Cite, please. I googled it, and this thread is the first result that popped up.
I’ll do some research and respond in another thread, unless the OP doesn’t mind the hijack.
It isn’t that big of a hijack really, but I’m fine with another thread.
The Soviets spent about $2B on the Olympics in 1980. Even if you consider that a total loss, it is chump change for the country. Takes a lot more to “bankrupt” it.
Let’s put it this way: (this is from Wikipedia): “CIA estimated in 1980s that the budget of Soviet propaganda abroad was between 3.5-4.0 billion dollars.”
Then why did the Soviet Union come hat in hand to the US a year later looking for wheat? I’ll find the cites, and you’ll see the evidence that the Soviet Union was on the brink of mass starvation without our wheat.
Oh yeah, and the obvious, you need to generate more money than you are spending. How much they spent is irrelevant.
And oh yeah, oh yeah, it wasn’t the money spent on the Olympics that was a problem, it was the lack of revenue that they were counting on.
If you were referring to the grain embargo, why would you call it a “boycott”?
I’m not referring to the grain embargo. I am referring to Reagan breaking the embargo which allowed the Soviet Union to keep operating though.
Although the embargo on grain sales to the Soviets was designed with the best of intentions, it had only a negligible impact on Soviet grain supply and on total U.S. grain exports. Estimates of the Soviet grain supply for the year ending in June were only one percent less than the pre-embargo forecasts. Estimates of U.S. grain exports were reduced sharply immediately following the embargo, but rose very soon after it was announced and, by July of this year, were approximately the same as the pre-embargo estimates.
…
Nevertheless, the embargo did have an impact on both the Soviets and the U.S. in that it resulted in less efficient patterns of trade and less efficient means of marketing. These inefficiencies increased somewhat the cost of food and feed to the Soviets and reduced somewhat the returns to U.S. farmers.
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Hardly the “bankrupting” effect you’re talking about.
Vodka.
That was written in 1980. No one in this country had sufficient information to make such predictions. And they turned out not to be true.
I have to do research now. It’s hard finding 20 year old information that nobody wanted to dwell on because it showed how incompetent the US was in fighting the Cold War. But at least you are attempting to refute me with facts instead of political posturing.
How’bout 1985: http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa064.html
The U.S. embargo on grain shipments to the Soviet Union is instructive in this regard. In the end, the Soviets imported only 1 percent less grain than pre-embargo forecasts had predicted, and U.S. grain exports were about the same as pre-embargo estimates. What happened, according to economist Clifton B. Luttrell of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, was that "large quantities of U.S. grain were shipped to nations which normally purchase grain from other sources, thereby permitting these sources to supply grain to the Soviet Union.'[16] Similarly, Congress’s Office of Technology Assessment found that the costs of the grain embargo to the U.S. economy “were at least as great as those which devolved on the U.S.S.R., and that the Soviet Union seems to have succeeded in replacing the United States as its principal agricultural supplier.”[17]
Hell, let’s try it this way: in 1980 USSR intended to import a record 25M metric tons of wheat from USA. The price at the time was $140/ton, approximately. That’s $3.5B worth of wheat. So even if USSR had to buy it on the market at double the price (it didn’t have to, not even close, but let’s take an extreme situation) the embargo would have cost it an extra $3.5B. As I pointed out, that’s approximately equal to what the Soviets spent at the time for foreign propaganda budget, and is a drop in the bucket.
It’s all good munches popcorn
Seriously, the whole topic is fascinating, unfortunately not much chance to reply in any depth at the moment but I’m reading with interest.
The Soviet Union failed as much through poor leadership as it did a bad politico-economic system.
Assuming that I have complete rule, and don’t have to worry about, for example, Beria arranging for an accident, My plans would go thusly.
1- Attempt to keep the Eastern Bloc nations within my sphere of influence, but follow the America\Canada model rather than just occupy them. Convert the massive industrial base towards making automobiles, home appliances, and heavy machinery, and market those to Eastern Bloc nations, along with supplying as much technical knowhow as I can. I am unsure of a method to imitate the “survival of the fittest” market actions within a Communist system, but I am sure it could be done. lucrative “profit sharing” for successful factories?
2- Scale back military development. It would become clear, quickly, that NATO is not planning to actually attack. While continuing military research and design, I see no reason to keep such a huge money-hungry beast around. The Soviets developed some amazing systems, but bankrupted themselves trying to keep up with the joneses. I have no need for that, if my nations economy is strong enough.
3- Reform agriculture. Clearly, the collective farming model failed. Maybe it would work with modern heavy farming equipment, maybe it would work with a modern fertilizer industry, but as it was, it was not effective. Agrarian reform would be key to fulfilling the food needs of the Soviet Union. Maybe something along the lines of sharecropping, whereing a portion of the land worked by the farmers would be free for their own usage, and farmers market… um… Peoples Markets would become a critical part of the economy.
4- Less indoctrination in the schools. If you have a functional economy, and plenty of food, and valid reasons to be proud of your nation, then there is no need to indoctrinate your people. They will do it to themselves (see: American Exceptionalism). Soviet schooling was very, very good, and outside of accepting sciences and ideas that were against the states ideals, I see no reason to change them.
I think this would set the foundation for a strong state, but I don’t know enough about pre-Soviet history to know how well it would play out with the satelite states and the internal minorities. The goal here was to make the Union self sufficient in food, with an internal market system (the damn place was big enough, after all) and enough motivation to end up with something similar to China today. Maybe.
As computer technology develops, integrate it as much as possible. Ironically, just as the tools were coming into being that would have made a command economy much more feasible, the biggest one around collapsed. Would be intersting to see a Central Control Bureau that records industrial output, compares it with demographic growth and change, and reconciles that with regional variances to produce shops with items that the people want, at a reasonable price, and all within the system.