I came home from school during these days, threw down [my books and sat down with my grandparents who raised me. Grandma said "don't leave. You're watching history taking place." I was mesmerized, as i had been around that time and earlier, watching what happened to Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife and also a velvet revolution. I had become just so curious, nearly obsessed. And finally when I was ready, I started to travel to former Soviet Bloc countries. It was the people, .of course who kept me going back. I ended up marrying a Czech Native. Our greatest, most anticipated journey was to Russia in 2019. Alas, I am very concerned that we shall never finish out the sojourn. I wish with all my heart that a peace comes soon. I hope for diplomacy. Because I surely love that part of the world and its peoples.
За всю историю человечества, мира никогда не было и никогда не будет. Так как основная причина этого безобразия природные ресурсы. У некоторых стран их слишком много , у других мало. А и есть те у которых кроме песка и камней ничего больше нет, даже вода только дождевая.
@@tolyamochin4066 Это не совсем верно; мир сейчас более распространен, чем когда-либо в нашей истории, несмотря на недавнюю войну в Украине. Войны заканчиваются, когда обе стороны больше не имеют разных ожидаемых результатов от продолжения борьбы в своих умах, то есть когда закрывается разрыв в переговорах.
@@tolyamochin4066 Do you think putin is in Ukraine for resources? I really don't believe he is there for that reason, maybe it could be a secondary reason. The reasoning which makes most sense to me, is that an independent, and culturally similar state close to Russia is a threat to the kremlin, especially one that allows its citizens some degree of political participation. So, when Ukraine started to leave russia's influence in 2014, putin tried to bring it closer to Russia again, sending little green men into Crimea. He saw the movement of Ukraine's people to the west as a direct threat to his control in Russia. Then, in 2022, he believed the russian military could overwhelm Ukraine's once again and take Kiev this time. Of course, he seriously miscalculated.
You can't have a meaningful discussion about why Soviet Union collapsed without a through understanding of how Soviet economics functioned and how the Politburo & Republic governments interacted.
** Thorough** understanding ; ) I totally agree with you, by the way - this is definitely far too simple, but of course it's a one-hour lecture at a university, so we can't really expect much more than we got, given the decidedly degraded state of American University education. Political correctness, telling "the story" has superceded critical thinking, coming to your own conclusions based on research and an objective view of the history. We are witnessing the protracted death of the United States as it was, and the "new" America... well, ,,born from the garbage'' pretty much sums it up.
@@darbyohara I remember shopping at GUM the supposed grand “universal” department store on Red Square, at peak Soviet Union in 1979, supposedly the Utopia that Stalin broke all those millions of eggs for, the great omelette of the new way humans should really live. To say there was not much to buy is an understatement, it was as appealing as the stuff the alcoholics lay out for your delectation on the fringes of Brick Lane. I bought a shirt, blue with rectangles of dark red and orange, it sort of looked like an abstract stained glass window. Paying was so convoluted, and took an age, meanwhile they wrapped the shirt in paper so coarse, you could have sanded wood with it. The shirt lasted less than a year.
1:07:12 Effectively Gorbachev was not a social democrat, he was a socialist who wanted to reform socialism and not end it. Social democracy is based on capitalist economy that social democrats tax to provide extensive social services. Gorbachev was not trying to introduce capitalism.
6:41 -- "Hardly anyone foresaw the collapse of the Soviet Union, maybe almost no one." I hear this so often from Western scholars. However, I made an extended visit to Bulgaria in 1981, where I was told again and again that the Soviet Union would collapse, and that it was just a matter of time. The reasons I was given were 1) that the system was profoundly inefficient and was steadily running itself into the ground, and 2) that nobody believed in the original communist vision. Everyone believed it was pure b.s.
Bulgarian here, still when the time the soviet union collapsed and the leader at that time Todor Jivkov announced that it's the end of the Soviet Union for 3 days nobody could actually believed and everyone was scared to speak because everyone believed it's hidden agenda to find all western traitors....
So communism was unpopular with about half the people, but that's the same for capitalist dictatorships too. So that doesn't explain the collapse. I mean capitalism is unpopular at the moment, but it doesn't mean it's gonna suddenly collapse. The USSR collapsed because of external pressure mounted by the US, in terms of the arms race. The USSR believed Reagan was serious about a Star Wars and 'winning' a nuclear war The USSR blinked first, thank god they did.
Before WW2 in Poland Communists never got more than 6% of votes. In August 1917 elections in Russia they got roughly 1/4 of votes. Communist ideology was too loony even for Russians.
I don't trust polls in such countries, either conducted by communists or capitalists. Such countries are ultimately corrupt and are not capable of creating functioning democracies. I mean democracy is beginning to falter in the West, let alone Russia and Poland. The fact is governments are rarely popular under any system. That communism was unpopular doesn't explain why it collapsed. It had enough means to stay in control. For whatever reason, Gorbachev refused to crack down, refused to deploy the iron fist that sustains control in 2nd and 3rd world countries. The collapse of communism didn't come about via people power, but rather a vacuum in state power. I think we'd have to conclude that Gorbachev was not a communist. Rather he was a Liberal, whose own power predictably collapsed, given Eastern Europe is not naturally Liberal.
@TheDoubleLibra I get what you mean. My point was that average Chinese citizens can start their companies, own property and earn money. These weren't available previously in China and in Soviet.
Soviet Union did not collapse, it went bankrupt. It could not feed itself and became completely dependent on oil and gas prices. In 60x it was already clear it is falling behind, but high prices of oil and gas in 70x kept it afloat with out any changes and when they went down in late 70-80x it went bankrupt in 90x.
@@lizgiagnacovo1067 During Bregznev times Soviet Union was already rotting from inside but high oil prices just kept it alive and allowed for rot to go deeper and wider. When prices went down it went bankrupt. It did not collapsed or was destroyed by outside foreces. It literally went bankrupt. Gorbatchev had no money to buy grain and was borrowing them personally. The only "help" from outside was economical sanctiions after Afghanistan invasion.
Could this guy possibly love Gorbachev more? He was a humble peasant; grandson of the most powerful man in his city. His grandfather was a wonderful man; describes him beating workers to produce. He got into university without trying; that's what powerful party members children get. His proximity to Gorbachev has clouded him from obvious truths.
OK to be a fanboy, there is enough negative to balance it. Like the Afghanistan withdrawl, it was coming, could have been worse. Remember, all these guys grew up under Stalin.
Did this guy seriously just ask why the USSR put a man on the moon 10 years before US? And no one in the room corrects him? At the end of the answer he says "they did it". (59:00) Holy shit.
I'm glad someone else caught that besides me, I was wondering if I woke up in an alternate universe! As far as I know the USSR NEVER put a man on the moon. They did put a satellite in orbit some months before us however and kicked off the space race.
@@sefnetxIf no country manages to bring people to the moon in the next 20 years, I will be convinced this has never been done EVER by ANYONE. I had no doubts before, never believed those conspiracy theories, but my doubts keep accumulating just by looking at the facts.
14:09 Soviet economic problems were so severe that even if the Party poured most of the resources previously used by military into producing consumer goods, it wouldn't have helped. It would just produce more of the same poor goods. Collective farms would be just as unproductive. Factories would have see little improvement, because their machinery was mostly bought in the West for hard currency and that was extremely short. People would have no incentives to do a good job either. Etc., etc.
When visiting a farm in Canada in the early eighties an impressed Gorbachev (who was I believe the top agricultural man in the USSR at the time) asked the farmer "who gets you up in the morning?". When he saw the well maintained farm machinery he asked "do they trust you with this equipment?"
@Jake Johansson Maybe he knew it was not a collective farm but for someone unfamiliar in a practical sense of Western farming he easily transferred his Soviet mindset. Soviet emigres to the U.S. chose New York City to settle in because they thought that was where the consumer goods were, just as Moscow had the monopoly on supplies of sausages. They also thought the New York Times as the largest newspaper was an American Pravda providing the official government line.
@Jake Johansson I'm sure the USSR students were given an unbiased account of the difference between "capitalistic" farming and collective farming. I'm sure they gave a balanced account of the necessity of eliminating the kulaks (those class enemies who might have owned an extra cow).
@@dennisweidner288That is an insult to hundreds of millions of ordinary Soviet citizens who woke up every morning, just like every human on Earth, to earn for living, send their kids to school, take care of their elderly parents, enjoy sunshine, meet their friends and colleagues, etc. Growing up in a family of a man of power, he viewed these people as a cattle, not human beings with souls and free will. It was not his father and grandfather, local strongmen, who made these people to wake up every morning. It was people's natural desire to contribute to their community, raise their children, enjoy talking to neighbors and strangers, and other natural causes, not the directives of the Communist Party, heads of collective farms or state enterprises.
I enjoyed the mention of the whole, "the SU went against human nature" argument. Western societies simply incentivize human greed and then regulate that to (hopefully) mitigate harmful and wreckless business. The SU tried to regulate everything so it goes perfectly. It's easier to try and control whats already there (greed) rather than centralising all power and controlling everything with absolute strength.
This is an amazing video, thank you. Living in Mexico in the late 80s it was such a bizarre period to watch the USSR just crumble in a matter of months
The main question stays, how much the US embassy really paid to Gorbachev Yakovlev Bobkov team to destroy the USSR. Russian intelligence officers estimate the bribe to be close to $1 billion cash in 1991 money.
Taubman's presentation gave a good summary of the theories that try to explain why the Soviet Union was the way it was and offered some explanation why it eventually failed. He seems to have a bias that the Reagan Administration should not get credit for its demise. His main explanation for the demise of the USSR is Gorbachev. He makes the point that by introducing "Glasnost" and other reforms that Gorbachev opened to the door to forces that undermined the communist regime and eventually led to its and destruction. Professor Taubman did a great job of presenting the facts. One can see why he has succeeded as a professor of political science specializing in Russian affairs. Being a biographer of both Khrushchev and Gorbachev he probably has imbibed a bit too much of the "great man theory of history" . To be more precise that history is moved more by great individual actors than by forces in a particular society. The weakness of Professor's Taubman's presentation lies in his inability to recognize or an unwillingness to admit that societal forces, namely the stagnating economy, created the conditions that demanded a reformer of the Gorbachev type. Gorbachev is not a Vaclav Havel who was a dissident with a program who was able to come to power and implement his reform program. Gorbachev was an honest apparatchik who wanted to make the communist system work. He never really understood that a totalitarian system cannot be reformed. They can only be abolished or maintained. Professor Taubman during the questioning period concedes that Reagan's policy of colluding with the Saudis to lower the price of oil was devastating to Gorbachev in his attempt to enact economic reform. In essence the lower price drastically cut the Soviet central budget. This contradicts his earlier comment that Reagan had little to do with the implosion of the USSR. Professor Taubman did not address how Reagan's increase of military spending and the launch of the Star Wars Program affected the Gorbachev regime. It must have had an effect on military strategy and allocation of resources that had to have a strong negative economic impact. Most telling was Professor Taubman's critique that during Bush I there were doubters in his administration about the sincerity of Gorbachev and an unwillingness on the part of the West to give Gorbachev the financial resources to preserve a reformed confederation of sovereign states . He takes it for granted that it was somehow in the interests of the West in general and the USA in particular to have a revamped Soviet Union. Given the fact that the USSR broke up peacefully that case seems hard to make. Dr. Taubman did concede that had Gorbachev not tried his reforms then it is likely that the USSR would have limped along and eventually had an explosive collapse similar to Yugoslavia. In conclusion, the Taubman lecture was quite useful and he offered interesting insights and asides to the many factors that contributed to the demise of what Ronald Reagan called "The Evil Empire" My main disagreement in the good professor's analysis is that it's rather obvious that many factors played a role in the demise of the USSR just as there were many factors that played a role in the demise of the Ottoman Empire. Having been a student and later in the 1990s an executive for an American Fortune 500 company in Russia it was rather obvious that a multiplicity of factors created the conditions for a reformer like Gorbachev to be chosen to try and save a sinking ship. One cannot discount the enormous efforts and investment in blood and treasure that the West made from the Truman Administration in 1947 up and through the Reagan-Bush administrations first to contain the USSR and then to bring it down. Reagan upped the ante to Gorbachev by increasing his military spend hoping to bankrupt the Soviets and by using its power to deny the Soviets badly needed revenue by getting the Saudis to over produce oil and drop the price. In addition, the Reagan Admin had invested much money and effort to undermine the Soviets in Poland. Thus, while Gorbachev certainly played the key role he did not destroy the USSR all on his own. Professor Taubman, along with many other professors of a liberal bent in the USA, seem to regret that the USSR was not saved albeit in a reformed and social democratic manner. If that is really his regret then he needs to make the case how American and European security would have been enhanced by that. Moreover, that desire ignores the legitimate desire of the non-Russian population of the old USSR to realize their self-determination. Certainly from the position of the USSR's former vassals in Central and Eastern Europe the fall of the USSR was nothing to regret. In conclusion, the Taubman talk is excellent and deserves the investment in time to listen to it. He is very engaging and quite well informed.
The professor was not only determined not to give Reagan credit for the demise of the Soviet Union, but he was also determined to deny Reagan ANY credit, despite the obvious impact of Regan's policies. Gorbachev was obviously the key player, but so many liberal Americans are determined to write Regan out of history. Also, notice how he ignores Capitalism, its functioning in America, and its absence in the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union did not break up peacefully. Wars in Georgia, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan point to the opposite. Later wars in Chechnya also attest to this reality. Hell, Yelstin almost annexed Crimea in 1993
really a relief to hear a speaker that is both so clearly intelligent and humble. many of the lecturers i've seen lately are very intelligent, very eloquent speakers, but when it comes to answering questions they can't resist treating the audience like they're beneath them. taubman seems like good and earnest person
This bloke has kept Reagan's contributions and foresight far from consideration. Other authors have carefully described the sweet, daring and complex forces bearing upon the Soviet Union, and Reagan is right there, squeezing the pressure points at his appointed time in history. Reagan's "national security decision directives" were timely, opportunistic and decisive. Gorbachev and Reagan were ready for each other.
@@owlnyc666 Well, your remarks are a step in the right direction, acknowledging Reagan as you do. But as far as being doomed from the start, Reagan seems to be the only one (at the time), who believed that it was inevitable,, and a good nudge would accelerate it. His critics enjoyed saying, "It was inevitable" after the collapse, yet none of those critics predicted it.
Great lecture, thank you! A bit disappointed about the lack of the answer to the question in the title - "why?". I think this question was not really answered. The lecture rather was focused on Gorbachev and the question "how?", which is not "why". We all know how it was, especially those of us who lived through it inside collapsing USSR. How is not that interesting. Why is. I was hoping to hear some interesting thoughts on that "why" question.
The economic independence demand of Estonia which led to political autonomy which led to republics declaring independence; collapsed from within and west failed to rescue USSR because economically sound open USSR is a direct challenge to Western power.
The term "conservative" depends on context and is focused on skepticism of reformist politics, regardless of what the local status quo happens to be. Thus what was "conservative" in the post-Communist states of eastern and central Europe in the 1990s wouldn't have qualified as conservative in the US at the same time.
Missing most important concepts…. But i guess this is the best lecture one can give in a western university without getting fired from the university. 😮
Taubman seems very sad that the US did not prop up the Soviet Union at the end. I wish that Professor Marshall Goldman was still around to give a more clear headed explanation of what happened.
I visited the Soviet Union for three weeks. The stores were almost empty of consumer goods. I went to Gum in Moscow, which was the equivalent of Macy's. There consumer goods were of very very poor quality. The Russian workers got paid no matter how well they worked.
Jimmy Carter and his National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, induced the Soviets into the Afghanistan War to bankrupt their treasury. Reagan had ZERO to do with it. When oil collapsed in 1983, the USSR was bankrupt. This was well before Reagan tripled USA debt. Conservative propagandists pretend Reagan's drunken-sailor spending was to defeat the USSR. Except, the Soviets never responded one red cent to Reagan's spending. Republican con-artists like to say "Ask the Soviet leaders who had most effect on the Soviet collapse.". As if the same people that spent their nation's treasury on military adventurism are going to tell you the truth and blame themselves. Soviet military spending as percent of GDP was about 25% for at least 20 years. The US spent about 8%. Again, Reagan had ZERO to do with anything concerning the collapse of the USSR. That is complete Republican invention.
Gorbachev ignored the lessons of the New Economic Policy (NEP) of Lenin whereby capitalism was largely re-introduced to revive a collapsing economy wrought by doctrinaire socialism (nationalizing the means of production). The economy revived and the NEP had to be scrapped. The only thing preventing the Soviet Union from turning into Venezuela was the tolerance of a black market economy and the system of allowing farmers their own small private plots of land.
I can summarize the cause of the fall of The Soviet Union.... The Soviet Union collapsed due to isolation from the western countries, especially economic isolation.. You have to keep in mind that the west is not only the U.S., it's mainly the U.S. and western Europe... Let me put in another way, if the U.S. and Europe would have traded with Russia the way they have done with China, than Russia would have become an economic power house... but the truth of the matter is that The west did not trust Russia and wanted to isolate them until their eventual demise, which eventually happened. Just think about it this way: Why do you think that China, ( A large communist country, like the USSR was), has become an economic power house? The simple answer is that the U.S. and western Europe let it be by dealing with them economically and technologically.... People erroneously think that China is a threat to the U.S. and that China became an economic power house by themselves.. This is not true at all... If the U.S. saw China as a threat they would eventually cut off China from the economic game from the west and the U.S. would choose another country or countries to deal with economically... The argument would be about the debt we have with China, the answer is that we would pay it off eventually....China would suffer more from the economic isolation and it would throw them back to their economic levels of the 1960s & 1970s when 90% of their people were living below the poverty level and even in starvation...
"The first time I met President Reagan I told him this story. I felt free to tell him everything. I told him of the brilliant day when we learned about his Evil Empire speech from an article in Pravda or Izvestia that found its way into the prison. When I said that our whole block burst out into a kind of loud celebration and that the world was about to change, well, then the president, this great tall man, just lit up like a schoolboy. His face lit up and beamed." -Natan Sharansky ........Leftists hate the fact that Reagan helped end the Soviet Empire
The Holly Triple Alliance. St Ronald Reagan, St Margaret Thatcher and St John Paul the II. They has their flaws internaly in the managend of ther countries and the church in the later, but they stood together against the URSS, and subverted and destroyed his ideological legitimacy. They were not just anticomunist fear mongers, they called communism inmoral and stupid and showed why. They were adamant in defending the moral and intelectual superiority of the West. And they did.
@@ricardosoto5770 The USSR fell mostly due to internal decision. Mainstream consensus. My friend it's a myth that any of those men ended the USSR. Thatcher did nothing. The Pope helped undo Communism with the CIA subversion in Poland, not USSR. Reagan retracted his "Evil Empire" qote during a visit to Moscow and softened his stance on the USSR.
@@napoleonbonaparteempereurd4676 The URSS was doomed from the start. Central planned economy, Lenin policies on nationalites..those were the slow burn bombs that destroyed the URSS. But had not Maggie T, Ronnie or the Polish Pope stood clearly against the Soviet Union, the dismantling of the Soviet Empire would had been far slower. The nationalistic and anti communist (in the fact of rejecting a planned economy and single party rule) movement in easter europe that spread to the soviet Baltics.... was inspired by the election of a Polish Pope. Military and ideological competition with the US and Nato unde Reagan and Thatcher was a heavy burden on the Soviet Economy. When the party chiefs of Russia, Belarus and the Ukraine got the consensus of ending the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union was already dead in the water. The internal consensus was to scuttle it.
@@napoleonbonaparteempereurd4676 The internal consensus came out of the blue? They just woke one morning and said, we have to dissolve the URSS? Also, the subversion of Poland did spread to the URSS, Im friendswith one of the first prime ministers of the new Baltic Republics. The fact the got the guts to challenge the URSS and to declare ilegal the Miolotov Ribbertropp pact secret protocol, came after seen the success of the Poles and other movement they inspired in Eastern Europe. He, who is a historian by profession, told me that in a dinner. One the Baltic Republics were independent de facto, the stage was set for Russia, Ukraine and Belaruss disolving the URSS.
that can be said about any country that cannot be invaded - the usa will fall from within - China will fall from within - India will fall from within All of then are unable to be invaded due to nuclear weapons and geography.
USSR dependend on stable foreign currency all the time, but in the end of USSR it had to recredit in foreign banks. As soon as baltic states proclaimed independence, foreign banks stopped their credit lines, since USSR was no longer single entity.
With reference to my earlier comments ( 5 days ago), I may add that another reason the collaps was not foreseen by the western world is that thinking and reasoning within a totalitarian regime is completely different. When your contacts with the SU consists of people like Arbatov and Burlatsky it is logic that you have no clue about what really is happening in the SU. Burlatsky for instance was considered to be a reformer while he was everything except a reformer. In the 1988 - 1991 period there were specific moments that contributed to the collaps of the SU. As the professor mentioned there was a shortage of basic products,, especially food products were systematically in short supply. To address this major problem that could also effect stability, it was decided that a meeting of the Central Committee be organized in March 1989. It would be the first time in the history of the SU that the most powerful organization of the country would come only together to plan and make fundamental decisions concerning the future of the agrocomplex. This Central Committee meeting took place in the period 12 to 17 March 1989. The progressive groups aimed for a decision about private farming but realized that a decision about this sensitive subject might be one bridge to far and therefore pushed the idea that a fast track to stimulate food production was to extent the liberties of dacha farming. Already a large portion of horticultural and agricultural products were already produced in dacha’s and even hard core communists were interested in the idea to stimulate the production in Dacha’s to a give a fast boost to overcome the food shortages. They thought that for instance doubling the dacha acreage would double the dacha production. The Central Committee indeed decided that dacha (private) farming should be stimulated. The following week in the Supreme Sovjet fundamental questions were asked about private farming related to for instance specific financing, specific machinery, storage facilities , and more important one start asking questions about land ownership . A discussion that was impossible (subversive) before the CC meeting and another nail in the coffin of the communistic system. On the opening day of this Central Committee meeting (12 March 1989) an editorial concerning the meeting was printed on the front page of Izvestia. It was the first time for this government paper to have an editorial directly related to a sensitive political subject written and signed by a foreign diplomate. It surprised me that non of the so-called Sovjet watchers took notice of my contribution that also got the blessing of the government.
I appreciate your analysis, and you’re way more knowledgeable than I… However, I still think this boils down to capitalism v Socialism.. Private industry v the State.. infrastructure, land mass, and yes, agriculture.. Everything is more expensive, harder to move, and more time consuming..
This guy clearly regrets that the USSR fell, and talks as though Gorbo wanted to see the end of the USSR, even though he described how Gorbo tried to keep it together as late as he could, as it was spinning apart. The guy describes Gorbo as an elite who lived a life full of lies. Based on this talk, Gorbo whispered how the system was full of lies to his Czeck freind in college, and wrote and talked openly how he was devoted to it from his childhood on. A guy full of lies all his life, in a system so full of lies, corruption, and threatened State violence that it simply tore apart due to all of its incredible, monstrous basic aspects. The guy said at the start of his talk, that some think the system simply fell apart once the threat of State violence was taken away. Then the guy says that such an explanation was too simple. Um - no - it seems spot on, based on the talk he gave right after he said it was too simple. Oy!
As a Russian citizen myself, I couldn't find a more accurate account on the late Soviet period than this lecture. My people are now in a precarious situation - we don't like our Soviet past, but we also don't like the Putin's present. We lost our meaning of life and the idea of bringing about western-like democracy seems utterly impossible and too dangerous (too many people got into Putin's prisons because of trying to achieve this noble goal). Well, at least we have internet access. For now. PS: You lucky Americans... just envy you.
I am the man who did it after a judge who went to Russia twice and LOVED it soooo much,,,,he had a paddle and lumbered everyone to understand it was beautiful.
I am the one who started the 3-D printing industries, I have the same conditions from lots of countries and my company was seized, I am just trying to stay alive as well. I ended Chynerbol atomic waste and ended the Pandemic (buy 2200 BCAA'S - amino acids of Leucine, Isoleucine & Valine) Look at the NWO gear at www.erectorbot.com,,, it's mine but it has gotten alot more powerful!
Maybe losing 25 million people along with 30 consecutive years worth of the Gross Domestic Product of the nation being lost within a span of just 3 1/2 years fighting the largest war in human history, while losing 40% of housing and almost 30% of the prime able male population in a time when their main rival in the years to come only suffered 300,000 military casualties and absolutely no foreign invasion might have had something to do with it. A possibility perhaps?
It is worse than that. The USSR only achieved GDP per capita of Tsarist Russia of 1913 in 1937. The system did not work. Russia was backward in 1913 like China was backward 1998. It was an emerging market where the Tsar had relented and given up absolute power which is something the communists in China still have not done. It had one of the strongest currencies in the world and a was a hot growth market. Were it not for Russia's entry into the war Russia would have evolved into a more standard European parliamentary democracy that attracted a huge amount of capital.
The USSR had 46 years to recover. By 1959 it was able to devote precious resources to being first in space. It was only able to stay afloat owing to its rich array of natural resources such as gas and oil that it could sell for hard currency . It rarely could produce enough food to feed itself and it had some of the best agricultural land in the world. Central planning and the corruption that always accompanies it was unable to produce goods and services efficiently. The country could not create surplus capital to meet the rising tide of domestic demand. I lived in Leningrad in 1974 and saw how backward the consumer sector was. Everything went to the military where the USSR was spending over 20% of its GDP on military. Today Russia spends 5.5%, the USA 3.75% of GDP on its military and most our allies in Nato less than 2%. So you can see by these simple examples why the Soviet economy was such a loser. Look at the facts and you will understand why the USSR collapsed. Thank God, it was more or less peaceful.
I think you meant "...like China was backward in 1948." I'm not sure you're right about Tsarist Russia eventually developing into a European parliamentary democracy if not for World War I. The only Eastern European country heading in that direction during the Great Depression and before World War II was Czechoslovakia. The Second Serfdom and centuries of Habsburg, Ottoman and Russian rule hadn't done the region many favors, and British, French and German finance Capital were waiting in the wings to keep them agricultural, underdeveloped and deep in debt. That was essentially the UK's plan for Russia if the Bolsheviks had been defeated in the Russian Civil War.
As we get more and more corporate concentration and achieve near monopoly status in industry after industry, I wonder whether we are approaching near "central planning" status in the developed capitalist countries. But that also makes me wonder whether the real problem in the USSR was the central planning, or the lack of political democracy, even proletarian democracy. And then I start wondering about why the Soviets were spending 20% of their budget on the military: was it just a matter of corruption, or were the Soviets truly afraid of a Western attack? Personally, I think it was the latter.
Soviet Union was modeled on Tsar Empire. Absolute theological monarchy was replaced with Collegial theological secretarialism. Tzar was replaced with General Secretary, Orthodoxy with Communism and people with working people. They end up rebuilding same thing only using different methods and materials.
Gorbachev was just a facilitator. He recognized the need for market type reforms in the soviet union and also that the reputation of communism was permanently damaged by the actions of it's past leaders . I don't believe the speaker understands how ideologically pure stalinism was. Stalinism was the embodiment of pure communism and every single soviet leader after Stalin has drifted apart and pushed the ideology more and more towards liberalization. Gorbachev was just one in a string of leaders and in his attempt to redeem communism in the face of history, he actually facilitated its collapse. It's fair to say that it's the only way to actually redeem communism, by eliminating it
I cannot agree more. To those who claim Stalin contaminated or betrayed Communism I reply that Stalin was the perfection of Communism. Stalin was the perfection of Communism and the most perfect possible implementation of the ideology of Communism in practice. Communism is simply Socialism that accepts its inherently mandatory authoritarianism and totalitarianism. The only competition to Stalin for Communist purity in practice seems to be North Korea, which may have (it's hard to say due to the complete lack of transparency there) done Stalin one better in the actual practice of communism.
@@nomdeguerre7265 i disagree, nothing in "communism" says it must be totalitarian. Do not strawman pointing to"hot" history periods. The way what i stand for it so search for some democratic but non-market economy and society. And if you talk about freedom, so called "free market" is just oppression of pure by rich and capital as equivalent of power, what really makes it totalitarian force-based system where force is capital, and futher factors like influence, etc, in what the whole world wil live now until probable best times. Best regards.
@@cicik57 Socialism, including when it goes by the name Communism, is inherently totalitarian. In fact it cannot work unless by coercion, since it requires forcing individuals to act contrary to their natural interests and their wishes. While in some limited communities voluntary Socialism has been tried, it invariably failed after a short period. Socialism can only persist for any length of time by force, legal and physical, applied by the State, comprehensive enough to prevent wholesale avoidance. This is why we have a 'limited totalitarian Police State' around those areas where OUR society has agreed specific functions of government must be socialized (i.e. National Defense for example). You will never find one example of any Socialist society ever working for any time without application of totalitarian authoritative government. This is invariably the case, from the former Soviet Union, to China, to Cuba....to the perfect example of Socialism: North Korea. This isn't a coincidence. It's because that is a fundamental requirement of Socialism.
@@nomdeguerre7265 you get it really wrong in west media space. Primary idea of socialism, repeat again, is "absence the private property OF the means of production". Nothing speak against that with some clever (not like examples above) organization you will gain individuals acting for their "natural interests" - mean to own profit without caring of others profit, while having the public ( not state or private) means of production and some public methods to influence on actions, what would produce common benefit - this can be tried to do with information technologies. Also the real socialist system must be depersonalized means with no "leader" at the top and be organized somehow as the community of people without hierarchy - maybe you would say that it also contradicts the natural interests of people. Finally look, some egoistic interests must be restricted for common benefit. The issue with fail of "socialist" societies is that they were in wild historical times and with intellectual weakness of the leading organizations. Taking capitalist position means, that modern system with all kinds of inequalities and injustice will permanently exist in civilization, and growing property inequality will naturally produce the inequality of rights and your favorite "freedoms". Best regards.
@@cicik57 Possession is as natural as breathing. People will do it regardless. The idea of Socialism is for a few to decide who should have what and it takes force to make that happen and totalitarianism to know who has what. Socialism is inherently totalitarian. And all totalitarianism, regardless its pretext is just fascism. Ultimately the people in power learn that power, with the privilege and perquisites it brings, is its own end. It was true of the Bolsheviks. It was true of the Maoists. It is true of the Cubans. It has been and will always be true of every society which tries to enforce Socialism, from the Paris Commune, to the Kremlin, to Peking, to Berlin, to Havana… and anywhere this seductive illusion can be used to pretend to strive for utopia and only manage to create another flavor of hell.
The Soviet Union was on the brink of collapse long before Gorbachev took charge. The arms race, and a flawed economy based on forced labour with unrealistic targets led to the economy tanking. He tried to radically change the way the world saw the USSR, but the ball was in motion and eventually the collapse happened, unavoidable because of years of bad decisions and the corruption and mismanagement by the politburo
@@napoleonbonaparteempereurd4676 No. He didn't notice. Because - like most twits - he thinks 5 minuters is enough to judge a two hour lecture. And his much more complex understanding of geopolitics and sociology has ALL Come from only watching the first 5 minutes of any lecture - that's all he needs because he's a genius.
It was the elimination of the idiotic tax and regulatory dictates concerning the oil industry during the Reagan administration that brought down the price of crude oil and natural gas that finished the Soviet Union - oil and gas were the only hard cash exports they had . Those same de-regulatory actions wiped out the economys of Oklahoma ,Texas and Louisiana and triggered the banking crisis of the late eighties and early ninetys. I traveled to east Germany in 1990 visiting the town of Bernburg, Anhalt where was stationed a Soviet armored brigade - who were without all their tanks - Gorbachev had sold them all to Saddam Hussein.
I'm not surprised. And sitting comfortably in his SF Bay area Presidio location given to him by the US military for a "Non Profit" NGO. That came within 4 years of Gorby's leaving power. How many people remember that?
Milton Friedman sums it up simply, (yes, some things can be summed up simply), the Soviet system had no way of figuring prices for goods or services. With every visit to the bathroom and no toilet paper the citizens came to know quickly the simple failure of the system. He seems to "gush" over this Soviet politician.
This is a very instructive and enjoyable presentation. Professor Taubman has, of course, written the definitive biography of Mikhail Gorbachev, whom he interviewed eight times in the space of a decade. So, he has obtained his perspective with a deep engagement with the central player in the dissolution of the Soviet Empire. I also enjoy Werner Hertzog's recently released documentary on Gorbachev, which was very moving. It poses the question of whether Mr Gorbachev is one of history's most tragic figures.
Will Putin fall into the same Category after reestablishing all the Christian Churches in Russia? The lie about killing three Astronauts, then staging the Lunar Landing in Area 51 on earth, then demolishing the World Trade Centers with Drones substituting for airliners while killing the passengers on the ground at the same time as people were jumping to their deaths or be cooked alive, while steel beams are being melted below them, then the first responders and firemen dying from 53:25 breathing in the toxic smoke, not to mention the war Of Terror sweeping through 7 countries consecutively, firing the generals who didn’t play ball, yadda yadda Yes Yadda, & killing all the Innocent people along the way, seems more tragic, would you say possibly Satanic?
Then you weren't really listening, were you? Taubman explores some of the psychological factors rather nicely, which is a contrast to and an augmentation of some of the usual viewpoints. Gorbachov WAS definitely naive in many ways, and had virtually no expertise in macroeconomics, and that was all part of the story. What were you expecting - the Marxist dialectical explanation? - that had already proven to be a failure, I'm afraid.
It does seem like almost everyone in the room, including the speaker, was rooting for the Soviet Union. You can't expect much in the way of incisive thinking in a roomful of true-believer cultists.
I listened closely and heard the same as Patrick. If I listened really closely I heard regret the Soviet Union collapsed. Light on analysis, heavy on opinion.
@@ssmusic214 Anyone who studies this period would know Reagan had no coherent stance on the USSR. "We seek friendhsip with the Soviet leadership" he says in public and then a few weeks later "Evil Empire" "We want to live in peace with the Soviets" while he reignites the arms race. "Our sons have never fought one another" he says. Wrong. US troops invaded Russia in 1918 during the intervention.
@@napoleonbonaparteempereurd4676 Child! Reagan was THE ONE who FINALLY DID SOMETHING about that cancer on the body of mankind. AND HE WAS ABSOLUTELY RIGHT. Presence of US troops in Archangelsk and FAR EAST REPUBLIC in 1918 never resulted in fighting with bolshevik army.
@@ssmusic214 Many Presidents before Reagan challenged and damaged the USSR. Harry S Truman is the prime exsample. The US troops were nonetheless involved in a war AGAINST the Bolsheviks. They fought with one another in war. th-cam.com/video/1mC1bmzbgxY/w-d-xo.html Kruschev even made a point of poiting this out.
In the west, many people regularly rummage through spattered bins and trash cans, with restaurants on every corner in the background. In the USSR, restaurants were clearly more modest, but it was difficult to imagine that a Soviet person would want to climb into the trash can, despite the more modest average salary of the population.
i understand the world still has its lessers but there is no comparison as far as the evils of the ussr compared to the west. capitalism has cut world poverty in half within the last 30-50 years. we had a depression, they made a conscious genocide. it was the west that saved their people including many others. the world is noticeably richer, safer, and more free then ever before because of it. the problem now since we taught them all how to capitalism it puts them all up as peers again which leads to a new cycle of dominance and struggle. we all knew this but risked it anyway and thats a beautiful thing to me. hahah
In my opinion the Soviet Union collapsed by itself. The system was rotten and even if they tried to improve it it did not work out. In the end it was goods (also food) shortages, many emigrating, the population no longer believed the regime...
For a much more in depth treatment of this topic, I'd recommend the following video with Dr. Sally Paine: NWC INS Lecture Series -- Lecture 3: "Why Russia Lost the Cold War," Sept. 29, 2020
Taubam has gotten to a point where he is too pleased with himself and his view of the world. This lecture gives a great view of how Taubam thinks the world should work, plenty of criticism of those with whom he does not agree but a dearth of serious analysis.
The chancellor, the late chancellor, was only partly correct. He was obsolete. But so is the State, the entity he worshiped. Any state, entity, or ideology becomes obsolete when it stockpiles the wrong weapons: when it captures territories, but not minds; when it enslaves millions, but convinces nobody. When it is naked, yet puts on armor and calls it faith, while in the Eyes of God it has no faith at all. Any state, any entity, any ideology which fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of Man... that state is obsolete. A case to be filed under "M" for "Mankind" - in The Twilight Zone.
I'm sure the ineffective reaction to the Chernobyl disaster had an important effect, too. As to the thought that Stalin dying early might have spared the purges: Maybe. Remember that the secret police and gulag system began under Lenin. Stalin didn't create that -- he inherited it. Had Lenin been succeeded by Trotsky or another of the Old Bolsheviks, there might have been moderation, compared with Stalin, but Trotsky was not a moderate man, either. The Soviet system was the kind that would bring ruthless leaders to the fore.
Socialism is a mixed bag depending on society. One would think it was sweet and rosy in Russia before Bolshies but the reality is Tsarist Russia before them was a medieval tyranny. It was just maybe half a century since serfdom was abolished, 9 in 10 people were illiterate peasants and dirt poor with life expectancy like 40 years. Nobility had it good but not the rest of the people. I am not about to whitewash Stalin but in mere 20 years it was an absolutely different country and at least on economic side it was much better for the majority. And in 30 to 40 years they had universal literacy nuclear power and space program.
I don't know USSR very well but I know Romania very well . In the 70's when I grew up people were happy enjoying life but there were a few problems and one of them was the freedom of travel . It was difficult to get a visa mainly for western countries but it had a reason . I am not gone talk about the bad things because it's going to take me pages but there were some good things to . For example dentists were free of charge .There was no unemployment . What we calll here in the West MASTER . Well You did not have to pay a penny for education except doctorate .. Apartments were free too . You would pay only the bills like electricity or the phone for example but they were very cheap because everything was state owned . In the 80 's it went from bad to worse . USA and its allies start boycotting romanian economy . USSR were selling us very expensive raw materials because they hated ceausescu .
Johney Smith and you are a freaking idiot. Are you serious or just writing a satire here? You cannot be as stupid as your comments make you out to be here? Are you a man-baby who is failing at life and long for a a daddy government that will give you all you want without you having to produce anything? Is that your problem? Pathetic for sure and a disgrace to the human race.
The Soviet Union from 1924-19454 was fastest growing economy in the history of the world. This includes going through a civil war in 1917/ revolution, WWI and WWII. System crumbled like every other empire. The Oligarchs in the Politburo were really greedy Capitalist, they kept all the wealth. 67% of the GDP went to the military. The conquerd contries cost the Soviet system too much money to maintain. The couldn't collect enough taxes. The Arms race with the west killed the system. Economist Richard Wolfe explains the Soviets could not get international loans from the west. Really the Soviet system was totalatarian Fuedalism.
Who told you that and how did they know? At what cost in lives did the economy grow? The Politburo were greedy Communist who were wealthier than the workers. I do agree that the arms race was one of the major reasons, but not the only major reason. I do agree that it was totalitarian fuedelism.
@@owlnyc666 Richard Wolf. Unfortunately the Communist were not real Communist. They were hyper capitalist oligarchs. Like America has always been. The best example of Communism was practiced in Acts 2:42-47(kjv) also read Acts 4:32-37(kjv) The early Jewish kingdom church lived all things in common.
In late USSR conditions were free of stress. It made many people alcoholics, vandals, hoodlums, thiefs, etc. But those conditions were good for wise and civilized people.
How can one take this guy seriously in his discussion of the fall of the USSR when he dismisses Reagan within a minute and waxes poetically about Gorbachev? Reagan had as much to do with fall as did Gorbachev. If not more. He is completely biased.
During the 19th Century there was a lot of technological progress and people fell in love with the idea of "Science". Everything had to be "Scientific". Socially you had a number of Utopian Societies that were created on the basis of someones ideas with Marxism being one of the most successful at gaining adherents. Talk of "Dialectical Materialism" being "Thesis opposed by Anti-thesis and yielding Synthesis" which became the new Thesis - sounded impressive to a lot of ignorant people. The growth of large factories with legions of poorly paid, over worked - workers - led to a lot of resentment on the part of the have not's who were open to ideas about how they would "seize the means of production". Under the leadership of the Communist Party they would form a "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" that of course would run things in a benevolent manner until they achieved True Communism - "From each according to their ability. To each according to their need". Lenin created the means for political control where in you had a Central Committee below which were such as Regional Committees and Local Party Representatives. According to Democratic Centralism information would flow up from the Local and Regional Party Members to the Central Committee who would make a decision - then the decision would flow down to the Regional and Local levels where it would be implemented. During the first phase - there was freedom of opinion to some degree but once a decision was made - it was to be implemented without further discussion. Five Year Plans were popular where it was decided what the nation would do - but - these plans were to inflexible and thus didn't work. The problem was that a Centrally Planned Economy just wasn't flexible enough to handled the constantly changing economics of the real world. The other thing was that people who no longer owned anything had no incentive to work on the collectives but - they were allowed small plots they could grow crops on themselves. These small plots became where much of the food was grown - and - led to a black market in things the State Economy failed to provide. An example of central planning was if they were going to make 500 cars - they would make 500 sets of wind shield wipers - not anticipating that they would wear out. Thus, you had car owners who routinely took their wind shield wipers off every time they parked their car and locked them up - because if they didn't - they wouldn't be there when they got back. Those in the west could see that this type of Centrally Planned Economy was doomed to failure and felt that all the needed to do was Contain the spread of Communism until if fell of it's own weight. Another factor in this was that while the first generation revolutionaries were true believers - as each generation passed, people believed less and less in the ideology until not even the party members believed it. Gorbachev tried to reform things but since the system itself was basically flawed - there was no fixing it. When the Communists went away - the Black Market - which had become the Real Economy as opposed to the State Run Economy - came out into the open - but it was being run by people who had been criminals under the old regime and still were criminals. Russia became a Kleptocracy, a nation of thieves run by thieves and that is where things are today. It's all vastly more complicated than that and this is a simplistic version but - it is in general what happened. .
All this is correct - when you take away the famous "checks and balances" of democracy, you're going to get thugs in power anyway. Marxism is, as you imply, at root a 19th ideology that has never caught up with the times. My main objection to it, though, is that it is, as a code based on violent revolution, fundamentally murderous.
There is a lot of truth to that. Gorbachev was brought in to save the sinking ship. In those days it was referred to "stagnation" . In short, the creaking Soviet empire was overburdened with spending on its military. Reagan decided to up the ante and Gorbachev responded by relaxing the coercive mechanisms of society and began restructuring hoping that the economy would recover. Gorby even released his vassal states in Central and Eastern Europe from imperial control It all failed. The internal empire rebelled and once the reactionary communist staged their coup the end of the USSR was the only game in town.
@@cka2nd China copied the Perestroika plan word for word. They have transformed China into a Social Democracy with State Capitalism, just like the Perestroika was planning to transform the USSR. How come China is so prosperous?
@@masternmargarita China may have copied perestroika, sort of, but it did not copy glasnost. The PRC is also not a social democracy, with a typical multi-party system. China is so prosperous because it had a labor pool of hundreds of millions of workers who could be set to work making goods for export on the one hand, and serve to lower the cost of labor to Big Capital on the other, just like the US South once provided Northern mill owners with lower cost labor than they could find in Massachusetts, or Mexico provided lower priced labor to American manufacturers. Eastern Europe is now providing the same service to German capitalists. China also had not been a military competitor of the US since the early 70's, and was rather an ally against the USSR in some areas, so US, Japanese and Taiwanese capitalists could use Chinese labor to increase their profit margins (and discipline their home workforces) without feeling the need to grind their noses into the ground, as basically happened to Russia in the 1990's.
@царь царь царь You are kidding? Nomenklatura ! Brezhnev had the largest car collection in the world. If you were a member of the Communist party , you had privilige. If not, too bad....
@царь царь царь It was common knowledge . He was receiving them as gifts from Western leaders. Are you saying that the USSR had NO elite? BTW, I am forced to always check my facts .
@царь царь царь Really? So there was never membership in the Communist Party? I see....I cannot make up stories as I saw with my own eyes and ears , how Communist officials lived and thought during their single party rule. BTW, your avatar says everything , as you seem to believe so strongly in a moral, economic, social and political abject failure. Pravda indeed.
@царь царь царь In the "corrupt" West, if you had a plumbing problem, you would look up as many plumbers you wanted and discuss a price and a schedule . In the "non-elitist worker"s paradise, you had to call the plumbing ministry where they would send someone of their choosing , who would decide , when and how much it would cost (50% to the worker, and 50% to the apparatchik that answered the phone). If you complained....you waited even longer.
The percentage of ethnic Russians has been falling since early 1970s. The minorities hated USSR. The system was horribly inefficient and everyone could see it.
The Economist proved that the a command economy like the Soviet Union was impossible because there wasn't time to make that many decisions. They proved that the system had to fail.
American propaganda will never mention how Putin takes on NATO with soviet equipment let alone the ones Ukraine is using from the time of Gorbechev. Wasn’t NATO that disarmed Ukraine of nukes? Sounds communist to me. SleepyJoeGulags
In March of 1991, at a reception in Moscow, Ian Shapiro, Sterling Professor of Political Science at Yale, spoke with Professor Vadim Zagladin, first deputy director international department of the Soviet Communist Party's Central Committee & asked, “When did you (the ruling elite) conclude that the Soviet Union was unsustainable? Zagladin replied, “1978”. Did you ever meet and/or communicate with Zagladin.
AND YET Reagan did calculate that the Communist system could be challenged and thereby defeated. And his associates led others to be foot soldiers about to do just that! Yet to the bond, it’s all so mysterious? Ridiculous..
14:02 What kind of over-extension is the prof talking about? Other Warsaw Pact countries were an asset to Soviet Union, not a drag. They substantially increased product of entire socialist system and were pretty much controlled by Moscow. Failure in Afghanistan was not the case of "over-extension", it was due to the fact that it had geography impossible to hold and they were against much more determined and cruel enemy that didn't think much about his own losses. Economically it wasn't that big of a deal either, as Afghanistan cost SU mere 3% of its GDP. It was the demoralization caused by Afghanistan that was a problem, not its economic ramifications.
Interesting lecture. I've studied the decline and break-up of the soviet union from an economic perspective and could probably deliver a lecture about half as good and interesting as Taubman, but I'd argue that economic causes fed into and amplified the political ones. It would make for an interesting debate, but Taubman referred to distorted economic performance, and this is but one facet of the overall soviet economic model. He also mentioned Korolev, a brilliant rocket scientist whose talent was wasted whilst imprisoned by a jealous and untalented colleague called Aleksandr Yakovlev (not Gorbachev's mate, a former ambassador to Canada). Do this enough, and this stifles ambition, creativity, and rewards political loyalty and reliability. Repression also erodes trust, which Taubman refers to indirectly.
I think Chernobyl had much to do with the collapse. It split the Ukrainians and the Belorussians from the system through hunger (their farmland was radioactive), fear, and sickness. The secrecy and denial of the USSR didn't play well when children were getting cancer and the USSR's leader was encouraging "openness".
After initial supression of the information about the disaster, the Soviet government rather quickly esitimated potential consequences of the disaster for current and future workforce and had a system of early cancer screenings, longer vacations, medication subsidies, etc. established in all the affected regions. It was not a secret, everyone in the country knew about it and everyone in the affected regions was encouraged to test their children (the most affected category for cancer-related mutations based on the nature of radioactive fallout). Also, everyone was regularly warned not to consume mushrooms, milk, berries and many other products from the affected regions. Just because you do not understand economic principles on which the Soviet healthcare was founded (the main of them was early prevention of costly outcomes) does not mean that government officials were not aware of the cost of potential cancer burden for the entire society or did nothing to prevent it. Also, Russia was heavily affected by the radioactive fallout, too. The wind blew north to Belarus first, and then it turned East, transporting radioactive particles along a thousand-kilometer-long strip deep into Russia.
Note: the soviet union would call liberals right, because they would be seen as right of their leftist stance. Liberals, traditionally were middle of the road!!
johnnyscifi The US government and media referred to people like Boris Nemtsov as “liberal”, despite him playing a pivotal role in implementing shock therapy during the 90’s, despite being told not to by actual liberals in Russia. This is the faction the elite here like to ignore to then pretend it was the communists vs Yeltsin in the 90’s and there were no other choices to bring freedom to Russia. Yeltsin, Nemtsov, Chubais, Gaidar - convenient to the western elite during the 90’s, despite there being actual progressives. Khordokovsky, Nemtsov (when he was alive), Sobchak, Lebedev, Browder - convenient to the western elite in the present, while real progressives in/from Russia are again ignored because they are not convenient to our elites. Long story short, our governments and corporate media like to distort those words in Russia and so does the Putin regime along with our chosen puppets. It’ll be the damn day when our corporate media shows their legitimate activists and they get invited to speak at talks.
@@johnnyscifi I must add that in the USSR, the CPSU considered hardcore Communist Righ-Wing by Gorbachev time. Left-Wing meant Liberal Communist Reformers like Gorbachev or Yakolev.
Trotsky predicted absolutely everything. Even predicted what has not yet happened. Yep.....Trotsky was a prophet. That explains why his followers operate like a cult....
Don't understand why the speaker dismisses Reagan and Star Wars as playing a role in the collapse of the Soviet Union when he later cites the arms race with the US as one important cause of said collapse.
There was indeed sabotage in the USSR. A simple and vivid example is the old Brezhnev on TV. Power could well replace him with a handsome and young man, like Trudeau from Canada. But it didn’t do it on purpose, so that people would tell jokes about their country, etc. One can recall other examples.
Gorboshev's crucial mistake was to give political freedom before economic freedom. The Soviet Union would not have disintegrated into several independent states if he had started to implement economic freedom and market economy first and when the people achieved financial prosperity the Soviet union would have not most likely disintegrated.
Let's see how long that 'economic freedom' lasts under totalitarian government....it will be interesting, and instructive. I'm putting my money on human nature and corruption. Economies thrive or fail largely to the degree force is used to distort the market. Perhaps the best experiment may be the rise of a more pervasive regulatory state (by sanctioned government force) in the United States. It may prove interesting.
You should read the basic thrust of Antonio Cramsci, who unstead of using military force to overthrow democracies; he designed what the called "The long walk through the cultures". Meaning: Infiltrate education, politics, popular culture, etc. Thereby, in his words, having a compliant SLAVE population that wills it on themselves. THAT is the reason that they love Republican democracy, as you can infiltrate and take over the levers of power. J.Goebbels said that western democracies had no knowledge of this and no (ruthless) instinct to destroy them when they do see it. The only direct democracy, Switzerland, has mostly been protected from this. They can't con most of the population, who have DIRECT power. (Switzerland--700 yr old democracy. Direct is where it's at, in my estimation. Very Stable.)
Yes, Titus, I'm obviously referring to these people/ideologues. When I say love 'republicanism', I mean like a hungry lion Loves an easy kill. Republican democracy is far tooo easy to co-opt. Look at the US Robber Barons, in the 1840's--1920's, and how the DSA (Democratic Socialists of Am.--have taken the levers of the US Dem. Party), and the Ortegas (past 30 years) in Nicaragua, Venezuela, etc. These have all infiltrated republican levers of power, with their own people contrary, destructive agendas. This is why I suggested that you look at Switzerland. By the way, they were almost a 500 yr old DIRECT democracy when they congradulated the US with recognition, the first country that recognized the US. They still have no problems with political takeover. THAT is worth paying attention to. I think that is also why the US "loves" democracy in many non traditional places, as it is easy for politics and Klepto-Huge Business (though in an industrial and software/IoT oriented age where large concentrations of capital are needed for development, I don't know how you NOT concentrate capital, which is unelected power. A troubling Corundum.) to infiltrate for their own aims, just like the communists using primarily Antinio Gramsci's 'March through the Culture & Institutions'. It may be impossible for man to solve this without succumbing to totalitarianism. I wish you well Titus. We all need an open mind to see ALL the dangers, not just the communists. Keep in mind, that much of what is being passed off as free enterprise now are just multi-national Corps. re-installing another brand of feudalism. We had real free enterprise prior to the Robber Barons. THAT Bunch never left. They are as dangerous to freedom as communists. I am not anti-capitalist, just anti-Croney Capitalist skewing the table in their favor. Look at history, Power always protects itself, and when institutionalized, always robs those it rules at some level. The communists DO have that understood. It's just that their solution is unhumane and alien to the human process of wanting to improve themselves/Each person's interests. They hate that thought.
I think the saddest part of the break-up of the soviet union (Other than the loss of life.) was the destruction of a national unit that could have prevented much headache. I think that the Western powers really short-changed the Eastern ones by not providing enough aid.
I came home from school during these days, threw down [my books and sat down with my grandparents who raised me. Grandma said "don't leave. You're watching history taking place."
I was mesmerized, as i had been around that time and earlier, watching what happened to Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife and also a velvet revolution. I had become just so curious, nearly obsessed. And finally when I was ready, I started to travel to former Soviet Bloc countries. It was the people, .of course who kept me going back. I ended up marrying a Czech Native. Our greatest, most anticipated journey was to Russia in 2019. Alas, I am very concerned that we shall never finish out the sojourn.
I wish with all my heart that a peace comes soon. I hope for diplomacy. Because I surely love that part of the world and its peoples.
За всю историю человечества, мира никогда не было и никогда не будет. Так как основная причина этого безобразия природные ресурсы. У некоторых стран их слишком много , у других мало. А и есть те у которых кроме песка и камней ничего больше нет, даже вода только дождевая.
@@tolyamochin4066 Это не совсем верно; мир сейчас более распространен, чем когда-либо в нашей истории, несмотря на недавнюю войну в Украине. Войны заканчиваются, когда обе стороны больше не имеют разных ожидаемых результатов от продолжения борьбы в своих умах, то есть когда закрывается разрыв в переговорах.
@@tolyamochin4066 Do you think putin is in Ukraine for resources? I really don't believe he is there for that reason, maybe it could be a secondary reason.
The reasoning which makes most sense to me, is that an independent, and culturally similar state close to Russia is a threat to the kremlin, especially one that allows its citizens some degree of political participation. So, when Ukraine started to leave russia's influence in 2014, putin tried to bring it closer to Russia again, sending little green men into Crimea. He saw the movement of Ukraine's people to the west as a direct threat to his control in Russia. Then, in 2022, he believed the russian military could overwhelm Ukraine's once again and take Kiev this time. Of course, he seriously miscalculated.
Funny that no one reads my truth……very strange
You can't have a meaningful discussion about why Soviet Union collapsed without a through understanding of how Soviet economics functioned and how the Politburo & Republic governments interacted.
** Thorough** understanding ; )
I totally agree with you, by the way - this is definitely far too simple, but of course it's a one-hour lecture at a university, so we can't really expect much more than we got, given the decidedly degraded state of American University education. Political correctness, telling "the story" has superceded critical thinking, coming to your own conclusions based on research and an objective view of the history. We are witnessing the protracted death of the United States as it was, and the "new" America... well, ,,born from the garbage'' pretty much sums it up.
Soviet economics don’t function.
@@darbyohara I remember shopping at GUM the supposed grand “universal” department store on Red Square, at peak Soviet Union in 1979, supposedly the Utopia that Stalin broke all those millions of eggs for, the great omelette of the new way humans should really live. To say there was not much to buy is an understatement, it was as appealing as the stuff the alcoholics lay out for your delectation on the fringes of Brick Lane. I bought a shirt, blue with rectangles of dark red and orange, it sort of looked like an abstract stained glass window. Paying was so convoluted, and took an age, meanwhile they wrapped the shirt in paper so coarse, you could have sanded wood with it. The shirt lasted less than a year.
@@SeiiTaiShogun1 hey. the great American Empire is dying and the People's Republic of China is rising
@@fabiojr8082 agree on China rising but the American empire will not fall like the ussr ,they heave economy what the ussr never head !
1:07:12 Effectively Gorbachev was not a social democrat, he was a socialist who wanted to reform socialism and not end it. Social democracy is based on capitalist economy that social democrats tax to provide extensive social services. Gorbachev was not trying to introduce capitalism.
@@erikvynckier4819 he still is..
6:41 -- "Hardly anyone foresaw the collapse of the Soviet Union, maybe almost no one." I hear this so often from Western scholars. However, I made an extended visit to Bulgaria in 1981, where I was told again and again that the Soviet Union would collapse, and that it was just a matter of time. The reasons I was given were 1) that the system was profoundly inefficient and was steadily running itself into the ground, and 2) that nobody believed in the original communist vision. Everyone believed it was pure b.s.
That's what Eastern Europeans saw and believed back then and it was a correct assessment.
Bulgarian here, still when the time the soviet union collapsed and the leader at that time Todor Jivkov announced that it's the end of the Soviet Union for 3 days nobody could actually believed and everyone was scared to speak because everyone believed it's hidden agenda to find all western traitors....
So communism was unpopular with about half the people, but that's the same for capitalist dictatorships too. So that doesn't explain the collapse.
I mean capitalism is unpopular at the moment, but it doesn't mean it's gonna suddenly collapse.
The USSR collapsed because of external pressure mounted by the US, in terms of the arms race. The USSR believed Reagan was serious about a Star Wars and 'winning' a nuclear war
The USSR blinked first, thank god they did.
Before WW2 in Poland Communists never got more than 6% of votes. In August 1917 elections in Russia they got roughly 1/4 of votes. Communist ideology was too loony even for Russians.
I don't trust polls in such countries, either conducted by communists or capitalists. Such countries are ultimately corrupt and are not capable of creating functioning democracies. I mean democracy is beginning to falter in the West, let alone Russia and Poland. The fact is governments are rarely popular under any system.
That communism was unpopular doesn't explain why it collapsed. It had enough means to stay in control.
For whatever reason, Gorbachev refused to crack down, refused to deploy the iron fist that sustains control in 2nd and 3rd world countries.
The collapse of communism didn't come about via people power, but rather a vacuum in state power. I think we'd have to conclude that Gorbachev was not a communist. Rather he was a Liberal, whose own power predictably collapsed, given Eastern Europe is not naturally Liberal.
Because Gorbachev tried to change the political system before the economic system. China learned from this.
China has never changed the poilitical or economic system. 8000 students were killed in 1989 in Peking for demanding democracy.
@@DipakBose-bq1vv Well they have, just not towards a more democratic society..
Exactly, China gave economic freedom to its people, though in a controlled way, but the political change either will come later or not at all.
@TheDoubleLibra I get what you mean. My point was that average Chinese citizens can start their companies, own property and earn money. These weren't available previously in China and in Soviet.
@@DipakBose-bq1vv They've changed the economic system a huge amount. And many soldiers were killed by the 'protesters' before the 1989 crackdown.
Soviet Union did not collapse, it went bankrupt. It could not feed itself and became completely dependent on oil and gas prices. In 60x it was already clear it is falling behind, but high prices of oil and gas in 70x kept it afloat with out any changes and when they went down in late 70-80x it went bankrupt in 90x.
Yes, with a lot of outside 'help', let's be honest.
@@lizgiagnacovo1067 During Bregznev times Soviet Union was already rotting from inside but high oil prices just kept it alive and allowed for rot to go deeper and wider. When prices went down it went bankrupt. It did not collapsed or was destroyed by outside foreces. It literally went bankrupt. Gorbatchev had no money to buy grain and was borrowing them personally. The only "help" from outside was economical sanctiions after Afghanistan invasion.
@@lizgiagnacovo1067 Thank God it had help.
yes, the communist party will not take responsibility for anything.
Could this guy possibly love Gorbachev more? He was a humble peasant; grandson of the most powerful man in his city. His grandfather was a wonderful man; describes him beating workers to produce. He got into university without trying; that's what powerful party members children get. His proximity to Gorbachev has clouded him from obvious truths.
Yeah he really didn't even try to hide his affinity for Gorbachev
He loves sucking that Gorbacock.
OK to be a fanboy, there is enough negative to balance it.
Like the Afghanistan withdrawl, it was coming, could have been worse.
Remember, all these guys grew up under Stalin.
Did this guy seriously just ask why the USSR put a man on the moon 10 years before US? And no one in the room corrects him? At the end of the answer he says "they did it". (59:00) Holy shit.
I'm glad someone else caught that besides me, I was wondering if I woke up in an alternate universe! As far as I know the USSR NEVER put a man on the moon. They did put a satellite in orbit some months before us however and kicked off the space race.
@@c-5899
It may have been so strange to hear Taubman thought he misheard
@@sefnetxIf no country manages to bring people to the moon in the next 20 years, I will be convinced this has never been done EVER by ANYONE. I had no doubts before, never believed those conspiracy theories, but my doubts keep accumulating just by looking at the facts.
It's been many years since I've seen a grown man have a Gorbasm. It must be true love.
21:11
@@DavidErdodyeven his face is flushed. If I had been there, I'd have yelled, "get a room!"
14:09 Soviet economic problems were so severe that even if the Party poured most of the resources previously used by military into producing consumer goods, it wouldn't have helped. It would just produce more of the same poor goods. Collective farms would be just as unproductive. Factories would have see little improvement, because their machinery was mostly bought in the West for hard currency and that was extremely short. People would have no incentives to do a good job either. Etc., etc.
The system was the problem
Source - I made it up. You people are laughable. "The Soviet Union failed because they lacked profit incentive!" 🤡🤡
I love how we have so many professors and Drs in the comments of all these lectures..
Yep! Hard to Believe.
yet they have 90 min lecture on how it was planned by the J
well, this ' specialist ' does not impress me addressing the topic of the ussr fall...
I lived in communist Poland in 1980. Everyone there saw the coming collapse of the Soviet Union.
Great, in Romania we didn't see it until December 89.
Poland put the ax to the system, other countries maybe not that much and hence just followed suit - just asking myself.
We worked hard to make this happen, didn't we? There is no other nation in the world that would deceive itself in this way...
When visiting a farm in Canada in the early eighties an impressed Gorbachev (who was I believe the top agricultural man in the USSR at the time) asked the farmer "who gets you up in the morning?". When he saw the well maintained farm machinery he asked "do they trust you with this equipment?"
In Windsor , Ontario, a visit to Eugene Whelan"s farm. Absolutely correct!
@Jake Johansson Maybe he knew it was not a collective farm but for someone unfamiliar in a practical sense of Western farming he easily transferred his Soviet mindset. Soviet emigres to the U.S. chose New York City to settle in because they thought that was where the consumer goods were, just as Moscow had the monopoly on supplies of sausages. They also thought the New York Times as the largest newspaper was an American Pravda providing the official government line.
@Jake Johansson I'm sure the USSR students were given an unbiased account of the difference between "capitalistic" farming and collective farming. I'm sure they gave a balanced account of the necessity of eliminating the kulaks (those class enemies who might have owned an extra cow).
Brilliant comment. "Who gets you up in the morning,?" says it all. Cuts to the quick as to why Capitalism works and Socialism dies not.
@@dennisweidner288That is an insult to hundreds of millions of ordinary Soviet citizens who woke up every morning, just like every human on Earth, to earn for living, send their kids to school, take care of their elderly parents, enjoy sunshine, meet their friends and colleagues, etc. Growing up in a family of a man of power, he viewed these people as a cattle, not human beings with souls and free will. It was not his father and grandfather, local strongmen, who made these people to wake up every morning. It was people's natural desire to contribute to their community, raise their children, enjoy talking to neighbors and strangers, and other natural causes, not the directives of the Communist Party, heads of collective farms or state enterprises.
I enjoyed the mention of the whole, "the SU went against human nature" argument. Western societies simply incentivize human greed and then regulate that to (hopefully) mitigate harmful and wreckless business. The SU tried to regulate everything so it goes perfectly. It's easier to try and control whats already there (greed) rather than centralising all power and controlling everything with absolute strength.
This is an amazing video, thank you. Living in Mexico in the late 80s it was such a bizarre period to watch the USSR just crumble in a matter of months
The main question stays, how much the US embassy really paid to Gorbachev Yakovlev Bobkov team to destroy the USSR. Russian intelligence officers estimate the bribe to be close to $1 billion cash in 1991 money.
Taubman's presentation gave a good summary of the theories that try to explain why the Soviet Union was the way it was and offered some explanation why it eventually failed. He seems to have a bias that the Reagan Administration should not get credit for its demise. His main explanation for the demise of the USSR is Gorbachev. He makes the point that by introducing "Glasnost" and other reforms that Gorbachev opened to the door to forces that undermined the communist regime and eventually led to its and destruction.
Professor Taubman did a great job of presenting the facts. One can see why he has succeeded as a professor of political science specializing in Russian affairs. Being a biographer of both Khrushchev and Gorbachev he probably has imbibed a bit too much of the "great man theory of history" . To be more precise that history is moved more by great individual actors than by forces in a particular society.
The weakness of Professor's Taubman's presentation lies in his inability to recognize or an unwillingness to admit that societal forces, namely the stagnating economy, created the conditions that demanded a reformer of the Gorbachev type. Gorbachev is not a Vaclav Havel who was a dissident with a program who was able to come to power and implement his reform program. Gorbachev was an honest apparatchik who wanted to make the communist system work. He never really understood that a totalitarian system cannot be reformed. They can only be abolished or maintained.
Professor Taubman during the questioning period concedes that Reagan's policy of colluding with the Saudis to lower the price of oil was devastating to Gorbachev in his attempt to enact economic reform. In essence the lower price drastically cut the Soviet central budget. This contradicts his earlier comment that Reagan had little to do with the implosion of the USSR. Professor Taubman did not address how Reagan's increase of military spending and the launch of the Star Wars Program affected the Gorbachev regime. It must have had an effect on military strategy and allocation of resources that had to have a strong negative economic impact.
Most telling was Professor Taubman's critique that during Bush I there were doubters in his administration about the sincerity of Gorbachev and an unwillingness on the part of the West to give Gorbachev the financial resources to preserve a reformed confederation of sovereign states . He takes it for granted that it was somehow in the interests of the West in general and the USA in particular to have a revamped Soviet Union. Given the fact that the USSR broke up peacefully that case seems hard to make.
Dr. Taubman did concede that had Gorbachev not tried his reforms then it is likely that the USSR would have limped along and eventually had an explosive collapse similar to Yugoslavia.
In conclusion, the Taubman lecture was quite useful and he offered interesting insights and asides to the many factors that contributed to the demise of what Ronald Reagan called "The Evil Empire"
My main disagreement in the good professor's analysis is that it's rather obvious that many factors played a role in the demise of the USSR just as there were many factors that played a role in the demise of the Ottoman Empire. Having been a student and later in the 1990s an executive for an American Fortune 500 company in Russia it was rather obvious that a multiplicity of factors created the conditions for a reformer like Gorbachev to be chosen to try and save a sinking ship. One cannot discount the enormous efforts and investment in blood and treasure that the West made from the Truman Administration in 1947 up and through the Reagan-Bush administrations first to contain the USSR and then to bring it down. Reagan upped the ante to Gorbachev by increasing his military spend hoping to bankrupt the Soviets and by using its power to deny the Soviets badly needed revenue by getting the Saudis to over produce oil and drop the price. In addition, the Reagan Admin had invested much money and effort to undermine the Soviets in Poland. Thus, while Gorbachev certainly played the key role he did not destroy the USSR all on his own.
Professor Taubman, along with many other professors of a liberal bent in the USA, seem to regret that the USSR was not saved albeit in a reformed and social democratic manner. If that is really his regret then he needs to make the case how American and European security would have been enhanced by that. Moreover, that desire ignores the legitimate desire of the non-Russian population of the old USSR to realize their self-determination. Certainly from the position of the USSR's former vassals in Central and Eastern Europe the fall of the USSR was nothing to regret.
In conclusion, the Taubman talk is excellent and deserves the investment in time to listen to it. He is very engaging and quite well informed.
The professor was not only determined not to give Reagan credit for the demise of the Soviet Union, but he was also determined to deny Reagan ANY credit, despite the obvious impact of Regan's policies. Gorbachev was obviously the key player, but so many liberal Americans are determined to write Regan out of history. Also, notice how he ignores Capitalism, its functioning in America, and its absence in the Soviet Union.
Too long, didnt read
@@planetcaravan2925 YOUR FREAKIN’ LOSS, Brother.
Блестяще. Коротко, ёмко, по существу. Спасибо)) вы очень взешенны и объективны.
The Soviet Union did not break up peacefully. Wars in Georgia, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan point to the opposite. Later wars in Chechnya also attest to this reality. Hell, Yelstin almost annexed Crimea in 1993
really a relief to hear a speaker that is both so clearly intelligent and humble. many of the lecturers i've seen lately are very intelligent, very eloquent speakers, but when it comes to answering questions they can't resist treating the audience like they're beneath them. taubman seems like good and earnest person
eee
You're right, nice to see I agree
This bloke has kept Reagan's contributions and foresight far from consideration. Other authors have carefully described the sweet, daring and complex forces bearing upon the Soviet Union, and Reagan is right there, squeezing the pressure points at his appointed time in history. Reagan's "national security decision directives" were timely, opportunistic and decisive. Gorbachev and Reagan were ready for each other.
Reagan was only one of many, many causes of the collapse. It was doomed to collapse from the start.
@@owlnyc666 Well, your remarks are a step in the right direction, acknowledging Reagan as you do. But as far as being doomed from the start, Reagan seems to be the only one (at the time), who believed that it was inevitable,, and a good nudge would accelerate it. His critics enjoyed saying, "It was inevitable" after the collapse, yet none of those critics predicted it.
Great lecture, thank you! A bit disappointed about the lack of the answer to the question in the title - "why?". I think this question was not really answered. The lecture rather was focused on Gorbachev and the question "how?", which is not "why". We all know how it was, especially those of us who lived through it inside collapsing USSR. How is not that interesting. Why is. I was hoping to hear some interesting thoughts on that "why" question.
My thoughts exactly.
They'd have to thank Jimmy Carter for his Afghan plans and that's not allowed.
The economic independence demand of Estonia which led to political autonomy which led to republics declaring independence; collapsed from within and west failed to rescue USSR because economically sound open USSR is a direct challenge to Western power.
Zdeněk Mlynář (pronounced Zdenyek Mlynahrzh) His son became a conservative (anti-communist ) politician in the 1990s in the Czech Republic.
The term "conservative" depends on context and is focused on skepticism of reformist politics, regardless of what the local status quo happens to be. Thus what was "conservative" in the post-Communist states of eastern and central Europe in the 1990s wouldn't have qualified as conservative in the US at the same time.
I still can’t pronounce it..
Missing most important concepts…. But i guess this is the best lecture one can give in a western university without getting fired from the university. 😮
Please recommend some books. I’m trying to learn how the Soviet Union died and from what I can tell, most of it is propaganda.
What’s missing?
you mean warped Soviet propaganda.
Taubman seems very sad that the US did not prop up the Soviet Union at the end. I wish that Professor Marshall Goldman was still around to give a more clear headed explanation of what happened.
YES.
If Gorbachev had succeeded in doing what this guy wanted it would not have been better.
I visited the Soviet Union for three weeks. The stores were almost empty of consumer goods. I went to Gum in Moscow, which was the equivalent of Macy's. There consumer goods were of very very poor quality. The Russian workers got paid no matter how well they worked.
The Soviet Union was a country run by the Department of Motor Vehicles.
THAT'S Hilarious!!!! Soo True, Comrade!!
Gee's when you get right down to it in 10 words. The Soviet Union was a horror show.
@@GeorgeSemel
USSR was theater of absurd....
@@ssmusic214 Was one of the theaters musicians.
Jimmy Carter and his National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, induced the Soviets into the Afghanistan War to bankrupt their treasury. Reagan had ZERO to do with it. When oil collapsed in 1983, the USSR was bankrupt. This was well before Reagan tripled USA debt. Conservative propagandists pretend Reagan's drunken-sailor spending was to defeat the USSR. Except, the Soviets never responded one red cent to Reagan's spending.
Republican con-artists like to say "Ask the Soviet leaders who had most effect on the Soviet collapse.". As if the same people that spent their nation's treasury on military adventurism are going to tell you the truth and blame themselves. Soviet military spending as percent of GDP was about 25% for at least 20 years. The US spent about 8%. Again, Reagan had ZERO to do with anything concerning the collapse of the USSR. That is complete Republican invention.
I’m afraid that he’s not going to mention the collapse of oil prices. But still very interesting presentation so far.
1.24.00 oil was a big issue.
1:03:17 - He specifically mentioned Reagan working the Saudis about that. Next time listen all through, or just listen more carefully.
Gorbachev ignored the lessons of the New Economic Policy (NEP) of Lenin whereby capitalism was largely re-introduced to revive a collapsing economy wrought by doctrinaire socialism (nationalizing the means of production). The economy revived and the NEP had to be scrapped. The only thing preventing the Soviet Union from turning into Venezuela was the tolerance of a black market economy and the system of allowing farmers their own small private plots of land.
I can summarize the cause of the fall of The Soviet Union.... The Soviet Union collapsed due to isolation from the western countries, especially economic isolation.. You have to keep in mind that the west is not only the U.S., it's mainly the U.S. and western Europe...
Let me put in another way, if the U.S. and Europe would have traded with Russia the way they have done with China, than Russia would have become an economic power house... but the truth of the matter is that The west did not trust Russia and wanted to isolate them until their eventual demise, which eventually happened. Just think about it this way: Why do you think that China, ( A large communist country, like the USSR was), has become an economic power house? The simple answer is that the U.S. and western Europe let it be by dealing with them economically and technologically.... People erroneously think that China is a threat to the U.S. and that China became an economic power house by themselves.. This is not true at all... If the U.S. saw China as a threat they would eventually cut off China from the economic game from the west and the U.S. would choose another country or countries to deal with economically... The argument would be about the debt we have with China, the answer is that we would pay it off eventually....China would suffer more from the economic isolation and it would throw them back to their economic levels of the 1960s & 1970s when 90% of their people were living below the poverty level and even in starvation...
Russia is not China. There is a long-standing hatred between Western civilization and Russia. Simply put-have diverged in worldview (reached long).
"The first time I met President Reagan I told him this story. I felt free to tell him everything. I told him of the brilliant day when we learned about his Evil Empire speech from an article in Pravda or Izvestia that found its way into the prison. When I said that our whole block burst out into a kind of loud celebration and that the world was about to change, well, then the president, this great tall man, just lit up like a schoolboy. His face lit up and beamed." -Natan Sharansky ........Leftists hate the fact that Reagan helped end the Soviet Empire
The Holly Triple Alliance. St Ronald Reagan, St Margaret Thatcher and St John Paul the II. They has their flaws internaly in the managend of ther countries and the church in the later, but they stood together against the URSS, and subverted and destroyed his ideological legitimacy. They were not just anticomunist fear mongers, they called communism inmoral and stupid and showed why. They were adamant in defending the moral and intelectual superiority of the West. And they did.
@@ricardosoto5770 The USSR fell mostly due to internal decision. Mainstream consensus.
My friend it's a myth that any of those men ended the USSR.
Thatcher did nothing.
The Pope helped undo Communism with the CIA subversion in Poland, not USSR.
Reagan retracted his "Evil Empire" qote during a visit to Moscow and softened his stance on the USSR.
@@napoleonbonaparteempereurd4676 The URSS was doomed from the start. Central planned economy, Lenin policies on nationalites..those were the slow burn bombs that destroyed the URSS. But had not Maggie T, Ronnie or the Polish Pope stood clearly against the Soviet Union, the dismantling of the Soviet Empire would had been far slower. The nationalistic and anti communist (in the fact of rejecting a planned economy and single party rule) movement in easter europe that spread to the soviet Baltics.... was inspired by the election of a Polish Pope. Military and ideological competition with the US and Nato unde Reagan and Thatcher was a heavy burden on the Soviet Economy. When the party chiefs of Russia, Belarus and the Ukraine got the consensus of ending the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union was already dead in the water. The internal consensus was to scuttle it.
@@napoleonbonaparteempereurd4676 The internal consensus came out of the blue? They just woke one morning and said, we have to dissolve the URSS? Also, the subversion of Poland did spread to the URSS, Im friendswith one of the first prime ministers of the new Baltic Republics. The fact the got the guts to challenge the URSS and to declare ilegal the Miolotov Ribbertropp pact secret protocol, came after seen the success of the Poles and other movement they inspired in Eastern Europe. He, who is a historian by profession, told me that in a dinner. One the Baltic Republics were independent de facto, the stage was set for Russia, Ukraine and Belaruss disolving the URSS.
THIS.
my father always said ussr would" collapse from within" .he said the people wont stand for it. .that was about 1975
As did mine, he worked hard to see it would for our Gov.
that can be said about any country that cannot be invaded
- the usa will fall from within
- China will fall from within
- India will fall from within
All of then are unable to be invaded due to nuclear weapons and geography.
USSR dependend on stable foreign currency all the time, but in the end of USSR it had to recredit in foreign banks. As soon as baltic states proclaimed independence, foreign banks stopped their credit lines, since USSR was no longer single entity.
With reference to my earlier comments ( 5 days ago), I may add that another reason the collaps was not foreseen by the western world is that thinking and reasoning within a totalitarian regime is completely different. When your contacts with the SU consists of people like Arbatov and Burlatsky it is logic that you have no clue about what really is happening in the SU. Burlatsky for instance was considered to be a reformer while he was everything except a reformer.
In the 1988 - 1991 period there were specific moments that contributed to the collaps of the SU. As the professor mentioned there was a shortage of basic products,, especially food products were systematically in short supply. To address this major problem that could also effect stability, it was decided that a meeting of the Central Committee be organized in March 1989. It would be the first time in the history of the SU that the most powerful organization of the country would come only together to plan and make fundamental decisions concerning the future of the agrocomplex.
This Central Committee meeting took place in the period 12 to 17 March 1989. The progressive groups aimed for a decision about private farming but realized that a decision about this sensitive subject might be one bridge to far and therefore pushed the idea that a fast track to stimulate food production was to extent the liberties of dacha farming. Already a large portion of horticultural and agricultural products were already produced in dacha’s and even hard core communists were interested in the idea to stimulate the production in Dacha’s to a give a fast boost to overcome the food shortages. They thought that for instance doubling the dacha acreage would double the dacha production. The Central Committee indeed decided that dacha (private) farming should be stimulated. The following week in the Supreme Sovjet fundamental questions were asked about private farming related to for instance specific financing, specific machinery, storage facilities , and more important one start asking questions about land ownership . A discussion that was impossible (subversive) before the CC meeting and another nail in the coffin of the communistic system. On the opening day of this Central Committee meeting (12 March 1989) an editorial concerning the meeting was printed on the front page of Izvestia. It was the first time for this government paper to have an editorial directly related to a sensitive political subject written and signed by a foreign diplomate. It surprised me that non of the so-called Sovjet watchers took notice of my contribution that also got the blessing of the government.
I appreciate your analysis, and you’re way more knowledgeable than I… However, I still think this boils down to capitalism v Socialism.. Private industry v the State.. infrastructure, land mass, and yes, agriculture..
Everything is more expensive, harder to move, and more time consuming..
@@jacobjones5269 Socialism must not be equal to "state administration"
Seems like too much government, no matter what kind of government it is, ALWAYS gets in the way of social mobility and progress.
Thanks for the talk , enjoyed listening to it all . 🇬🇧
SKIP INTRO BUTTON: 4:00
This guy clearly regrets that the USSR fell, and talks as though Gorbo wanted to see the end of the USSR, even though he described how Gorbo tried to keep it together as late as he could, as it was spinning apart. The guy describes Gorbo as an elite who lived a life full of lies. Based on this talk, Gorbo whispered how the system was full of lies to his Czeck freind in college, and wrote and talked openly how he was devoted to it from his childhood on. A guy full of lies all his life, in a system so full of lies, corruption, and threatened State violence that it simply tore apart due to all of its incredible, monstrous basic aspects. The guy said at the start of his talk, that some think the system simply fell apart once the threat of State violence was taken away. Then the guy says that such an explanation was too simple. Um - no - it seems spot on, based on the talk he gave right after he said it was too simple. Oy!
A Wellesley lecturer on the fall of communism? How humorous.
i concur r.g. wachendorf
@@8634StJamesAve idk, 20 people have liked it so i think you're incorrect. just because you disagree doesnt mean anyone else does
Lovely change from the usual rabbits to the right of Genghis Khan.
BINGO.
How do they keep from crying?
I was watching RU1. When I saw Ludmilla Tourischeva crying, I knew it was over.
There is such television in the west that if it had been held in the USSR at one time, there would be no perestroika.
As a Russian citizen myself, I couldn't find a more accurate account on the late Soviet period than this lecture.
My people are now in a precarious situation - we don't like our Soviet past, but we also don't like the Putin's present.
We lost our meaning of life and the idea of bringing about western-like democracy seems utterly impossible and too dangerous (too many people got into Putin's prisons because of trying to achieve this noble goal).
Well, at least we have internet access. For now.
PS: You lucky Americans... just envy you.
I am the man who did it after a judge who went to Russia twice and LOVED it soooo much,,,,he had a paddle and lumbered everyone to understand it was beautiful.
Well, democracy and human rights did not bring prosperity and peace to Russia from 1991 to 2000. There is no need to blindly fawn over western models.
Trust me the Russians I know do not talk like this guy.
I am the one who started the 3-D printing industries, I have the same conditions from lots of countries and my company was seized, I am just trying to stay alive as well.
I ended Chynerbol atomic waste and ended the Pandemic (buy 2200 BCAA'S - amino acids of Leucine, Isoleucine & Valine)
Look at the NWO gear at www.erectorbot.com,,, it's mine but it has gotten alot more powerful!
I believe Russian have 50-50 opinons. One support the regime, one not
Maybe losing 25 million people along with 30 consecutive years worth of the Gross Domestic Product of the nation being lost within a span of just 3 1/2 years fighting the largest war in human history, while losing 40% of housing and almost 30% of the prime able male population in a time when their main rival in the years to come only suffered 300,000 military casualties and absolutely no foreign invasion might have had something to do with it. A possibility perhaps?
It is worse than that. The USSR only achieved GDP per capita of Tsarist Russia of 1913 in 1937. The system did not work. Russia was backward in 1913 like China was backward 1998. It was an emerging market where the Tsar had relented and given up absolute power which is something the communists in China still have not done. It had one of the strongest currencies in the world and a was a hot growth market. Were it not for Russia's entry into the war Russia would have evolved into a more standard European parliamentary democracy that attracted a huge amount of capital.
The USSR had 46 years to recover. By 1959 it was able to devote precious resources to being first in space. It was only able to stay afloat owing to its rich array of natural resources such as gas and oil that it could sell for hard currency . It rarely could produce enough food to feed itself and it had some of the best agricultural land in the world. Central planning and the corruption that always accompanies it was unable to produce goods and services efficiently. The country could not create surplus capital to meet the rising tide of domestic demand. I lived in Leningrad in 1974 and saw how backward the consumer sector was. Everything went to the military where the USSR was spending over 20% of its GDP on military. Today Russia spends 5.5%, the USA 3.75% of GDP on its military and most our allies in Nato less than 2%. So you can see by these simple examples why the Soviet economy was such a loser. Look at the facts and you will understand why the USSR collapsed. Thank God, it was more or less peaceful.
probably we preferred life without iPhones, rather than life in radioactive dust after the American bombing :)
I think you meant "...like China was backward in 1948." I'm not sure you're right about Tsarist Russia eventually developing into a European parliamentary democracy if not for World War I. The only Eastern European country heading in that direction during the Great Depression and before World War II was Czechoslovakia. The Second Serfdom and centuries of Habsburg, Ottoman and Russian rule hadn't done the region many favors, and British, French and German finance Capital were waiting in the wings to keep them agricultural, underdeveloped and deep in debt. That was essentially the UK's plan for Russia if the Bolsheviks had been defeated in the Russian Civil War.
As we get more and more corporate concentration and achieve near monopoly status in industry after industry, I wonder whether we are approaching near "central planning" status in the developed capitalist countries. But that also makes me wonder whether the real problem in the USSR was the central planning, or the lack of political democracy, even proletarian democracy. And then I start wondering about why the Soviets were spending 20% of their budget on the military: was it just a matter of corruption, or were the Soviets truly afraid of a Western attack? Personally, I think it was the latter.
dear introducers, please keep introductoins to 30-60 seconds, not 4 minutes.
Soviet Union was modeled on Tsar Empire. Absolute theological monarchy was replaced with Collegial theological secretarialism. Tzar was replaced with General Secretary, Orthodoxy with Communism and people with working people. They end up rebuilding same thing only using different methods and materials.
Gorbachev was just a facilitator. He recognized the need for market type reforms in the soviet union and also that the reputation of communism was permanently damaged by the actions of it's past leaders . I don't believe the speaker understands how ideologically pure stalinism was. Stalinism was the embodiment of pure communism and every single soviet leader after Stalin has drifted apart and pushed the ideology more and more towards liberalization. Gorbachev was just one in a string of leaders and in his attempt to redeem communism in the face of history, he actually facilitated its collapse. It's fair to say that it's the only way to actually redeem communism, by eliminating it
I cannot agree more. To those who claim Stalin contaminated or betrayed Communism I reply that Stalin was the perfection of Communism. Stalin was the perfection of Communism and the most perfect possible implementation of the ideology of Communism in practice. Communism is simply Socialism that accepts its inherently mandatory authoritarianism and totalitarianism. The only competition to Stalin for Communist purity in practice seems to be North Korea, which may have (it's hard to say due to the complete lack of transparency there) done Stalin one better in the actual practice of communism.
@@nomdeguerre7265 i disagree, nothing in "communism" says it must be totalitarian. Do not strawman pointing to"hot" history periods. The way what i stand for it so search for some democratic but non-market economy and society. And if you talk about freedom, so called "free market" is just oppression of pure by rich and capital as equivalent of power, what really makes it totalitarian force-based system where force is capital, and futher factors like influence, etc, in what the whole world wil live now until probable best times.
Best regards.
@@cicik57 Socialism, including when it goes by the name Communism, is inherently totalitarian. In fact it cannot work unless by coercion, since it requires forcing individuals to act contrary to their natural interests and their wishes. While in some limited communities voluntary Socialism has been tried, it invariably failed after a short period. Socialism can only persist for any length of time by force, legal and physical, applied by the State, comprehensive enough to prevent wholesale avoidance. This is why we have a 'limited totalitarian Police State' around those areas where OUR society has agreed specific functions of government must be socialized (i.e. National Defense for example). You will never find one example of any Socialist society ever working for any time without application of totalitarian authoritative government. This is invariably the case, from the former Soviet Union, to China, to Cuba....to the perfect example of Socialism: North Korea. This isn't a coincidence. It's because that is a fundamental requirement of Socialism.
@@nomdeguerre7265 you get it really wrong in west media space. Primary idea of socialism, repeat again, is "absence the private property OF the means of production". Nothing speak against that with some clever (not like examples above) organization you will gain individuals acting for their "natural interests" - mean to own profit without caring of others profit, while having the public ( not state or private) means of production and some public methods to influence on actions, what would produce common benefit - this can be tried to do with information technologies. Also the real socialist system must be depersonalized means with no "leader" at the top and be organized somehow as the community of people without hierarchy - maybe you would say that it also contradicts the natural interests of people. Finally look, some egoistic interests must be restricted for common benefit. The issue with fail of "socialist" societies is that they were in wild historical times and with intellectual weakness of the leading organizations.
Taking capitalist position means, that modern system with all kinds of inequalities and injustice will permanently exist in civilization, and growing property inequality will naturally produce the inequality of rights and your favorite "freedoms".
Best regards.
@@cicik57 Possession is as natural as breathing. People will do it regardless. The idea of Socialism is for a few to decide who should have what and it takes force to make that happen and totalitarianism to know who has what. Socialism is inherently totalitarian. And all totalitarianism, regardless its pretext is just fascism. Ultimately the people in power learn that power, with the privilege and perquisites it brings, is its own end. It was true of the Bolsheviks. It was true of the Maoists. It is true of the Cubans. It has been and will always be true of every society which tries to enforce Socialism, from the Paris Commune, to the Kremlin, to Peking, to Berlin, to Havana… and anywhere this seductive illusion can be used to pretend to strive for utopia and only manage to create another flavor of hell.
DID it collapse or did it just change its name to avoid lawsuits?
It turned into the biggest joke army on the planet😂
8:00 The list of reasons "Why Did the Soviet Union Collapse?"
Thank you for uploading and sharing.
The Soviet Union was on the brink of collapse long before Gorbachev took charge. The arms race, and a flawed economy based on forced labour with unrealistic targets led to the economy tanking. He tried to radically change the way the world saw the USSR, but the ball was in motion and eventually the collapse happened, unavoidable because of years of bad decisions and the corruption and mismanagement by the politburo
It wasn't "on the brink of collapse." Stagnation, and falling futher behind the West? Sure, but not collapsing. Educate yourself.
It wasn't "on the brink of collapse." Stagnation, and falling futher behind the West? Sure, but not collapsing. Educate yourself.
I tuned out after five minutes. Seems so simplistic and self evident. Like a high school lecture. Geo-politics and sociology are much more complex.
You may not have notice but an hour or 2 isn't enough to summarize a 500 page book.
@@napoleonbonaparteempereurd4676 No. He didn't notice. Because - like most twits - he thinks 5 minuters is enough to judge a two hour lecture. And his much more complex understanding of geopolitics and sociology has ALL Come from only watching the first 5 minutes of any lecture - that's all he needs because he's a genius.
Only someone at a place like Wellesley, would say Gorbachev is thought of as a "Hero" in the United States.
Gorbachev was liked here because you could see he had a brain
It was the elimination of the idiotic tax and regulatory dictates concerning the oil industry during the Reagan administration that brought down the price of crude oil and natural gas that finished the Soviet Union - oil and gas were the only hard cash exports they had . Those same de-regulatory actions wiped out the economys of Oklahoma ,Texas and Louisiana and triggered the banking crisis of the late eighties and early ninetys. I traveled to east Germany in 1990 visiting the town of Bernburg, Anhalt where was stationed a Soviet armored brigade - who were without all their tanks - Gorbachev had sold them all to Saddam Hussein.
I'm not surprised. And sitting comfortably in his SF Bay area Presidio location given to him by the US military for a "Non Profit" NGO. That came within 4 years of Gorby's leaving power. How many people remember that?
@@gm4321 Revolution eaten form inside out by bureaucrats living in Dacha's. Drinking good wine and driving shinny automobile.
@@kimobrien. Agreed. Morality is the essential issue. Bad morality ruins any proposed system.
it was cutting the life support, not the cause of its sickness.
@fireson23 It still has never left 2nd world status even with being second largest economy.
Ah classic academia. Never forget to roast your visiting lecturer's discipline while introducing him.
The how and why vodka, played such an instrumental role in Russian politics
Milton Friedman sums it up simply, (yes, some things can be summed up simply), the Soviet system had no way of figuring prices for goods or services. With every visit to the bathroom and no toilet paper the citizens came to know quickly the simple failure of the system. He seems to "gush" over this Soviet politician.
It was von Mises who first pointed this out I believe
@@juliantheapostate8295 PRECISELY.
@@juliantheapostate8295thank you based emperor
This is a very instructive and enjoyable presentation. Professor Taubman has, of course, written the definitive biography of Mikhail Gorbachev, whom he interviewed eight times in the space of a decade. So, he has obtained his perspective with a deep engagement with the central player in the dissolution of the Soviet Empire. I also enjoy Werner Hertzog's recently released documentary on Gorbachev, which was very moving. It poses the question of whether Mr Gorbachev is one of history's most tragic figures.
Now he's dead
Will Putin fall into the same Category after reestablishing all the Christian Churches in Russia? The lie about killing three Astronauts, then staging the Lunar Landing in Area 51 on earth, then demolishing the World Trade Centers with Drones substituting for airliners while killing the passengers on the ground at the same time as people were jumping to their deaths or be cooked alive, while steel beams are being melted below them, then the first responders and firemen dying from 53:25 breathing in the toxic smoke, not to mention the war Of Terror sweeping through 7 countries consecutively, firing the generals who didn’t play ball, yadda yadda Yes Yadda, & killing all the Innocent people along the way, seems more tragic, would you say possibly Satanic?
he is cause he didnt want the dissolution of the ussr but it also couldnt continue through the same path. it is worthy of a oppenheimer-esque movie
Gorby was avatar, chosen by Andropov and Yakovlev to be hitman of USSR. It is KGB who sold the country for cheap..
Well, that wasn't insightful.. No real explanation or analysis at all. Just a description of events and personalities.
Then you weren't really listening, were you? Taubman explores some of the psychological factors rather nicely, which is a contrast to and an augmentation of some of the usual viewpoints. Gorbachov WAS definitely naive in many ways, and had virtually no expertise in macroeconomics, and that was all part of the story. What were you expecting - the Marxist dialectical explanation? - that had already proven to be a failure, I'm afraid.
It does seem like almost everyone in the room, including the speaker, was rooting for the Soviet Union. You can't expect much in the way of incisive thinking in a roomful of true-believer cultists.
and even those descriptions have little to nothing insight, only anecdotes from not very credible friends of the author
Exactly, hes just rambling about Gorbachev's life
I listened closely and heard the same as Patrick. If I listened really closely I heard regret the Soviet Union collapsed. Light on analysis, heavy on opinion.
Taubman onstage from 4:04 - you're welcome ⚒️
idk, seems to me it went through it's 4th turning. (there's no reason to believe every country is on the same generational time line)
"Evil Empire" is the best description of USSR anybody ever came up with!
Then Reagan' renounced it in Moscow. 😉.
If you read the book you would notice Raegan had no ceherency in his stance on the USSR.
@@napoleonbonaparteempereurd4676
LOL! Difference between Andropov and Gorbachev is beyond your intelligence level.
@@ssmusic214
Anyone who studies this period would know Reagan had no coherent stance on the USSR.
"We seek friendhsip with the Soviet leadership" he says in public and then a few weeks later
"Evil Empire"
"We want to live in peace with the Soviets" while he reignites the arms race.
"Our sons have never fought one another" he says. Wrong. US troops invaded Russia in 1918 during the intervention.
@@napoleonbonaparteempereurd4676 Child!
Reagan was THE ONE who FINALLY DID SOMETHING about that cancer on the body of mankind.
AND HE WAS ABSOLUTELY RIGHT.
Presence of US troops in Archangelsk and FAR EAST REPUBLIC in 1918 never resulted in fighting with bolshevik army.
@@ssmusic214
Many Presidents before Reagan challenged and damaged the USSR.
Harry S Truman is the prime exsample.
The US troops were nonetheless involved in a war AGAINST the Bolsheviks.
They fought with one another in war.
th-cam.com/video/1mC1bmzbgxY/w-d-xo.html
Kruschev even made a point of poiting this out.
In the west, many people regularly rummage through spattered bins and trash cans, with restaurants on every corner in the background. In the USSR, restaurants were clearly more modest, but it was difficult to imagine that a Soviet person would want to climb into the trash can, despite the more modest average salary of the population.
i understand the world still has its lessers but there is no comparison as far as the evils of the ussr compared to the west. capitalism has cut world poverty in half within the last 30-50 years. we had a depression, they made a conscious genocide. it was the west that saved their people including many others. the world is noticeably richer, safer, and more free then ever before because of it. the problem now since we taught them all how to capitalism it puts them all up as peers again which leads to a new cycle of dominance and struggle. we all knew this but risked it anyway and thats a beautiful thing to me. hahah
@@johnanderson3475 USSR was not evil. It was good.
@@deckuofm The millions who died in Gulags might disagree.
@@twd6568 Even those who are born in USSR have no idea about Gulags.
@@deckuofm LIES!!! haha
In my opinion the Soviet Union collapsed by itself.
The system was rotten and even if they tried to improve it it did not work out. In the end it was goods (also food) shortages, many emigrating, the population no longer believed the regime...
This is one of the few comments worth a Dollar on this thread. Well done.
For a much more in depth treatment of this topic, I'd recommend the following video with Dr. Sally Paine:
NWC INS Lecture Series -- Lecture 3: "Why Russia Lost the Cold War," Sept. 29, 2020
Excellent presentation of Gorbachov.
Taubam has gotten to a point where he is too pleased with himself and his view of the world. This lecture gives a great view of how Taubam thinks the world should work, plenty of criticism of those with whom he does not agree but a dearth of serious analysis.
I would be even more critical. His opinion on history and the world in general is close to being a series of clichés
The chancellor, the late chancellor, was only partly correct.
He was obsolete.
But so is the State, the entity he worshiped.
Any state, entity, or ideology becomes obsolete when it stockpiles the wrong weapons: when it captures territories, but not minds; when it enslaves millions, but convinces nobody.
When it is naked, yet puts on armor and calls it faith, while in the Eyes of God it has no faith at all.
Any state, any entity, any ideology which fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of Man... that state is obsolete.
A case to be filed under "M" for "Mankind" - in The Twilight Zone.
I'm sure the ineffective reaction to the Chernobyl disaster had an important effect, too.
As to the thought that Stalin dying early might have spared the purges: Maybe. Remember that the secret police and gulag system began under Lenin. Stalin didn't create that -- he inherited it. Had Lenin been succeeded by Trotsky or another of the Old Bolsheviks, there might have been moderation, compared with Stalin, but Trotsky was not a moderate man, either. The Soviet system was the kind that would bring ruthless leaders to the fore.
Gorbachev had the right ideas with Perestroika and Glasnost, but he was rushin' things.
😂
Odd at the center of so many wonderful things, there's a brood of self-chosen.
Socialism is a mixed bag depending on society. One would think it was sweet and rosy in Russia before Bolshies but the reality is Tsarist Russia before them was a medieval tyranny. It was just maybe half a century since serfdom was abolished, 9 in 10 people were illiterate peasants and dirt poor with life expectancy like 40 years. Nobility had it good but not the rest of the people. I am not about to whitewash Stalin but in mere 20 years it was an absolutely different country and at least on economic side it was much better for the majority. And in 30 to 40 years they had universal literacy nuclear power and space program.
I don't know USSR very well but I know Romania very well . In the 70's when I grew up people were happy enjoying life but there were a few problems and one of them was the freedom of travel . It was difficult to get a visa mainly for western countries but it had a reason . I am not gone talk about the bad things because it's going to take me pages but there were some good things to . For example dentists were free of charge .There was no unemployment . What we calll here in the West MASTER . Well You did not have to pay a penny for education except doctorate .. Apartments were free too . You would pay only the bills like electricity or the phone for example but they were very cheap because everything was state owned . In the 80 's it went from bad to worse . USA and its allies start boycotting romanian economy . USSR were selling us very expensive raw materials because they hated ceausescu .
Tell it to the peasants starved on the collective farms in 1931-33
why venezuela fell apart ? Is it also first of its kind.. ?
Johney Smith and you are a freaking idiot. Are you serious or just writing a satire here? You cannot be as stupid as your comments make you out to be here? Are you a man-baby who is failing at life and long for a a daddy government that will give you all you want without you having to produce anything? Is that your problem? Pathetic for sure and a disgrace to the human race.
Er, the Soviet Union wasn't socialist, it was communist.
The Soviet Union from 1924-19454 was fastest growing economy in the history of the world. This includes going through a civil war in 1917/ revolution, WWI and WWII. System crumbled like every other empire. The Oligarchs in the Politburo were really greedy Capitalist, they kept all the wealth. 67% of the GDP went to the military. The conquerd contries cost the Soviet system too much money to maintain. The couldn't collect enough taxes. The Arms race with the west killed the system. Economist Richard Wolfe explains the Soviets could not get international loans from the west. Really the Soviet system was totalatarian Fuedalism.
Or, post-feudalism.
Who told you that and how did they know? At what cost in lives did the economy grow? The Politburo were greedy Communist who were wealthier than the workers. I do agree that the arms race was one of the major reasons, but not the only major reason. I do agree that it was totalitarian fuedelism.
@@owlnyc666 Richard Wolf. Unfortunately the Communist were not real Communist. They were hyper capitalist oligarchs. Like America has always been. The best example of Communism was practiced in Acts 2:42-47(kjv) also read Acts 4:32-37(kjv) The early Jewish kingdom church lived all things in common.
In late USSR conditions were free of stress. It made many people alcoholics, vandals, hoodlums, thiefs, etc. But those conditions were good for wise and civilized people.
How can one take this guy seriously in his discussion of the fall of the USSR when he dismisses Reagan within a minute and waxes poetically about Gorbachev?
Reagan had as much to do with fall as did Gorbachev. If not more.
He is completely biased.
During the 19th Century there was a lot of technological progress and people fell in love with the idea of "Science". Everything had to be "Scientific". Socially you had a number of Utopian Societies that were created on the basis of someones ideas with Marxism being one of the most successful at gaining adherents.
Talk of "Dialectical Materialism" being "Thesis opposed by Anti-thesis and yielding Synthesis" which became the new Thesis - sounded impressive to a lot of ignorant people.
The growth of large factories with legions of poorly paid, over worked - workers - led to a lot of resentment on the part of the have not's who were open to ideas about how they would "seize the means of production".
Under the leadership of the Communist Party they would form a "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" that of course would run things in a benevolent manner until they achieved True Communism - "From each according to their ability. To each according to their need".
Lenin created the means for political control where in you had a Central Committee below which were such as Regional Committees and Local Party Representatives. According to Democratic Centralism information would flow up from the Local and Regional Party Members to the Central Committee who would make a decision - then the decision would flow down to the Regional and Local levels where it would be implemented. During the first phase - there was freedom of opinion to some degree but once a decision was made - it was to be implemented without further discussion.
Five Year Plans were popular where it was decided what the nation would do - but - these plans were to inflexible and thus didn't work. The problem was that a Centrally Planned Economy just wasn't flexible enough to handled the constantly changing economics of the real world.
The other thing was that people who no longer owned anything had no incentive to work on the collectives but - they were allowed small plots they could grow crops on themselves. These small plots became where much of the food was grown - and - led to a black market in things the State Economy failed to provide.
An example of central planning was if they were going to make 500 cars - they would make 500 sets of wind shield wipers - not anticipating that they would wear out. Thus, you had car owners who routinely took their wind shield wipers off every time they parked their car and locked them up - because if they didn't - they wouldn't be there when they got back.
Those in the west could see that this type of Centrally Planned Economy was doomed to failure and felt that all the needed to do was Contain the spread of Communism until if fell of it's own weight.
Another factor in this was that while the first generation revolutionaries were true believers - as each generation passed, people believed less and less in the ideology until not even the party members believed it.
Gorbachev tried to reform things but since the system itself was basically flawed - there was no fixing it.
When the Communists went away - the Black Market - which had become the Real Economy as opposed to the State Run Economy - came out into the open - but it was being run by people who had been criminals under the old regime and still were criminals. Russia became a Kleptocracy, a nation of thieves run by thieves and that is where things are today.
It's all vastly more complicated than that and this is a simplistic version but - it is in general what happened.
.
All this is correct - when you take away the famous "checks and balances" of democracy, you're going to get thugs in power anyway. Marxism is, as you imply, at root a 19th ideology that has never caught up with the times. My main objection to it, though, is that it is, as a code based on violent revolution,
fundamentally murderous.
@@Maelli535 Yes.
.
Brezhnev started the ball rolling , USSR was already a sinking ship when Gorbachev took over , he was the fall guy !!!!
Michelle Rice Technically Lenin began the process that caused the dissolution of the USSR.
There is a lot of truth to that. Gorbachev was brought in to save the sinking ship. In those days it was referred to "stagnation" . In short, the creaking Soviet empire was overburdened with spending on its military. Reagan decided to up the ante and Gorbachev responded by relaxing the coercive mechanisms of society and began restructuring hoping that the economy would recover. Gorby even released his vassal states in Central and Eastern Europe from imperial control It all failed. The internal empire rebelled and once the reactionary communist staged their coup the end of the USSR was the only game in town.
Trotsky predicted that the bureaucracy would eventually restore capitalism, and he was right.
@@cka2nd China copied the Perestroika plan word for word. They have transformed China into a Social Democracy with State Capitalism, just like the Perestroika was planning to transform the USSR. How come China is so prosperous?
@@masternmargarita China may have copied perestroika, sort of, but it did not copy glasnost. The PRC is also not a social democracy, with a typical multi-party system. China is so prosperous because it had a labor pool of hundreds of millions of workers who could be set to work making goods for export on the one hand, and serve to lower the cost of labor to Big Capital on the other, just like the US South once provided Northern mill owners with lower cost labor than they could find in Massachusetts, or Mexico provided lower priced labor to American manufacturers. Eastern Europe is now providing the same service to German capitalists. China also had not been a military competitor of the US since the early 70's, and was rather an ally against the USSR in some areas, so US, Japanese and Taiwanese capitalists could use Chinese labor to increase their profit margins (and discipline their home workforces) without feeling the need to grind their noses into the ground, as basically happened to Russia in the 1990's.
one word to answer this question, CORRUPTION!
@царь царь царь You are kidding? Nomenklatura ! Brezhnev had the largest car collection in the world. If you were a member of the Communist party , you had privilige. If not, too bad....
@царь царь царь It was common knowledge . He was receiving them as gifts from Western leaders. Are you saying that the USSR had NO elite? BTW, I am forced to always check my facts .
@царь царь царь Really? So there was never membership in the Communist Party? I see....I cannot make up stories as I saw with my own eyes and ears , how Communist officials lived and thought during their single party rule. BTW, your avatar says everything , as you seem to believe so strongly in a moral, economic, social and political abject failure. Pravda indeed.
@царь царь царь In the "corrupt" West, if you had a plumbing problem, you would look up as many plumbers you wanted and discuss a price and a schedule . In the "non-elitist worker"s paradise, you had to call the plumbing ministry where they would send someone of their choosing , who would decide , when and how much it would cost (50% to the worker, and 50% to the apparatchik that answered the phone). If you complained....you waited even longer.
@царь царь царь What about Ceaucescu , for example?
The percentage of ethnic Russians has been falling since early 1970s. The minorities hated USSR. The system was horribly inefficient and everyone could see it.
The Economist proved that the a command economy like the Soviet Union was impossible because there wasn't time to make that many decisions. They proved that the system had to fail.
American propaganda will never mention how Putin takes on NATO with soviet equipment let alone the ones Ukraine is using from the time of Gorbechev. Wasn’t NATO that disarmed Ukraine of nukes? Sounds communist to me. SleepyJoeGulags
In March of 1991, at a reception in Moscow, Ian Shapiro, Sterling Professor of Political Science at Yale, spoke with Professor Vadim Zagladin, first deputy director international department of the Soviet Communist Party's Central Committee & asked, “When did you (the ruling elite) conclude that the Soviet Union was unsustainable?
Zagladin replied, “1978”.
Did you ever meet and/or communicate with Zagladin.
Beijing doesn’t need your opinions, and brics nations is unison.
Can’t pretend like Regan didn’t have a part in this
AND YET Reagan did calculate that the Communist system could be challenged and thereby defeated. And his associates led others to be foot soldiers about to do just that! Yet to the bond, it’s all so mysterious? Ridiculous..
I pretend to work and you pretend to pay me.
Great audio
14:02 What kind of over-extension is the prof talking about? Other Warsaw Pact countries were an asset to Soviet Union, not a drag. They substantially increased product of entire socialist system and were pretty much controlled by Moscow. Failure in Afghanistan was not the case of "over-extension", it was due to the fact that it had geography impossible to hold and they were against much more determined and cruel enemy that didn't think much about his own losses. Economically it wasn't that big of a deal either, as Afghanistan cost SU mere 3% of its GDP. It was the demoralization caused by Afghanistan that was a problem, not its economic ramifications.
Interesting lecture. I've studied the decline and break-up of the soviet union from an economic perspective and could probably deliver a lecture about half as good and interesting as Taubman, but I'd argue that economic causes fed into and amplified the political ones.
It would make for an interesting debate, but Taubman referred to distorted economic performance, and this is but one facet of the overall soviet economic model.
He also mentioned Korolev, a brilliant rocket scientist whose talent was wasted whilst imprisoned by a jealous and untalented colleague called Aleksandr Yakovlev (not Gorbachev's mate, a former ambassador to Canada). Do this enough, and this stifles ambition, creativity, and rewards political loyalty and reliability.
Repression also erodes trust, which Taubman refers to indirectly.
I think Chernobyl had much to do with the collapse. It split the Ukrainians and the Belorussians from the system through hunger (their farmland was radioactive), fear, and sickness. The secrecy and denial of the USSR didn't play well when children were getting cancer and the USSR's leader was encouraging "openness".
After initial supression of the information about the disaster, the Soviet government rather quickly esitimated potential consequences of the disaster for current and future workforce and had a system of early cancer screenings, longer vacations, medication subsidies, etc. established in all the affected regions. It was not a secret, everyone in the country knew about it and everyone in the affected regions was encouraged to test their children (the most affected category for cancer-related mutations based on the nature of radioactive fallout). Also, everyone was regularly warned not to consume mushrooms, milk, berries and many other products from the affected regions. Just because you do not understand economic principles on which the Soviet healthcare was founded (the main of them was early prevention of costly outcomes) does not mean that government officials were not aware of the cost of potential cancer burden for the entire society or did nothing to prevent it. Also, Russia was heavily affected by the radioactive fallout, too. The wind blew north to Belarus first, and then it turned East, transporting radioactive particles along a thousand-kilometer-long strip deep into Russia.
Note: the soviet union would call liberals right, because they would be seen as right of their leftist stance. Liberals, traditionally were middle of the road!!
johnnyscifi The US government and media referred to people like Boris Nemtsov as “liberal”, despite him playing a pivotal role in implementing shock therapy during the 90’s, despite being told not to by actual liberals in Russia. This is the faction the elite here like to ignore to then pretend it was the communists vs Yeltsin in the 90’s and there were no other choices to bring freedom to Russia.
Yeltsin, Nemtsov, Chubais, Gaidar - convenient to the western elite during the 90’s, despite there being actual progressives.
Khordokovsky, Nemtsov (when he was alive), Sobchak, Lebedev, Browder - convenient to the western elite in the present, while real progressives in/from Russia are again ignored because they are not convenient to our elites.
Long story short, our governments and corporate media like to distort those words in Russia and so does the Putin regime along with our chosen puppets. It’ll be the damn day when our corporate media shows their legitimate activists and they get invited to speak at talks.
Oners82
On the eve of Raegan a pouplist weighted in that "The US had gone so far to the right that you couldnt recognize it anymore!!!"
I agree
Ka Gala
Shock therapy in russia during the 90's? That sounds horrifying!!!
Please tell me more about this
Ka Gala
Generation X are also called the last soviet generation. Sad, very sad
@@johnnyscifi
I must add that in the USSR, the CPSU considered hardcore Communist Righ-Wing by Gorbachev time.
Left-Wing meant Liberal Communist Reformers like Gorbachev or Yakolev.
Leon Trotsky also foresaw it.
Fuck if only he foresaw a pick darting toward him. He could have provided us with cringe for several more decades.
Can you direct me to a resource for this? An article, book, speech or lecture? I'm very interested. Спасибо!
@@fredrickhenley354 LMFAOOO
Leo
Trotsky predicted absolutely everything. Even predicted what has not yet happened. Yep.....Trotsky was a prophet. That explains why his followers operate like a cult....
Don't understand why the speaker dismisses Reagan and Star Wars as playing a role in the collapse of the Soviet Union when he later cites the arms race with the US as one important cause of said collapse.
There was indeed sabotage in the USSR. A simple and vivid example is the old Brezhnev on TV. Power could well replace him with a handsome and young man, like Trudeau from Canada. But it didn’t do it on purpose, so that people would tell jokes about their country, etc. One can recall other examples.
A long, breathless, passionate love letter to Gorbachev. Gonna give this one the extreme privacy it deserves...
its been a long time but i have to say he wins. So much talk so little to offer
Exposé formidable. Merci pour la diffusion !
He sure loves Gorbachev
Gorboshev's crucial mistake was to give political freedom before economic freedom. The Soviet Union would not have disintegrated into several independent states if he had started to implement economic freedom and market economy first and when the people achieved financial prosperity the Soviet union would have not most likely disintegrated.
This is correct. The USSR gave the PRC the perfect example of what not to do.
TRUE. Deng Xiauping say: economic freedom first.
Let's see how long that 'economic freedom' lasts under totalitarian government....it will be interesting, and instructive. I'm putting my money on human nature and corruption. Economies thrive or fail largely to the degree force is used to distort the market. Perhaps the best experiment may be the rise of a more pervasive regulatory state (by sanctioned government force) in the United States. It may prove interesting.
Ludwig von Mises predicted it as well.
You should read the basic thrust of Antonio Cramsci, who unstead of using military force to overthrow democracies; he designed what the called "The long walk through the cultures". Meaning: Infiltrate education, politics, popular culture, etc. Thereby, in his words, having a compliant SLAVE population that wills it on themselves. THAT is the reason that they love Republican democracy, as you can infiltrate and take over the levers of power. J.Goebbels said that western democracies had no knowledge of this and no (ruthless) instinct to destroy them when they do see it. The only direct democracy, Switzerland, has mostly been protected from this. They can't con most of the population, who have DIRECT power. (Switzerland--700 yr old democracy. Direct is where it's at, in my estimation. Very Stable.)
@ Gary McClurg: Who is they? (Soviets? Communists? Marxists? Collectivists?) and do they really "love" republican democracy?
Yes, Titus, I'm obviously referring to these people/ideologues. When I say love 'republicanism', I mean like a hungry lion Loves an easy kill. Republican democracy is far tooo easy to co-opt. Look at the US Robber Barons, in the 1840's--1920's, and how the DSA (Democratic Socialists of Am.--have taken the levers of the US Dem. Party), and the Ortegas (past 30 years) in Nicaragua, Venezuela, etc. These have all infiltrated republican levers of power, with their own people contrary, destructive agendas. This is why I suggested that you look at Switzerland. By the way, they were almost a 500 yr old DIRECT democracy when they congradulated the US with recognition, the first country that recognized the US. They still have no problems with political takeover. THAT is worth paying attention to. I think that is also why the US "loves" democracy in many non traditional places, as it is easy for politics and Klepto-Huge Business
(though in an industrial and software/IoT oriented age where large concentrations of capital are needed for development, I don't know how you NOT concentrate capital, which is unelected power. A troubling Corundum.)
to infiltrate for their own aims, just like the communists using primarily Antinio Gramsci's 'March through the Culture & Institutions'. It may be impossible for man to solve this without succumbing to totalitarianism.
I wish you well Titus.
We all need an open mind to see ALL the dangers, not just the communists. Keep in mind, that much of what is being passed off as free enterprise now are just multi-national Corps. re-installing another brand of feudalism. We had real free enterprise prior to the Robber Barons. THAT Bunch never left. They are as dangerous to freedom as communists. I am not anti-capitalist, just anti-Croney Capitalist skewing the table in their favor. Look at history, Power always protects itself, and when institutionalized, always robs those it rules at some level. The communists DO have that understood. It's just that their solution is unhumane and alien to the human process of wanting to improve themselves/Each person's interests. They hate that thought.
Second law of thermodynamics in action! Great video. I will see it again and I will recommend it.
Could not be $80 oil followed by $7 oil? Nah, to simple.
I think the saddest part of the break-up of the soviet union (Other than the loss of life.) was the destruction of a national unit that could have prevented much headache. I think that the Western powers really short-changed the Eastern ones by not providing enough aid.
Bill’s best book is “Soviet Youth in Asia.”
When I listen to the western historians. especially american historians i am surprised how little they understand what happened in Stalin era