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Hmm with the break up of the USSR approaching its 30th anniversary, I should probably make another historical thread on the what was the long term & short term reasons for the 15 Republics breaking up.
Grab the Vodka and here we go 1/.
Grab the Vodka and here we go 1/.
Probably the most talked about reason that your average person gives is that the United States’ outcompeted the Soviet Union in terms of the arms race and military spending. There is some truth to that. But it’s a small piece of the puzzle 2/.
The rest of the answer lies in looking at the changes undergone in the 1960’s & 70’s to see a full picture. This is where the Soviet system starts to lag behind. Contrary to the fact, the politburo never really embraced full “communism” as it always led to dissatisfaction 3/.
Famines, slowed production, overspecialization & even environmental disasters from Lysenkoism. It forced the Soviets to lower their expectations and have some limited “State Capitalism”. This began to cause stagnation in the “second world” (USSR aligned countries) 4/.
Speaking of foreign relations, the USSR was also a bit too honest in what it wanted. Having been a pariah state in the beginning and having embraced the image of a bloodthirsty power bend on world domination in which NATO & the US built a system to counteract it. 5/.
There was also a culture of anti-intellectualism & anti-elitism in the politburo culture that made the system increasingly cut off from any sort of reforms. Khrushchev’s reforms undone by Brezhnev’s which stabilized the political system at the cost of increased corruption 6/.
Ultimately it also made a fatal mistake of trying to create a new world system from scratch rather than use existing ones in place to exert influence. It didn’t work for Napoleon and it certainly failed for the Soviets. This can be shown in the late 1980’s 7/.
More and more Eastern Bloc people realized that their countries were only held in place by the “Brezhnev Doctrine” of the Soviets sending in the tanks, not by their own countries armed forces. So when Gorbachov refused to send them in, many governments started to fall 8/.
Another weapon that the USSR had no defense against was the West’s “soft power” of cultural items like Coca-Cola, Jeans, the Beatles and other elements of culture acted like invisible ICBMs that gave people under socialist governments a taste of things in the west they wanted 9/.
Eventually these things started to catch up with the Soviets. Gorbachov’s policies of Glastnost came in as an attempt to save the USSR but in fact sped up it’s demise as more and more of the republics & eastern bloc countries began to see the writing on the wall 10/.
The second world vanished in 1989 as socialism & communism fell out of favor with a majority of the countries behind the iron curtain. Soviet republics defied the “unbreakable union” to basically secede and even Russia left after a failed coup to restart the USSR 11/.
The protracted conflict in Afghanistan, failing to reform a system that was inherently non-competitive, loss of trust in the government, and inability to hand wave the misery and flatlining quality of life were also some lesser known factors which killed the USSR (1924-1991) 12/.
Unfortunately the US itself is starting to resemble a lot like the Brezhnev era of stagnation as its financial power around the world decreases with collapse of trust in institutions follows by a hostile religion that causes decline of the country’s founding 13/.
The power apparatus is decaying and those in charges of it are refusing to jump ship while blocking any solutions. This means that any sort of break up or secession is probably not going to be peaceful but also not explicit at first 14/.
I give it 10-15 years before a true fracture as the US declines financially & its institutions lose legitimacy with policies regarding religion, culture and ethnic groups deteriorating with a mix of 90’s Yugoslavia & 30’s Spain. 15/.
Perhaps the loss of the USSR was giving the US an enemy to unite its 50 states against. Or perhaps it delayed the inevitable. It’s not like the eventual dissolving of the US government is gonna be as peaceful if things continue to accelerate towards a reaction 16/.
TLDR , the Soviet Union’s was undercut by several short term reasons which exposed how unstable the system was. The collapse was inevitable once those contradictions set in and unfortunately the US looks to be a fatter, dumber and more pozzed version of the USSR 17/.
“Whoever doesn’t miss the Soviet Union has no heart. Whoever wants it back has no brain” - Vladimir Putin.
“America is a communist country” -Moldbug
Some quotes to that relate to this thread in mind.
Finale
“America is a communist country” -Moldbug
Some quotes to that relate to this thread in mind.
Finale
