The literacy rate in Tsarist Russia was ~50% in 1916. The Soviet Union managed to raise it to 75% in two decades, despite a largely rural population, near-zero infrastructure, going through a civil war, famine, gross government mismanagement, being flat-broke, and having incredibly incompetent, and ideologically-bound leadership, that was more concerned with waging a war against its people, than actually governing them.
If you're telling me that the United States, with an unlimited budget couldn't accomplish the same in two decades of occupying Afghanistan, I'll tell you it's not because it couldn't do it. It's because it didn't try.
> No form of social engineering would solve this
No form of social engineering if you don't actually try to build a national identity is going to solve that. National identities don't arise by an act of God, they arise out of focused top-down propaganda and education and cultural efforts. Every country that has a national identity built one through such a manner. Afghanistan didn't develop one in the past twenty years, because the occupation couldn't be assed to.
To be fair to the Soviets, killing or starving millions of people, mostly in rural areas for the latter, certainly helps with increasing literacy on its own ( less illiterate peasants to dilute the stats).
The literacy rate in Tsarist Russia was ~50% in 1916. The Soviet Union managed to raise it to 75% in two decades, despite a largely rural population, near-zero infrastructure, going through a civil war, famine, gross government mismanagement, being flat-broke, and having incredibly incompetent, and ideologically-bound leadership, that was more concerned with waging a war against its people, than actually governing them.
If you're telling me that the United States, with an unlimited budget couldn't accomplish the same in two decades of occupying Afghanistan, I'll tell you it's not because it couldn't do it. It's because it didn't try.
> No form of social engineering would solve this
No form of social engineering if you don't actually try to build a national identity is going to solve that. National identities don't arise by an act of God, they arise out of focused top-down propaganda and education and cultural efforts. Every country that has a national identity built one through such a manner. Afghanistan didn't develop one in the past twenty years, because the occupation couldn't be assed to.