Why did the Soviet Union collapse? - VisualPolitik EN
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 ต.ค. 2024
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This year marks the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Soviet Union. On 25 December 1991, the then president of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev, addressed the nation announcing three things: his resignation, the disintegration of the Soviet Union, and the end of communism.
Soviet communism did not fall because of outside interference but because of its leaders' own decision. After several attempts to modernize it, Gorvachev ended up abandoning all hope. For many, the failure of communism was to be expected. However, up until that moment the Soviet Union had been one of the greatest superpowers in the world. How is it possible that it collapsed in this way? Why did Soviet communism fail? In this video we tell you.
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In reality, the Soviet Union and its satellites in Eastern Europe were “state capitalist” societies, where workers had no control.
Dictator Joseph Stalin and his successors built up a brutal dictatorship marked by exploitation and oppression.
This wasn’t the inevitable result of the Russian Revolution. It had shown the potential of workers running society without bosses, bankers and landlords.
*scares viewer with 3 % S&P 500 returns" meanwhile, it returned 22.7% in the last year. I see what you did there.
The Soviet System was actually an Eastern European style Military Junta; ruled by a dictator, then by a Central Committee with absolute power. The conditions were so bad, that the people revolted, also within the Soviet Union and they were brutally suppressed.
After the Hungarian '56 revolution, the top leaders couldn't deny anymore that Communism will eventually collapse.
'68 Prague, '80 Gdansk, Yugoslavia and Romania never really wanted to submit to Soviet Russian influence. From 1980 the Communist Secret Police/s have already started to to plan to transition the System for a Velvet Revolution and save themselves from being violently overthrown.
Eastern European Communism couldn't be kept, because there was no money left. The governments went bankrupt.
Do you have permission to use the footage from the Russian propaganda service called Ruptly in your videos? Do you pay for it? Do they "donate" it to you because you are useful to them? Or are you using it illegally? You seem to use clips from this Russian propaganda service regularly in your videos, so it would be nice to clear this up...
Yes, the collapse of Soviet Union could’ve narrowly been avoided the same way as it was in China. And Gorbachev was indeed the victim of events in his time.
As a teenage intern in the 1990's, I had the opportunity to ask a retired KGB colonel his opinion about why the Soviet Union disintegrated. To my astonishment, he attributed it to Andropov's crackdowns on corruption. The whole Soviet system was insanely corrupt except the KGB because ideologues went into the KGB. When former KGB head Andropov was put on the throne, he launched a huge anti-corruption effort. But what he didn't understand was that the corruption and black markets were the only things keeping the Soviet economy functioning at all. In order to make money on black markets, you have to actually make some shoes, coats, car parts, rebar, etc that people will voluntarily buy. So they were the best products around. Black markets were free-ish markets. And when the rules of a system are completely backward and contrary to facts and reason, the system becomes absolutely dependent on rule-breakers for its survival.
Wow that actually makes sense, now I can see why countries like China and North Korea survive despite the rhetoric and appearance they present; something else lies beneath the surface keeping it up
Despite the unfathomable size of the youtube, this is the second time I stumble upon you. The first was when Isaac Arthur suggested your "palaeontology" story. Maybe it is a sign. Who knows? I just subscribed to you - just in case. Cheers from Brazil!
_
PS: I actually stopped to read your comment (the only one I read among all of the comments under this video), found it interesting, and went browsing your channel to see if you had anything else in the same vein. Just then I recognized the story. What a coincidence. I admit I'd rather have won the lottery with those odds. But won't look at a gift horse in the mouth...
@@Kabutoes North Korea has a whole generation of rule breakers. Those who refused to break the rules during the 90s famine starved and died.
@@philoposos Cool! Well, I hope you enjoy my channel. It's all scifi and fantasy stories, no geopolitics, but I might start posting these personal reminiscences there some day.
@@jerrysstories711 Please, do!
Old Soviet expression, "they pretend to pay us, we pretend to work."
now a western saying.
Also,
"Capitalism - work, or starve
Communism - work AND starve"
It wasnt Gorbachiov's fault why it collapsed. he tried to save it. I would say the main 'hero' of making Soviet Union collapse was Brezhnev.
gorbachev was pretty weak. i think members of the Russian SSR forced or convinced him to dissolve the union
It was definitely Gorbachev and Yeltsin who was to blame for the collapse of the union. Yeah, Gorbachev especially was trying to save the Soviet Union, but he was so fucking weak and stupid that his attempt to save the union escalated the situation.
@@LeonWagg and how was he supposed to save the union when it was already falling apart by the time he got into power. And shortly after he got Chernobyl card.
@@darkestkhan I would imagine the situation where they might lose the Baltic states and some other republics, but I still think the union itself could be preserved if people in the leadership were more courageous. Although I do agree that the process of destabilization happened prior to Gorbachev coming to power.
Actually the one to start all of it is Khruschev, as he is the one that denounced the former Socialist principles of the USSR.
"A nation ends not when the final nail is hammered in the coffin, but when the coffin starts being built. "
Mikhail Gorbachev might have hammered the final nail in the Soviet coffin, but I believe Leonid Brezhnev was the one started building the coffin. The utter corruption and disastrous economic mismanagement during the Brezhnev rule rotted the Soviet economy to the core and kept on rotting throughout the years. Plus, Soviet Union's megalomaniacal obsession with militarism and nuclear weapons. They overspent way too much on the military and interventions in other countries for someone who constantly pushed "anti-imperialism" as propaganda.
Add to this - the ideological rigidity that left no space freedom of thought and expression. Though atheistic in principle, Soviet Union idolized or lets say "worshipped" Marx and Lenin as if they are Mohammad and Jesus. The rest like you mentioned.
Nah. Gorbachev's reforms gave soviet republics the will and the power to declare independence. Just imagine if states in the USA had the legal right to leave as they wish, how many would still be part of the USA? Gorbachev destroyed the USSR. Saying otherwise would be nonsense. Lenin is also slightly responsible because he created these super autonomous republics within Russian territory and ultimately the republics were able to declare independence.
@@MWENDA-vv5im Neither of these things led to the collapse. There was a referendum held shortly before the collapse where the vast majority of the population expressed a desire to continue the Soviet socialist project. Less than half a dozen SSRs voted to leave.
@@CanadaJarod The leaders of the soviet republics has already decided to dissolve the USSR. Those referendums were just ignored. Just take for example the 1994 Crimean referendum where they voted to have more autonomy from Ukraine and to have both Ukrainian and Russian passports. This referendum was completely ignored by the Ukrainian government.
They had to have a strong millatary and do "interventions" they had a cold war rival called the US of A or they would have been eaten alive
@@MWENDA-vv5im well he was setting up for the end goal of communism a world where giant state structures are replaces by communes with militias serving as military
Can't believe it, I was born in Soviet Union.
God bless Baltic States 🇱🇹🇱🇻🇪🇪
@Eisenschmidt Proton USSR will be back
@Eisenschmidt Proton and when it does you will probably end up in the Gulag near you. 🙂
@Eisenschmidt Proton wow....you have rockets....I see...
In that case we will have to look for other measures...
@@uncleho3085grow up
@@gaborhorvath6006 we will...and seize the means of production
I come from Visualpolitik Spanish and I like how you also in English use humour and jokes to illustrate about subjects and make points, the use of simple language and lack of political/economic jargon is what makes this project so great, I'm actually studying french, not sure if VisualpolitikFr is a thing yet, but I'll love to hang around there when my french is good enough.
Greetings from Mexico.
I love the fact that how many times visual politik guys play soviet national anthem at the start. These guys are as obsessed as i am with this NA
Find this TH-cam video and I guarantee you will. Love it!
🎶 😁👍🇨🇳 - The shawshank redemption - soviet anthem
To be fair it is a kick ass national anthem.
The Soviet Union did a lot of terrible things, but their national anthem is way better than America's.
Thee national anthem is what made the russki memes
The national anthem is the best in the world
I have been trying for decades to see specifically what caused the USSR to collapse. Im almost 50 I lived through the 70's & 80's. We all thought we would all die from Nuclear War. I'm not kidding. So thank you so much for make ng this.
Watch another version of it on Simon Whistler's megaprojects channel - dissolution of the USSR
50? you look 30 mf
@@manhoosnick Ofcourse..He isn't just David...He is David Young.
@@houseplant1016 hahaha good one mate
If you think a neoliberal channel is going to give you the answers I have a bridge to sell you
I really like your points that the whole system had a hard time evaluating costs, risks and benefits. Even well-intentioned bureaucrats were a far distance from the actual situation, and so their judgement is more "off" than if you'd organize those evaluations more locally.
And this assumes goodwill to begin with. When your entire government isn't accountable to anybody but itself, corruption and abuse will inevitably follow. At some point it becomes a culture, part of the institution itself, and culture is REALLY hard to change in organizations.
In any system, I think it's essential to ask: where do the incentives point to? What is everybody's best action to take for themselves? People will tend to behave in that way. When actions and positive results are so distant from the entire system that actual results are not rewarded, will people actually spend their time making sure that happens? Or will they spend their time trying to impress their superiors?
You failed to mention the Polish "Solidarnisc" Movement. It was the major reason for the eventual fall of the Berlin Wall as well as the reason for Central European exit from the Warsaw Pact.
Lech Walesa played a huge role in the fall of the USSR as well.
Reagan is underrated. He also got the Saudis to help lower the price of natural gas in the 80s on top of scaring the Soviets into spending more on military.
I remember being a little kid (I was just over 5), and seeing this happening on TV. Didn't know what I was watching at the time, but being the history buff I am, I now know. I recall Dad being really interested about it (He served in the Dutch army in the late 1970s), I guess all his training was geared up towards the possibility that the Russians were coming. Now its a joke amongst my friends, that I'm the only one that remembers communism (most of them are post collapse babies). Communism is always great in theory, but in practice, humans never want to be equal, and someone always wants to be top of the pile.
Yep
The 1930's "A soviet golden age?" What about the 1932 famine when 6 million died of starvation.
Exactly
Nice video!But I really hope that you will cover the situation in Kazahstan or the NATO-Russia tensions and "russian conditions" for peace.
Ikr
The Soviet Union collapsed because political growth (glasnost) exceeds economic growth (perestroika). When the economy deteriorated, the people blamed the Communist party. China paid plenty of attention to this, and did not made the same mistake. So when a bunch of students demanded freedom, Beijing sent in the tanks to massacre them. Focus on the economy first, then everything else comes later.
China has been making huge shifts and changes to keep that boat afloat. If economy might become a problem, they CREATE more economy.
Of course, nothing is without a price...
not freedom, they demanded social change. ofc at every protest, there will be extremists. tanks to control the situation
Actually the Soviets overextended themselves with massive centrally planned projects and the Chinese are making the same costly mistake. They build huge ghost cities in which practically no one lives, and make long high speed rail lines to areas that barely use them. China's high speed rail is currently the world's biggest money losing project, with 900 billion USD in current debts, and losing 44 MILLION every day. The Chinese have had to halt all highspeed rail construction as a result, and likely will not build any more.
@@dr.j5642 there’s literally news saying they’re building more rail. what are you even talking about
@@sinoroman when is this news from? Beijing ordered the halts only months ago, so any news prior to this time period is invalid. Any plans stating they will be expanding high speed rail into dates such as 2035 are dated. Two rail projects in Shandong and Shaanxi provinces which already used 20$ billion usd have been halted, and others are being reconsidered as well. China already built all of its profitable rail lines based on population centers and population movement YEARS ago. Any other rails they build from now on will not be profittable and will incur a monthly loss of revenue. I can show you the rail is already losing $44 million usd every month, and that they have $900 billion usd in current debts. Do you want the sources? China can not afford to allow this problem to spiral out of control any further. It only took this long to control the problem because high speed rail construction was the cornerstone of China’s economic boom, but now its become a detriment, and they likely have begun addressing the issue too late.
Thank you for the info comrad.
-Why did the Soviet Union collapse?
-Because it was a shithole
There i saved u 19min of ur life
I think the more proper date of dissolution of the USSR is 8 December - Date of Belavezha Accord - The USSR has been dissolved by member states. Gorbi declaration of 25th was only confirmation of the fact. He was already a leader without a country.
best comment on here
8th December: Belavezha Accords.
16th December: Last republic (Kazakhstan) declares independence.
25th December: Gorbachev resigns and Soviet flag is lowered.
26th December: Supreme Soviet formally votes the USSR out of existence.
@Petro Petrovich I am not so quick to say he fcked up - he barely came into power when he got dealt Chernobyl card. If USSR was in proper that would have been fine. It wasn't - USSR was already on the verge of collapse and dissolution. Chernobyl was just the final nail in the coffin. Not his fault - he didn't even know about it for days after it happened.
@Petro Petrovich You would be right about plenty of time IF not for Chernobyl. It was not just a matter of how much it costed to 'fix' the problem - though that was crippling for sure. Loss of trust in communist system was much bigger problem. When most of republics want out of communist project you can either acknowledge that or start series of conflicts that would cripple CCCP even more.
Soviet Union could have been saved if they started the reforms much earlier. In my view Gorbachev was victim of events. He tried to bring up reforms but was too late and to worsen things, the Chernobyl accident. As president he didn’t came to know of the truth, days after the accident. Now he speaks of environmental protection always probably due to those nuclear accident(not only Chernobyl) and those over night projects shown in this video.
But hey, nice video and best wishes.
Also I feel like he lacks the political wisdom in playing a 'house of cards' basically. Even as late as early 1991 the USSR itself can still be saved (albeit with some breakaway regions like Baltics and Moldova becoming independent and the communist system abolished) as most regions, including even Ukrainians and most southern Caucasian countries, voted to stay in the union. The coup attempt was only crushed after the support of the likes of Boris Yeltsin, who unlike Gorbachev seems to have no problem just dissolving the union and allowing independence of even Ukraine & Belarus (and pretty much encouraging it as a way to force Gorbachev & the Soviet leadership out of power) by signing the Belavezha Accord. And since basically Gorbachev 'owes' to the likes of Yeltsin to survive the coup attempt, inevitably he was at a weaker position in stopping the agenda of Yeltsin. Had he played the cards better where he could keep those radicals from making any substantial moves without relying on the likes of Yeltsin a smaller but still unified, non-communist USSR can be formed since.
I agree, the reason why the ussr become so great (outside of stalins terrible methods) was because of the Khrushchev thaw, because it allowed things like innovation for example
The life of Yuri Gagarin is a great reflection of this because of course it was under Khrushchevs rule that the Russian space program prospered and sent the first man into space among many things.
Not that the USSR was a free country at the time, But once Brezhnev came into power the USSR came back to a police state where shooting the messenger became a common sport
Brezhnev literally did nothing to improve anything (rather he just hid it instead) and he mismanaged the USSR. Yuri Gagarin became a victim to this mismanagement as he died in a plan accident
what reforms, those which totally destryed USSR and later Russia, their problem was starting any reforms
@@jara1462 but they had to reform
@@lovelyhomeboy1584 they had to introduce home internet and introducing more of centrally-decentralized planning, only thing they had to was that, and abolish money and markets, 100%
Imagine if the Soviet Union survived 1991. Still #1 at the Olympics among other things.
You gotta give the man credit for trying to fix it.
But, it just had too much flaws.
Who? Gorbachev? He is the one who destroyed the USSR with his stupid reforms. His reforms created cracks along ethnic lines most of which exist even today.
@@MWENDA-vv5im
Freedom of speech is not good?
WTF...
Gorbatschow also gave freedom to the eastern bloc.
He's a hero outside of Russia.
@Petro Petrovich
Doesn't matter!
He gave Freedom to the eastern bloc after more then 40 years of Communist opression.
Including East Germany, where i live.
We the people of the former eastern bloc will always be thankful for Gorbatschow.
So i repeat myself again...
Gorbatschow is very much celebrated outside of Russia.
Yup, Stalin fucked it up way too much.
@Petro Petrovich From the research I’ve done though, it seems that he did that in response to what the citizens wanted. The empire was stagnating (kind of like how the US is now, in some areas), resources were not properly distributed ( which is more a consequence of a command economy than it is exclusive to the USSR), and according to some, the empire was heading towards a civil war.
So, his intent was definitely good. Execution was just bad. But, not as bad as Stalin and his crazy lunatic doings.
R.I.P Mikhail Gorbachev
🕊🕊🕊🕊
Thank you for ending the cold war
In 1930s, United States sold a lot of machinery to the Soviet Union, even as much as whole factories arrived in the USSR in pieces and then reassembled there. And provided training. This included the factory in Stalingrad. So, U.S.S.R industrialization happened in large part thanks to the products of the American capitalist system
True
I don't think it would have survived, at least as a superpower. I think when 2/3 of your population is cynical toward the goals of your leadership. And they can't help but experience your oppression and mismanagement everywhere they go. At that point propaganda isn't enough to keep people working hard or serving in the police or military with any conviction. And my guess is that can make any political or economic system fragile. Switzerland would eventually collapse if they had those problems.
You described modern-day Iran
The PRC is heading that way too, talk to any Chinese national as a foreigner (not a fellow citizen/potential Party informant) and you'd see they know a surprising amount of "unpatriotic" knowledge and embarrassing news. The turn towards uncritical nationalism and state control over the markets hints at the Party running out of options to continue its unchallenged rule.
A lot of critics say the US is going that way too, but it's been on the "verge of collapse" since 1812. Part of the reason it's so durable is because it holds the potential for revolution every year or so through periodic voting. Plus America thrives on chaos and loosely-defined limits; arguably the disturbing pushback comes from when those societal red lines start getting found and established to the detriment of the privileged.
2/3 of the population were cynical, the rest had Stockholm syndrome.
@@doujinflip Bruh, the Chinese people's views have been polled. Not just by Chinese agencies, but by freakin' Harvard University of America (look up Understanding CCP Resilience online). Good luck arguing that American researchers are helping the Chinese govt. to spy on its citizens. And the results? Higher approval ratings than pretty much any western govt. This isn't at all surprising btw - raising nearly 3 times America's entire population out of poverty in a few decades will do that to people. You'll find a similar story in tiny little Brunei, a country even more authoritarian than China but that's also blessed with so much oil wealth that it's able to take care of its people even despite its ruling classes' flamboyance. Hardly any popular rebellion, not so much out of fear but satisfaction. Prosperity matters more to people than libertarian idealism.
Yes, the collapse of Soviet Union could’ve narrowly been avoided the same way as it was in China. And Gorbachev was indeed the victim of events in his time.
Is too soon to say "avoided the same way as..." since events are still ongoing on that front and could easily turn out *worse!*
The USSR at least ended in a relatively peacefull, controlled way.
@@ethereal2620 You have to be able to see the possibility of the fall of the US empire.
China did not collapse,but it did embrace the capitalism system before the ussr.
@@kingpauljoel6827 not fully, it still command a lot of the economy and a most big companies were state owned not because the market allow it survive as a big company. A lot of their economy relies on small to medium sized companies and like Soviet Union, no Free Speech and no accountability with corruption and still parts of economy is a command based with the political system a command one centrally based is a problem. And also local officials get promoted for short term growth so they can achieve through corruption, take on high debt, mismanagement and get the growth and flashy infrastructure projects in the short term and any issues you can pretend is not your problem and pass it on and get promoted because of your short term achievements rather you get promoted by being as least corrupt, with good management of your local province and making investments in things like infrastructure at a level that makes with little to no corruption and with full transparency. China isn’t like that like Soviet Union m, China in its current state will collapse but knowing their political system it will be either through revolt by the population or war.
A major underlying issue, as Josh stated, is that Communism simply _does not work_ in an agricultural economy. Stalin couldn't explain Marx to the weather to make it rain at the right time; seed wheat was completely uninterested in the speeches of Gospodin Lenin. After all, Marx was writing about Britain during the Industrial Revolution, so while his theories had some value in that environment, they were utterly unsuited to agriculture, which cannot be pushed as though it's an assembly line. So what do the Bolsheviki do? They try to impose Marxist economic theory onto an economy almost completely unfit for it, and eventually it failed.
I know of one successful, commercially productive, example of communism. This occurred in the US, believe it or not! The Oneida Community started as a communist enterprise with religious overtones. The workers lived in barracks, ate in common areas and had few personal possessions. Their products were of exceptionally high quality, and they were much in demand. Eventually, the people wondered why they had only one pair of shoes and one change of clothing despite the massive sales of their products. It's a somewhat complicated story, but you should look it up. This is a case of a communist community becoming so successful that it turned itself into a corporation that still exists today. The Shakers might have been equally successful, as their products are equally known for high quality. Except, of course, for their religious "overtone" being a complete rejection of sex and reproduction. The products were excellent, but the community has gone extinct.
That is why Stalin had the country industrialize even if it met there wouldn't be enough resources to keep millions from starving.
@Petro Petrovich They imposed Marxs' violent revolution and the elimination of private ownership.
@Petro Petrovich Marx apparently was a fan of Pres. Lincoln. The problem I have with "Marxism" is that it was called "Scientific Socialism," but in its time science and social sciences were in their infancy. It is based on false beliefs, such as Lamarckianism that led to Lysenkoism. It didn't have access to what biologists and psychologists now know about human behavior.
One person commented that communism can't work in an agrarian country. It could be argued that it can only work in a small, close-knit agrarian or primitive commercial economy. I have to admit, though, that in the future, if money ceases to be physical and social services improve and become universal, it could become viable.
@Petro Petrovich I hope you looked up American [US] experiments in Socialism. It isn't something most Americans know about [thanks to the anti-Socialist and anti-Communist propaganda throughout the 20th Century. There were quite a few socialist elements on the frontier [hushed up mostly] like farm cooperatives [some still exist], barn raisings, welcome wagon, etc.
Unlike Europe, all of this was voluntary association, none was government imposed OR suppressed. Even in the 1960-70 period there were hippy communes. One thing that might surprise you is that the failing hippy communes of the late 20th Century weren't the first attempt by the literati and educated elites to get back to the simple life [and fail at it].
Check out Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson whose circle tried a short lived commune near here in Massachusetts.
Thank you for contributing to solving a riddle!
Sorry for the long text, but I think that I can give you some context about the USSR. It is a complex matter, so I wrote something I believe is worth your time. The USSR didn't collapse, it was collapsed. Socialism took Russia from literal middle ages to a modern society, paying the price of Stalin's repression in order to stop any revolt due to chance in traditions (religion, political tought, culture, some moving to a urban area while others were forced to stay in rural areas in order to avoid a collpse in agricultural goods). Most of the playing with Hitler between Stalin and Chamberlain was to make that dog bite your enemy; in the end, Hitler attacked both - but the biggest toll was in the USSR. It was compared to the US having destroyed, at the time, its infrastructure from the west coast to Detroit. This led to a immense lack of resources and infrastructure, which led to an production and culture devoted to fulfill the needs with cheap products. This was also associated with the idea of no big brands and propaganda: people would consume according to their needs, instead of the artificial needs estimulated in a capitalistic market. Latter, this would impact soviet exports and make its population an easy target to commercials in US propaganda. The economic blockades, the huge ammount of sabotage and anti-soviet propaganda was a huge toll, hugelly shown in western tv in images of deffectors. Most of them were attracted to programs devoted to make a brain drain to key soviet positions. The latter oil crisis had its costs too; specially because it was one of the main ways for the soviets to get a little ammount of imports. Their industry was also very inneficient to apply new technologies (mainly in oil production), due to the fact they usually tend to create new factories instead of expanding the existing ones. All that said, it would be enough to create a huge crisis in the USSR. But remember that the same happened to the US: both had nuclear plants melting down, both had been hit by the oil crisis, US lost in Vietnam. Politically, the US seemed more unstable: hippies movements, black movements, the killing of Malcon X and Luther King, an attempt against Reagan (remember that Kennedy was shot not so long before), the impeachment against Nixon and latter against Clinton, the risk of the FBI getting too powerfull, the fall of the many US dictatorships in Latin America, and so on. Even if the soviet had an incredible crisis, it would probably keep as the second world economy due to its HUGE market. Also, soviet planned sistem had many flaws to coordinate interconnection between factories, a problem that would be mostly solved by automation and OGAS (soviet internet system to factories and services). So, how could it collapse? I had this question for a long time (one of my randon historical interests, that I pursue for years), so I sistematically read everything Gorbachov wrote as Soviet Premier, as well his written interviews. Also watched many of the news, interviews and docummentaries from that time about the main events in Soviet affairs. Then, most of the latter Gorbachev and Yeltsin works and interviews, but not all. My conclusion is the following: Gorbachev destroyed the USSR, beyond any reasonable doubt. I can point to 4 phases in his political life as Soviet Premier: i)he was ellected to be a reformist, following Andropov's plan for economy (small business as with Kruschev, infrastrucure investments, modernize the economy, more cultural - not political - freedom), he kept the line but started to slowly replace people in key positions; ii)he broke with Andropov's plan and with reformist, placing more opportunists and liberal in key roles (such as Yeltsin, a communist that just threw Lenin out of the windown in the first chance he had in order to get in power); iii)he lambasted most of the hard liners, specally in armed forces and midia, using Glasnost and the Komsomol to make the younger generation more pro-democracy and capitalism (that's mainly why you hear that the new generation wasn't so soviet, even that there were being a bit more liberal even under Kruschev); this third fase is the most known of Gorbachev's career, using a reformist argument to erode the Politiburo's power; iv)in this last phase, he was openly anti-soviet; a week before the August Coup he published an open letter - intended to be a latter discourse - that, well, if you said it was Reagan's I would say he went way too far, even for him. He took advantage of Hoenecker's sickness to replace him and destroy the wall; he created a new russian federation all from his head: that was never mentioned - then, he posponed the signing of the new federation, went to the media and said: "Oh I really hope nobody stops this signing, you know, that would be a tragedy. Also, I won't do it now, I'll first go to a very isolated Dacha for a week to take some rest. Hope nobody do anything while I'm not here". Duh. The Coup was a disastrous mess, conducted by reformists (never the hard line) and they, SOMEHOW, in a coup to stop the downfall of Communism, forgot to arrest the anticommunist leaders, like Yeltsin (but arrested the leader of the Communist Party). After that, Gorbachev allowed the dissolution of the Communist Party, arresting its main leaders. He demoted the last loyal Communist officials in armed forces, and didn't stop the meeting that divided the Soviet Union into capitalist countries. He latter said he was betraid - which is a lie, he knew about every movement and refuse to arrest Yelstin. He also said he never did anything wrong (duh) in his life, that he was an ardent Communist. When questioned if he would have done anything differently, he said he would have left the Communist Party earlier, created a new party and got ellected instead of Yealtsin. He distorted many things in his speaches and memoirs, but the doccuments don't lie. He tried a social-democratic coup in USSR in order to get the status of a figure like Ghandi; he wanted to be the democratic hero who single-handded stopped the Cold War, brought immense investments to a new capitalistic, free, richer, better, higher, stronger, sexier Russia. In reallity, it was just in his head: the country collapse, new forms of fascism and racism showed up, famine spread all around. Any serious Soviet-affairs analist considered impossible to get with Perestroiska without destroing the country. Lesh Valessa also said that he once talked with Gorbachev, that told him about his plans. Valessa, according to his own words, immediatly noticed that: i)Solidarity was way too weak to do anything, but it was his only chance to get to power; ii)Gorbachev refforms would either destroy the USSR or, at least, create an ennormous crisis until the Communists stopped it. So he said that he fully supported Gorbachev. And waited. That was the main line, usually the worst got into power after the USSR dissolution: Valessa itself destroyed Polland and the left the presidency to become a factory worker again; Yeltsin, who claimed to the soldiers to not shoot the people, shelled the Duma and killed around 800 people only in the Red Square when the workers noticed what was going on and tried to get their factories back; in the eastern countries, it took around 20 months for the western companies to buy almost all the enterprises - and then demolish them, destroying both the competition and any chance that any of those countries would take their factories back. Yeltsin lost his power, due to incompetence, to the mob that now controls all the commodities in the country. Then he lost his power to Putin, who was put in place in order to stop Communism to come back, with his idea of a stronger Russia. All those pensions, pallaces of culture, free educational programs, no increase in food production, visiting programs for the eldery and sick people, all of this is gone. It's incredibly sad. And nobody gives a fuck.
This was a great read♥️
The greatest nation and the first socialist experiment brought down not by the enemy but by traitors within.
@@uncleho3085 Thank you for the kind repply. In the end, the Cold War became a psychological warfare. Soviets look for a way to get rid of products fetichism, while the USA bombarded the Warsaw Pact with propaganda 24/7. Our climate collapse is one of the results of such consumerism that prevailed.
@@andredias5284 and now we see the end of the globalisation era. The western middle class being left out of the fruits of globalisation and the rise of China. Neoliberalism really fucked things up big time...
Everything you said is true. The soviet union fell due to a political, not economic, crisis.
@@somethingelse9228 and it was an intentional, planned one. Even the small Communist countries like Cuba and North Korea are still alive; how come?
Adding some clarifications to the content discussed, it is urgent to point out that the “success” of Stalin - the man who used to boast of having taken the U.R.S.S. "from the plow to the atomic bomb in just one generation" - compared to Gorbachev's failure shows that a socialist economy is unable to function with a minimum of efficiency without requiring a massive dose of political violence. In an attempt to reform a decadent regime, Gorbachev proceeded more quickly with the process of political openness in the hope of removing the predictable resistance that the Soviet bureaucracy would create to economic reform measures, as was fully proven by the failed coup attempt in the USSR in August 1991 - which ended up precipitating the final crisis of socialism and the dissolution of the USSR itself. Having restored several freedoms (creed, expression, organization, party, etc.) that had been abolished in his country since the time of Vladimir Lenin, Gorbachev's opening process can be defined as a kind of attempt to "deleninize" the U.R.S.S.
While Gorbachev went ahead with his policy of "one step forward" (towards capitalism) and two steps back (back to socialism), his Chinese parallel - Deng Xiaoping - adopted a logic diametrically opposed to that of Gorbachev: he prioritized the achievement of economic prosperity (adopting capitalism in practice) precisely to delay any attempt at political opening, as was evident with the acceleration of the economy. reforms after the Tiananmen Square massacre.
It is important to note that it was Karl Marx himself who, in his Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, discerned the scenario in which the conditions for a social revolution process are formed, describing it as follows:
“At a certain stage in its development, the material productive forces of society contradict existing production relations or - which is just their legal expression - with the property relations in which they have operated until then. From the forms of development of the productive forces, these relations are transformed into fetters of them. So, it is a time of social revolution. '*
By rejecting the pursuit of profit maximization as an instrument to stimulate innovation, socialist countries ended up condemning themselves to obsolescence. Thus, they lost the chance to incorporate the productivity gains made possible by technological progress. That is why the capitalist countries managed to provide a greater rise in the standard of living of their population, even without pursuing the egalitarian ideal. Therefore, until the “final crisis of socialism” (to paraphrase K. Marx's own definitions once again), it was only a matter of time. But religious fanatics do not give up on their faith, even against the indisputable proof of the facts, which completely refute it!
What has always happened to human society since the time of chipped stone is that technological development does not require human beings to dedicate themselves to certain activities, which start to be carried out in a more intensive way, with increased productivity of decline in the contingent of hand. -employed labor, eliminating certain jobs with the aid of the developed technology. But the jobs eliminated are offset by the increased employment of labor in more technologically developed sectors.
This is basically what happened when the advent of the Industrial Revolution helped to increase the productivity of the extractive and agricultural sector - notably from the advent of agro-industry - while reducing the need for the employment of human labor in these sectors. , which makes up the primary sector of the economy. At the same time, the Industrial Revolution moved the economically active population to the secondary sector of the economy (handicrafts, industry and manufacturing).
This process was first noticed by the Austrian economist Joseph Alois Schumepeter, who defined it as a kind of "creative destruction" - that is: technological progress destroys job opportunities in some sectors, but also creates new opportunities in other sectors!
The problem is that Schumpeter was a pessimist, who detested the Soviet regime, but strongly believed that he embodied the "future of humanity". Schumpeter did not realize that he had found the key to explain why capitalism does not self-destruct in an immense crisis of overproduction, as K. Marx predicted it would happen: instead, it evolves, creating the conditions for the overcoming of technological civilization. industrial and the subsequent advent of a technological civilization of a post-industrial character, in the same way as the Industrial Revolution had already done with the agricultural or pre-industrial civilization.
Therefore, we can conclude that from the invention of the first chipped stone tools to artificial intelligence and space travel, human history is not driven by a notorious and highly questionable "class struggle", but by technological progress: since it discovered how handling fire and producing tools, including the wheel, human evolution has become more technological and less biological, unlike other animals. The main reason for this phenomenon is that, with the help of the technology we have created, the human race has gradually become less subject to the limitations imposed by nature. It was by obstructing this mechanism of human evolution - disregarding the importance of maximizing profit in an industrial technological society - that the so-called "socialist mode of production" proved unable not only to compete with capitalism, but even to survive. Therefore, it is easy to deduce that this is a mere question of TIME until the so-called "21st century socialism" in Venezuela ends up following the same path as its counterpart of the last century. However, if there are still economic reforms, it is possible that it will survive for some time.
To paraphrase Marx once again, it can be said with certainty that socialism is a system full of contradictions, which bears the germ of its own destruction: it is the system that digs its own grave!
* Reproduced according to MARX, K. Preface to the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, organized by Florestan Fernandes and published under the title K. Marx: Teoria e processo histórico da revolução social, In Marx & Engels, Great Social Scientists Collection , História, vol. 36. São Paulo: Ática, 1983. p. 232. Edição comemorativa do centenário da morte de Karl Marx.
Obs .: Adaptation made from a text of my authorship published in issue nº 72 of the Magazine of the Brazilian Association of Intellectual Property - RABPI in September 2014.
That was a mouthful.
This video sums it up quite well but it missed some other key points:
- The 1980s glut led to oil prices being cut more than in half. The USSR was a major oil exporter at the time and its budget depended on oil prices that worsened the country's deficit.
- Sino-Soviet split and Nixon's visit to China made the USSR spend more money on the army in case they'll have to fight two fronts. Add here Afghanistan and the Star Wars program that were mentioned in the video and you'll understand why Soviet military expenditure went up to ≈15% GDP in the '80s from ≈5% in the '70s.
- The USSR lost the tech race, the most important factor being the inability to produce its own microchips.
- The USSR was famous for its education, especially in technical and natural sciences. But it wasn't famous for its economics (for some obscure reason...), and particularly the ruling elite wasn't famous for having any education at all. By training, Brezhnev and Yeltsin were engineers (as many, many others), Andropov was a teacher, Chernenko and Malenkov didn't finish a university, and Khruschev didn't even finish school. And we're talking only about the main guys; you can imagine the rest. Top managers in factories, who were very influential in the Soviet economy, usually were also engineers. The top officials' education level degraded so much that it went below the level of an average Soviet citizen! So, that's that too.
- Gorbachev's policies were extremely inconsistent and bafflingly wasteful. His primary concern seemed to be him remaining in the position, so he just promised better conditions for those whose loyalty was most important for him at the moment. So, the budget deficit went crazy and a country basically went bankrupt before falling apart.
- The power structure of the late USSR was reminiscent of the feudal one. So, the minute the center lost its ability or willingness to hold power together, local leaders just claimed what they considered their own. An attempt to reform the economy at the same time with the politics (glasnost') didn't help it at all. (Just look at modern China as a counterexample.)
I'm sure this list is still far from complete, but I guess you can see the pattern here. The stiffness and inefficacy of the nomenclature (intransparency, no checks and balances, bad human resource policy, high volatility), poor understanding of economics, and a long series of poor decisions both home and abroad buried any possibility for the USSR to overcome the crisis.
"the ruling elite wasn't famous for having any education at all. By training, Brezhnev and Yeltsin were engineers (as many, many others), Andropov was a teacher, Chernenko and Malenkov didn't finish a university, and Khruschev didn't even finish school. And we're talking only about the main guys; you can imagine the rest. Top managers in factories, who were very influential in the Soviet economy, usually were also engineers."
And that is supposed to be a bad thing?
"the inability to produce its own microchips"
Trust me, countries don't collapse because of that.
"the budget deficit went crazy and a country basically went bankrupt before falling apart"
Neither do they collapse because of that, just look at the US.
@@MalleusImperiorum the US government can afford to mess up constantly thanks to almost always having a strong private economy. There are of course limits.
@@robertortiz-wilson1588 It's thanks to their military presence around the world, so that the whole world pays for their freshly printed money. They are still in debt and one day they'll have to pay for their stuff themselves. But for now let's enjoy this relative "stability".
Any other example of a country that collapsed because their economy went bankrupt?
Let's just hope that Russia breaks up even more. The very existence of Russia is a threat to the entire world.
Great Video guys!
Very interesting and informative video.
Can we all agree that investing in art in that way is shaddy at least?
Tax evasion
1. Could USSR avoided its dissolution? Yes. Absolutely.
2. What do you think of Gorbachev? Good man and kind leader.
He could mobilizes the military and crushes the breakaway republics, yet he choose to let go of power for the good of the people.
Maybe not the "hero of democracy", but the magnanimous liberator for those in East Germany, Hungary, Baltic republics, etc.
USSR is a fake country.
@@valenrn8657 How so?
In my point of view, I see that Gorbachev has a good plan about the USSR, but the mistake is, he act suddenly which was misunderstood by the people. Another thing that cause in its collapse is the corruption in its bureaucracy, if they handle corruption well, it wouldn't collapse. See in the west, there is still corruption, but because of their good handling, it didn't collapse the system. And lastly, if USSR did not force to speed up the productions, especially in the plantation sector, it will bare good fruits, because there is many areas to be planted, and only winter hinder it.
Lack of freedom to express is the real concept
Gorbachev is a hero ... He wanted to reform a repressed society into a better one and he tried .. gave his best...
Awesome video man. Thanks.
I will sift through the comments for commie tears
Great video - looking forward to more.
IMHO - the first palpable nail in the coffin for the USSR government was actually placed by Stalin and his advisors when the USSR negotiated and signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Germany prior the WWII.
This treaty contained a "Secret Protocol" between Germany and the USSR that where Germany recognized "spheres of influence" by the USSR over several baltic states like Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, etc.
The story about the secret protocol and how it survived destruction after WWII is almost movie worthy.
The story about the impact the secret protocol had on history during and after WWII is documentary material unto itself.
Sadly, many people outside of the baltic states and Russia generally have no awareness of the secret protocol and the part it played in history.
There are other videos that describe the secret protocol and the impact it had, but the fact remains that Stalin and his team inadvertently created a tool that was used by affected baltic states as a legitimate means to claim independence from the USSR starting in the late 1980s.
Certainly, other factors contributed to the fall of the USSR, but the secret protocol has the longest, oldest thread - which when pulled correctly contributed greatly to the unraveling of the USSR.
Nice vid!
Still it’s unbelievable how they fall
It was the Cold War, all the time and resources wasted on building weapons. It hurt both sides. The USSR probably would have collapsed, but it would not have been as devastating.
The rot set in very early for the USSR, with the paranoia and egotism of Stalin. Had Lenin lived longer (he died in the 1920s after a series of strokes) it could have made a big difference. Lenin may not have been a saint, but he would have taken the USSR in a very different direction which - who knows? - might have given it a better foundation and maybe a less confrontational relationship with the West. This might have avoided some of the crippling expense of the Cold War and the arms race.
Stalin embedded a culture of purges, internal spying, secret police, and personality cults that infected Soviet politics and never really went away. This led to a culture of secrecy and self-protection which was finally exposed in the mismanagement surrounding Chernobyl.
Stalin was like a mob leader in executing power.He ruled with iron fist ,much like a war lord
@@zachzanal1067 Arguably, that cold brutality was necessary during WW2. But not really appropriate for peacetime governance.
Well exactly that is still ongoing in the self proclaimed communist countries which are Cuba, China, and North Korea. A system that monopolizes power with no opposition able to criticize issues without state repercussion is bound to rot.
@@chinesesparrows Isn't this also happening in the US? There's no significant opposition in their 2 party system.
@@wesleywagumba812 The US does not enforce the count of parties, any party is free to compete e.g. the Green Party. Thats in stark contrast to commie countries where opposition parties are outlawed and punished by state security.
The sad truth that most people lived a better life than after words . There are many examples and 98% of Eastern Europes people who lived in a Soviet Union would tell you the same thing …. Life in Soviet union was way better for most people . The only one thing was real that some people instead of improving things with an amazing economic base decided to destroy everything . That collapse brought most of the people a way worse life .
The results of the Cold War...
The "free" countries might not be able to be speedy and quick at times due to having to work through many layers and agreements. And communistic countries like China can make HUGE projects just happen.
But all the bounds and checks in "free" countries do stabilize the system. And given enough desire lead to agreements.
The USSR was bound to fail, as Chernobyl showed, the lower people didn't want to be the bringer of bad news [and hence lower their own status] so they just lied. The whole organisation was broken! And based upon lies, much as we see in China these days. Yes China IS powerful and GROWS pretty quick but... its structure leads to huge abuses of power, influence and resources not ending up where they should.
Every system has its faults, communism sounds good, but it always crashes.
Hard to compete against capitalism in a game of who can spend the most amount of money.
And you have to spend upwards of 20% of GDP to keep up with the arms race, while your rival spends around 8%
Well, remember it's not about money per se, but production. Zimbabwe and Weimar can print money, but only free and stable markets create the production to spend it on.
The Russian revolution was the most important thing that happened in the 20th century(imo)
oddly I was looking for this video today, and it just appeared lol
It would have fallen sooner or later. There were too many people who wanted their own land, own choices and without being extorted.
Yes, but this time could be like XXIII century. The problem is that the most part of all states in history wasn’t very kind to its population. Like Rome Empire that conquered so much nations, none of them ever wanted to live in the empire, the rebellions happened all the time. But the Empire lasted for thousand years. And of cause, Soviet Union had much more sophisticated and effective methods of suppression the Romans, so it could exist even longer. If the will of people to liberty had influence, it only added the last straw but not caused the collapse.
It was bound to happen
1. Too many ethnicities
2. Too much investment in military & military industry
3. No sense of competition in masses
4. Arrival of cable TV and sharing of information globally
5. Overall poor economy to lift the weight of system doing poking throughout the globe
It seems being a victim of circumstance is, in the end, how heroes are made
The Soviet Union collapsed because Gorbachev was willing to undergo any change to save the Union, any change short of the dissolution of the Union. Unfortunately for him, after he took his foot off the people's throats, the people of each SSR demanded independence from the Soviet Union, and the straw that broke the camel's back was when Russia itself demanded independence from the Soviet Union. After that the party was truly over.
He is such a hero and is the biggest reason the Cold War ended.
If he choose to suppress dissent and allow corruption like all his parties colleagues would have done, he could have kept his Cushy job as the leader until the next century.
Soviet DOES NOT equal Russian. Very unprofessional. Didn't expect that from visualpolitik
The Soviet Union began to collapse after Rocky Balboa gave his speech about everybody being able to change.
I think it was when Rambo helped the Taliban
Russia was growing/industrializing rapidly in the early 1900's. The German assessment was that Russia would overtake by 1917? hence their preference for war before then, should the cause arise (military assessment, it was not their domain to start a war). Note, Communist/Marx (Engels?) belief that only labor generates value. That amounts to a linear theory of money, that it has a separate source, analogous to Maxwell's equations for electro-magnetism. Everything we know about money is that money can also generate money, i.e., a nonlinear theory analogous to gravity as in the Einstein equations.
The REAL problem with the Soviet USSR, was the lack of incentive.
Why do you get up at 2am to go to a horrible work place?
Because you het money for your family
In the USSR, you were paid however well you worked.
As the people said:
“The government pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work”.
So the West was 10x as efficient as the USSR,
and the USSR were spending 50% of income on the military.
so it collapsed.
Ralph
no, there were different pay scales and material incentives in lieu of pay, you obviously did not do your homework
@@markyaremko8031 correct. The incentives were very thoughtful: poor doctors and teachers, and rich grocery shop and warehouse workers due to access to sought after goods. Also special benefits (hospitals, grocery kits/paiki) for military, secret service, communist party members. Corruption everywhere, bottles of vodka and cigarette packs as the means of exchange.
@@korostov It's great that in capitalist Russia things are different... Oh wait, they are exactly the same.
I don't know why so many continue to refer to the USSR as a "Communist" state. It was factually a Socialist state by definition(total state control over resources, means of production, and state ownership of all property)
Communism implies an absence of the state as an organizing power. The Soviet Union was a heavily centralized Socialist state with communism at best as an ideal to aspire towards.
Yeap. We were all the time on never-ending "road to communism"
Maybe because these countries (Soviet Union and its satellites) actively promoted communist ideology and were all led by 1 party, the communist party in each of their respective states.
@@MihaiRUdeRO Yeah, that's essentially what I said - " communism at best as an ideal to aspire towards." It's the same as to say that China is a communist state. We all know that China has the second largest capitalist, not communist or socialist economy. I think that's what matters most. Labels and asperations we call "Communist" don't reflect the reality in this case. And those labels tend to confuse a lot of people.
@@rubenrossman3357 It's a confusing term because even communist parties themselves have been unable to create a communist state.
You are correct though, pure communism requires the abolition, or at least great reduction of the state.
However, ironically without the state's imposition of this ideology, communism collapses. It's against human nature to deprive individuals of free commerce, private property, hierarchies and social stratification.
@@MihaiRUdeRO Totally agreed 👍
the personal motivation of a human is the fuel of productivity. thats why group think fails.
you are the best. continue do perfect content
OMFG, you fired the guy who was making your tooth yellow!
Love this channel
In a nutshell Gurbachev gave both market and political freedom and ended up with collapse but China learnt so it only gave market freedom but kept political control tight and hence kept alive its system.
Hey! Long time bug fan of Visual Politik here. I really enjoy your content but the introduction of add that derail the video from the subject at hand really throws off the video. Maybe better to have them at the beginning or end?
Interestingly when people talk about the Soviet Union's collapse they like to say "communism failed". In reality what the USSR exercised was not communism, which in fact hasn't been practiced in any country in modern history. In the former USSR and even now in China, communism remains an distant ideal. What really happened was just that the ideology was used by a group of people to gain power. Communism, in Marx' theory, the foundation of it must be built on the tremendous wealth and productivity compiled in the era of capitalism. At the peak of capitalism, human society could evolve into socialism, and so on move to communism.
It doesn't matter which ever way you look at it, either there's something about these ideas that is easily exploited by wannabe dictators, or the methods suggested by communists don't lead to that ideal.
Socialism refers more to distribution though, while capitalism and communism focus on production. Clearly capitalism is superior to "public" state control in getting resources where it's wanted, the main battle is how socialized do we want the profits to be versus how much wealth those who earned/stole get to keep with libertarianism. Then there's democracy/autocracy which governs the policy.
So the real evolution might not be feudalism > capitalism > socialism > communism, but finding the mix of policy + production + distribution. It's arguably possible to be a capitalist socialist democracy.
@@doujinflip In post-war European/Scandinavian countries, this is clearly the trend. To me, the flaws in human nature will prevent a true and functional communist society from ever happening. But as we accumulate wealth and knowledge, a more socialist world is practical and can go hand in hand with a capitalist system.
Why is he constantly calling USSR "Russia" and Soviet people "Russians"? Should we call any country/union by its largest economy? Like EU-Germany, UK-England etc. Pathetic.
potentially we might be seeing a similar play with capitalism right now and the US in particular. I mean it's a country full of inefficiencies, run by a bunch of old men and full of disillusioned citizens under the influence of foreign disinformation campaigns like the Soviet Union was in the years leading up to the fall of communism. I don't think the US will fall into a totalitarian regime or anything like that but I do think a new economic model will emerge by the end of the decade for better or for worse. Time will tell.
We did not wait keenly in the Baltics to have elections we made them happen. Being the harbingers of these reforms while still in the Union which was getting its act together.
The Soviets freaked out the West with its Foxbat fighter. You could say Reagan learned the trick from the Soviets.
XI had to embrace capitalism in his communist state.
It's market socialism. And it was actually Deng who did that. But they themselves said that they're just buying time. Considering how the CCP is trying to expand the PLA it's still a good time to get money out of there while we still can.
Hello from Ukraine. The USSR could not be saved, since the authorities themselves destroyed it. After the putsch of the GKSP and the inability to cope with even one challenge (Chernobyl, Afghanistan, prohibition, inflation, lack of food in stores), local elites immediately seized power. And they did not need strict control from above. The same power was seized in Moscow itself-Yeltsin. And the Russians left the USSR, and the rest of the peoples did not need it. As for Gorbachev, he was an ideological communist and was against the exit of the republics or the collapse of the USSR. He was a weak leader whose inept actions ruined the country entrusted to him. And thank God)
Ukraine is still worse off than it was before the collapse, but "thank God".
I see your Mises and raise you Rothbard.
I more or less agree, centralized planning steered resources into projects beyond what could be naturally sustained, repressive measures were used to clamp down on protest against the inefficiency. Even Khrushchev was partly forced out due to what was perceived as an excessive focus on consumer goods and Brezhnev was all too eager to re-divert resources into military projects.
Couple that with the disastrous Afghanistan invasion (a lesson the US should have taken note of as Alexander The Great, The British and Soviet Union had troubles with and which China will as well), its amazing The Soviet Union lasted as long as it did.
I see your *failed economist* and I raise you *another failed economist*
@@phunkracy Ha! Still trying to reach the utopia eh? It's always the dictator phases that run into issues that seems to be terminal to getting to the utopia. I don't know why they are considered "failed" though, as The Austrian School hasn't really held sway in many halls of power, the closest any market mind was to power was Friedman but his attitude toward inflation was fatal. The rest has basically been warmed over Keynesian thought, especially now with MMT.
@@PiousPriest it hasn't held sway in *any* halls of power :)
And "true free market" is as much an ideological project as 'true communism' is, while being truly demonic and inhuman in nature. Having choice between the two, I'd chose the latter. Not that original austrian economists cared, as they were always fairly sceptic towards democracy.
@@phunkracy That's the issue: natural rights gets in the way of collectivism, and I'd hardly call natural rights theory demonic and inhuman. Even the smallest individual has dignity ("the least of these"), the issue is that inequity is assumed to be injustice and that isn't always the case. Humans vary quite a bit and may value different items differently in terms of economics.
The Soviet Union was propped up by its satellite states and sympathisers in the West (especially during WWII when they were allies).
10:04 Shout out to Ludwig Von Mises. Strong.
Soviet Union's dissolution was always inevitable; if it didn't happen under the leadership of Gorbachev, it would have happened under the guidance of the next leader or the next after that, and so on.
With that being said, we have to give credit to Gorbachev but calling him a hero of democracy is a little bit of a stretch.
Despite the fact that soviet republics left, he still had one important factor under his control, the Red army. He said much after, that for communism to continue there would have to be a massacre, he decided against, in China they did go the massive repression route.
These megalomaniacal projects were 'communist' in the same way that mega-corporations say their capitalism is 'freedom' - Soviet 'Communism' was not based on the definition of 'Communism' (because 'communism' didn't proscribe a unique political/economic structure), it was based on which singular figures (party members, or modern day oligarchs) could coerce people to concentrate wealth their way.
The supposed 'promise' of 'Communism' parallels the supposed 'promise' of 'Capitalism'- i.e. 'if you buy into this system (work for the glory of the Union/ buy all these products) then your needs and wants will be satisfied too (somehow).
But in both systems, the highest placed members of the hierarchy can use their presumed 'earned' privilege to deny everyone 'beneath' them basic needs for the sake of their own privilege. Party-members/oligarchs can divert productivity to treat themselves and starve anyone else, and 'efficient capitalists' can depress wages so much, that few can buy into the consumerism needed, while giving themselves a bonus at the same time.
I think for a lot of russians living under communism the attitude to work was more along the line of "why put in effort when a lack of effort is equally rewarded" the whole idea that you walk away with the same pitiful pay and food if your crops and industries flourish or fail.
2:06 no they didn't start the cold war, the U.S. did
Make a video about the situation in Kazakhstan!
Michael Gorbachev was the most honest and capable leader but he was not able to do that miracle of dissolving and reorganizing the largest country in the world.
Largest nightmare for management !
His greatest contribution to humanity was the START treaty.
Gorbachev had good ideas, but everything happened so fast the system couldn't keep up.
Yeltsin & Gorbachev, along with their likeminded bureaucratic contemporaries are two men on the very short list of those whom I actually look up to, since they both had many opportunities to go the wrong way, but they were vigilance incarnate.
What? Gorbachev had the opportunity to turn Russia into a capitalist power like the rest of the west, but instead turned it into the oligarchy it is today. Russia today is just the USSR with a little more freedom. that's it.
@Petro Petrovich and Yeltsin gave Putin the power he has today due to his incompetency.
@@LeonAnilom no, Russia I’d completely different from the USSR.
@Petro Petrovich The economy collapsed because of Yeltsin. Gorbachev gave people freedom of speech and allowed countries to leave the Soviet Union if they wanted to which was fair enough. He didn't want or expect them to leave though so he failed in his goal but he gave them the rights they should have had all along. It's a shame Yeltsin took over and there was no way Gorbachev could have stayed in power as he wanted a social democracy which would have very much better than what happened.
@Petro Petrovich Countries may have been granted the right to leave in 1922 (I didn't know that) but in practice they weren't allowed to leave otherwise they all would have.
It only could have avoided dissolution if real economic and political reforms were pursued early enough. The 80s were far too late.
The amount of ads should be criminal. Made it halfway.
Hopefully this doesn’t become a pattern. I’d hate to unsubscribe.
*Remembering that time Soviet Union applied for NATO membership after match ww2.*
????? they never did !
some context: begining of 20th century, 15 years before revolution, tsarist Russia is 5th industry economic giant, it growth in wealth, population, technology, industrialization can be compared only to booming USA. German General Staff analyzed economy, industry, military possibilities and made official technical conclusion - if no radical change in Russia happen, by year near 1920y Russian military capabilities will be so, that not only Germany have no chance but even Europe combined would have little chance to hold it.
So it can be German General Staff's analytical powers suitable only for "Bruce Lee vs. Mike Tyson who would win if legs allowed" talks or if it's not a propoganda and you are not infoprostite it can be analytical powers of your's. And while there was no organization which surpases German General Staff in predictions, mathematical accuracy and analysis so I think you are pure genius
Surprisingly accurate video. That's rear to see about USSR. As for Gorbachev, he was probably a traitor, just like Eltsin. I think the difference in luxuriousness of life of higher-ups in US and USSR was making them want to ditch communism.
Looking on in fear, Pooooooh imposes more controls.
I’ve heard it said that it was because their credit line was subordinate to those of western “free” nations. Eventually it just couldn’t compete in the marketplace and the only way it could survive was by ever-increasing totalitarian rule from Moscow.
One main problem was instead of slowly implementing reforms Gorbachev tried to do it in one go along with opening of media people could know about their life vs in west. That's why China didn't allowed open media as it would lead to many protest and dissent
Because communism and socialism doesn't work. That's why you see China and Vietnam becoming rich and embracing capitalists, free market economies because it works as you can see specially in China where it lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty in less than 20 years after implementing free market, capitalist system.
Why you say "russians"? Russia was just one of the 15 republics. Seems bad to call all of them Russians.
command economy == malinvestment
US would have learn from the collapse of Soviet Union.
yeah they've learned that communism/planned economy are trash. That's why the US and China are still total powerhouses while Russia is a corrupt mess
@@Solaxe The only reason Chinanhas anything is because it's on US life support. Without US consumers they'd lose a huge majority of their cash flow. And they can't expand their military if they're broke.
The US arguably still holds China's fate, just as it did since the end of the Opium Wars: empire-ending Western education, WWII materiel, abandonment of the KMT, switch of diplomatic recognition, support against the Soviets, introduction to global markets, allowing integration into the world economy post-1989, and constant infusion of knowledge and dollars. The Mainland also relies on the US for agriculture and open sea trade to import cheap food -- Americans can adapt to digital hacks and expensive gadgets, the PRC can only ignore polluted meals and empty stomachs for so long.
#Freedom #NoSocialism #NoCommunism #Democracy #Freespeech #Accountability #NoCorruption #Transparency The only way to live!
I'm calling it now, masterworks is a scam. Ya'll be careful
Where is Simon? I miss Simon