s a view here in the West that surely they were oppressed and had nothing, and they have escaped from that now, and are part of the real world. Apparently this isn’t the case - most citizens were quite happy with the Soviet regime, and some resent the Western view that we are the ideal they now strive for.

91

I know the Russian language has no article, no word for “the,” so I would guess the Ukrainian language doesn’t have one either.

92

I’d say that this is a good case of folks looking back on an earlier time with rose colored glasses. If folks REALLY were happy with the old Soviet regime, why did it collapse so totally and completely? It wasn’t some small minority taking the nation in a direction contrary to where the majority wanted to go…nor was it a strong and stable and generally liked government brought low by a dedicated few. The old Soviet regime collapsed like a rotted tree to complete dust. There was no massive civil war, no oceans of blood as those masses of content Soviets fought with all their heart and soul to keep the system going…it simply ceased to exist.

What you have there now (well, especially several years ago) is uncertainty. Many citizens liked the illusion that the state was taking care of them, that things were simplier and more stable before. They forget the lines for buying nearly every product (unless you were a party bigwig of course), the cronic shortages or the over stocking of needless items, etc. Now things are more dynamic…and much more uncertain. And uncertainty frightens people. I’m sure there is also a measure of resentment to go with that…after all, when your system collapses THAT completely, while the other guys just chugs on, you are bound to have some major resentment.
To answer the OP (since I dipped my toe in…was just lurking before), there were certainly some good aspects to the old Soviet empire. What you have to do though is look at the thing over all…i.e. was there more good than bad? To turn it around for a moment, you could ask are there bad aspects in the US ‘empire’? Certainly. However, in our case and IMHO the good outweighs the bad. In the case of the old Soviet empire though I’d say the bad outweighed the good…by a fairly substantial margin. Otherwise I can’t see how the thing would have collapsed so totally…like a house of cards in a strong wind.

-XT

93

The Allies put a stop to the creation of heavy water for long enough that the Nazi’s abandoned their work didn’t they? And IIRC after this the Nazi’s Uranium was used to coat anti-tank shells for the war in the East.
Besides, didn’t the Nazi scientists captured after the war reveal their research was going in the wrong direction?

(I can’t remember where I got the bit about the anti-tank shells so I stand ready to be corrected.)

I always thought the benefit to the US military was in the creation of meddlesome rocket engines for ICBMs and not the warheads themselves.

94

Ukranian nationalists prefer the translation “Ukraine” to “the Ukraine”, because “the Ukraine” seems like the name of a region, more than a country name, just like in America, we’d talk about “the Midwest”, “the Great Plains”, “the South”, etc.

It doesn’t help, of course, that “Ukraine” itself means “the border”.

95

Sort of, but not quite.
The Allied attacks on the Norsk Hydro plant in Norway were a serious impediment to the German nuclear programmes, but never halted them.
You’re correct that their armament industry realised that uranium was ideal for coating shells, but your timing is off. In fact, both some naval and Luftwaffe weapons seem to have been covered with uranium from relatively early on in the war. Futhermore, rather than using a supply originally intended for an abandoned nuclear efforts, such demands appear to have had more of an immediate priority and hence were overruling the requirements of the nuclear scientists as the war progressed. Such competition for this particular resource was thus arguably amongst the brakes on their nuclear reseach.

96

What a crappy name.

97

Exactly the reason my co-workers gave - “The Ukraine” is a region, like “The Crimea”. “Ukraine” is the country name, just like any other country. It doesn’t help that us over here are so used to saying “The UK” for The United Kingdom.

I think you’re certainly partially right - they remember the good bits, and highlight the bad bits of what’s happened since. It’s not been an easy transition for the Soviet nations, but IMHO it would be worth them sticking to the Westernisation.

98

Nazi Germany was never even CLOSE to making an atomic bomb. Physicist Werner Heisenburg made several key mistakes in designing his atomic pile (reactor); chief of these was his selection of heavy water as a moderator. He also failed to realize that the refining process used to make the uranium fuel was deficient-impurities in the uranium would have poisoned the reaction. Finally, the german effort was pitiful-no more than a few hundred people worked on it…vs the manhattan project, that employed thousands of scientists and engineers.
Also, I don’t think that the germans ever developed a process to enrich uranium-their bomb (had they been able to develop one) wouldhave been extremely low yield, and very large and heavy…so heavy that no German bomber could ever have delivered the bomb. Perhaps they planned to deliver thir bomb by U-Boat?

99

There is actually a historian out there who claims the Nazi’s tested 2 or 3 atomic bombs in '44 or '45 (I forget the details now…I’ll look it up if anyone is interested), but his theories are not exactly main stream. Basically one has but to look closely at the German nuclear program. It was pretty pitiful, especially compared to the US’s program. The Germans had only a handful of people working the project, had some fairly large design flaws (some speculate that Heisenberg was secretly sabotaging the Germans efforts…others say he was just on the wrong track and too egocentric to hear any different), was way underfunded, their actual bomb design was flawed (it wouldnt have worked, even assuming they COULD refine the nuclear materials they needed, which they couldn’t) etc. In the end, when we actually invaded Germany and took a look around we found only a low level and primitive nuclear program, which I’d say should put this whole question to rest. :slight_smile:

-XT

100

I used to live in Slovakia, and their educational system was based on the Soviet model, which follows a more European norm. From my perspective, the education was better for SOME students.

At 11, students were tested. Those who scored highest went to the “gymnasium,” kind of a college prep school. I would say that the students there had the equivalent of a us high school diploma, and a year or two of college. They had advanced mathematics, one or two foreign languages, and quite a bit else. However, there were no choices. IIRC, they got to choose which foreign languages when the started the gymnasium, and then had the same classmates in every class until they graduated.

There was a kind of school for average students, where they got much less academic stuff. It wasn’t exactly tech school, but they graduated to be office workers.

The kids who scored lowest went to a variety of tech schools. There was a broader range than in the US, for example, nurses and vet techs started in 6th grade and graduated fully qualified 6 years later. But there were also schools in traces- carpentry, metal working, cooking, etc.

In some ways, I like this system. Not everyone wants to go to university. But there are no second chances. Someone who had a bad year in 6th grade is out of luck. There were no facilities for bright students who might have dyslexia, for example. (In the US, even as an adult you can go to community college, transfer to university, and get a professional degree, if you work at it. There was no possibility of that in this system.)

What I also found odd, in an officially “classless” society, was that there was a strong class system based on education. Of one girl who was struggling in school, I was told that her parents were working class, it was enough for them that she attended the gymnasium, she didn’t also need to get good grades. Families got upset if a gymnasium student started dating a tech school student. Clubs and organizations touted the percentage of gymnasium students who attended.

With all it’s faults, I actually prefer the American system. We have more choices, we aren’t so stratified, and there are more opportunities to get back on track if you screw up. But for gymnasium/university students in the Soviet bloc, yes, they got a very good education.