> GOSPLAN had decades, and access to unlimited men with guns and dogs, to make its plans work. And it failed.
I am no fan of oppressive regimes, centralised planning or Stalinism, but it always grinds my gears when people point to the collapse of the Soviet Union as the One, Absolute proof that centralised planning is always doomed to failure.
While I'm sure that the hierarchy and command structure of the government and economy had their parts to play in the collapse, their importance is often overplayed by gargantuan proportions.
At the time of the October Revolution, Russia was a largely agrarian society, which henceforth industrialised and developed remarkably quickly under Stalinist Five-Year-Plans, in the midst of the Great Depression. However, it was still poor and barely industrialised when it was decimated by WWII. Despite this, it recovered to become a major world power that challenged the US during its peak.
US GDP has consistently been 3-5 times USSR GDP during the the latter's entire period of existence. Despite this, the pressures of the Cold War forced USSR military spending to match US spending, reaching more than 25% of GDP.
Any country in a similar position would be doomed to crack under the economic strain, regardless of the structure of government or economy.
I think it was the fall in oil prices in the late 70s/early 80s - combined with a ruinous invasion of Afghanistan - that finally did in the Soviet Union economically. Putin should take note.
Otherwise - despite the appalling human cost of projects such as the White Sea Canal and farm collectivisation - the USSR did indeed become a global power if only for a short period. Red Plenty [1] is an excellent book on the subject.
> However, it was still poor and barely industrialised when it was decimated by WWII.
The country was killing itself at a fantastic rate during the 30's purges prior to WWII. Stalins complete failure to listen to the advice of the remaining army staff ('that army we can see is about to invade') helped make the situation even more desperate.
Being able to buy toilet paper was a major win (in the '80s), that was planning economy at its finest, not military spending. Or people who had to commute from countryside to large cities to buy cheese and sausage. Source: born in the USSR.
> At the time of the October Revolution, Russia was a largely agrarian society, which henceforth industrialised and developed remarkably quickly under Stalinist Five-Year-Plans, in the midst of the Great Depression. However, it was still poor and barely industrialised when it was decimated by WWII. Despite this, it recovered to become a major world power that challenged the US during its peak.
Apologists for the Soviet regime always like to bring up how quickly it developed, but they ignore a) that prior to the Great War Russia was actually quite advanced and b) how quick its development could have been with a market economy. Yes, Russia in 1984 was extremely advanced compared to Russia in 1919 — but the free world in 1984 was far more advanced than the free world in 1919.
Actually any normal country would not have wanted to match the US's military spending. It is precisely, this crazy, paranoid, militaristic bureaucracy that people criticize - not the mention any human rights issues.
'Any normal country' doesn't have it's ideological basis declared US public enemy #1, and its growing influence deemed by a "crazy, paranoid militaristic bureaucracy" to be the greatest threat civilization has ever faced.
The Red Scare wasn't pure paranoia: it was in reaction to a legitimate threat. The COMINTERN really did want to overthrow the governments of all other countries, and the members thereof really did work towards that goal.
Indeed, there was quite a bit of govenment overthrowing, mostly at gunpoint and backed by the USSR. Of the The Black Book of Communism's 94 million estimated victims 74m were outside the USSR so there were issues there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Book_of_Communism
As mentioned by OP the US invested considerably less resources as a fraction of the total trying to fight communism. Contemporary Russian domestic propaganda draws a direct line between the so called "heroic" sacrifices the Soviet people made ( a majority of which were self inflicted) and the sacrifices Russians will yet again make due to EU import bans - which we recall is due to them invading the Ukraine.
No, they tried to get independent from USSR. Even the somewhat liberal USSR government at that time decided to crush them.
> Iran wants to wipe out, US are wiping out the whole countries and don't seem to know how to stop.
I cannot and will not defend everything US does and I freely admit they have made a lot of questionable moves over the years. Still broadly hyperbolic statements like yours doesn't help I think. US is more of a clumsy and somewhat selfish giant than an evil giant but many (including myself and my parents) are very happy that US has intervened in a number of conflicts as well as made clear that the rest of Europe wasn't up for taking. (Modern Russia doesn't seem to evil either but former USSR proved to be a legitimate source of concern for smaller countries with common borders.)
First, a bit of nitpicking. You probably meant Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Two notorious rebellions took place is 50's and 60's.
1. Either way, the original argument was that some Soviet actions were reactions to actions of US (nukes in Cuba etc). No one says that Soviets were saints.
2. To simple people without guns in Iraq, Lybia and Syria the clumsiness of US may be a weak consolation.
As a side note, looks like people are blind to what is happening in the world before their eyes. We are all smart in hindsight, e.g. blaming Soviets for the crap they have done. But, what amazes me, is that actions of US, brutal, barbarian bombings, regime changes, plunging countries and millions of people into chaos, are not condemned at all! On the contrary, US is very proud of what they are doing (looks like they are going into 4/8 more years of it). It will probably take a number of years before people are able to reflect on what damage US has done in the past 20 years.
I meant Hungary and Poland. Czechoslovakia was 1968, long after the missile crisis.
> 1. Either way, the original argument was that some Soviet actions were reactions to actions of US (nukes in Cuba etc). No one says that Soviets were saints.
Agree. Only, however dumb or not - I can't say, US decision to move nukes to Europe was most likely a reaction to something as well. That "something" might very well have been USSR aggressively expanding into Europe.
> 2. To simple people without guns in Iraq, Lybia and Syria the clumsiness of US may be a weak consolation.
Totally agree, only your original post was a bit hyperbolic as well as made it seem like US was doing this with evil intents (no doubt some US citizens, also in the Military complex are evil but I don't approve of the whole nation being more evil than others.)
> But, what amazes me, is that actions of US, brutal, barbarian bombings, regime changes, plunging countries and millions of people into chaos, are not condemned at all!
Don't know where you have been, around here they are condemned a lot for all kinds of good reasons, just like e.g. Israel, mentioned upthread. And just like Israel they get a lot of additional hate from what seems to be uncritical underdog-supporters.
I don't say any of them don't deserve critic; I just say we shouldn't judge them without taking into account the whole situation.
PS: Same happens with Microsoft, and as someone who has disliked MS strongly for most of my career I appreciate that I can like them now, it gives me hope that I am not a totally hopeless fanboy in other situations either.
>Iran is pretty agressive in its rethoric on how it wants to wipe out a certain democracy by the Mediterranean.
Apartheid. Palestinians are under occupation, will not get their own state and cannot vote.
The rhetoric is only aggressive once it's gone through the media filter. What they actually said is closer in meaning to what some wet Jewish New York liberals say - that Israel "the Jewish state" should be consigned to the dustbin of history.
Well, anytime Israel give them a little more room they use it to move their rocket launchers closer. That is not a particularly smart move unless you want to keep the conflict going.
Also: Arab citizens in Israel can vote, - Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank can vote in Gaza.
As for the media filter that is really interesting (I think there is a grain of truth to it) but more than that you have to show evidence.
Yeah, it's funny how many people look at a country that went from agrarian society to first spacefaring society & 2nd most powerful nation in ~40 years and go "obviously their economic system was an abject failure".
The level of growth experienced by the SU was unsurpassed. In the 50s the US media was fretting over it being "too successful".
> Yeah, it's funny how many people look at a country that went from agrarian society to first spacefaring society & 2nd most powerful nation in ~40 years and go "obviously their economic system was an abject failure".
The U.S. went from agrarian society to the first spacefaring society to make it to the Moon, and became the most powerful nation on earth, in ~40 years.
The issue is not that the Soviets didn't develop: it's that they didn't develop as quickly as they could have, had their central planning not retarded their growth rate. Not to mention their utterly murderous regime.
> The issue is not that the Soviets didn't develop: it's that they didn't develop as quickly as they could have, had their central planning not retarded their growth rate
Even if centralised planning is doomed to retard growth rates(a hypothesis I consider quite plausible), you cannot reasonably confirm that hypothesis, or the extent of the retardation, using the example of Soviet Russia. There were too many factors involved for you to lay so much of the blame on centralised planning.
There were multiple geopolitical and economic factors involved, including the fact that USSR was trying to match the military and diplomatic might of an economy triple its size, fought wasteful wars(Wars are a centralized decision in almost all modern countries) and suffered from variations in the rates of global commodities. These factors alone would most likely decimate a country no matter what its economic system.
The US benefited from WW2, while USSR had a large amount of their infrastructure destroyed and 20 million of most productive members of society killed in their prime. Yet they still pulled it off.
The growth was so incredible that even though the Soviet Union's economy was about half of that in the US in 1961, Samuelson estimated Russia would overtake the US sometime in 1984-1997.
It's pretty remarkable that after 30 years consistently growing much faster than the United States, in 1990 the USSR economy was still half as large!
Indeed, the apparent success of the Soviet NHS model, for example, in fighting Typhoid, Typhus and Tuberculosis is partly what led to the structure of the British NHS.
Had the Tories had their way in the 40s (and without a clear example of success to point to, they may have), the UK would now have an insurance based "show me the money and we treat you" system - the exact kind which Americans are all apparently very happy with.
USSR GDP was a total lie like the foam missiles. On a totally centralized economy the statistics depend on the Government and of course, they are not real.
Specially under Stalin, nobody ever gave a bad number, because he would be murdered as incompetent,this fact led to consequences:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
The people in power in the US knew that was totally bogus, but the defense industry benefited immensely from this belief.
Look for Argentina recently(Kirchner) where people has gone to prison, their properties confiscated just for publicizing data that went against the official data by law.
Something similar happens in China today, and as centralization increases, in the Western world too. The data from central banks are becoming more and more "hocus pocus".
Don't pin the Holodomor on timid statisticians and misunderstandings. It was deliberate, as is stated in the lede of the very article you link to: "actions such as rejection of outside aid, confiscation of all household foodstuffs, and restriction of population movement confer intent, defining the famine as genocide"
I am no fan of oppressive regimes, centralised planning or Stalinism, but it always grinds my gears when people point to the collapse of the Soviet Union as the One, Absolute proof that centralised planning is always doomed to failure.
While I'm sure that the hierarchy and command structure of the government and economy had their parts to play in the collapse, their importance is often overplayed by gargantuan proportions.
At the time of the October Revolution, Russia was a largely agrarian society, which henceforth industrialised and developed remarkably quickly under Stalinist Five-Year-Plans, in the midst of the Great Depression. However, it was still poor and barely industrialised when it was decimated by WWII. Despite this, it recovered to become a major world power that challenged the US during its peak.
US GDP has consistently been 3-5 times USSR GDP during the the latter's entire period of existence. Despite this, the pressures of the Cold War forced USSR military spending to match US spending, reaching more than 25% of GDP.
Any country in a similar position would be doomed to crack under the economic strain, regardless of the structure of government or economy.