My Grandpa told me stories about Lithuanian SSR times in the mid 50-60's, when Kruschev was in power, he was in charge of a local collective farm near our village. One story he recalled will always stick with me. When Nikita found about corn he became obsesed about growing it in the USSR, and since Lithuania was primarily exporting food directly to Moscow they quickly received orders to produce and grow insane ammounts of corn. Given the fact that he had no clue what corn is (not really a stable crop for the region back then), they did not really know how to grow it and the seeds they were provided with were not a good fit for the soil and climate, the harvest were horrid. Food started to became a problem in the region, so to not have everyone starve or get shot by the newly renamed KGB for calling the decision by the supreme secretary stupid they began to plan 1-3 meter perimeters of corn around the totally not rye or wheat fields so when inspections happened they could not see that far back.
It's crazy how they could order something to be done with little to no knowledge of what it takes to get a specific crop grown in massive numbers without considering the cost of growing that specific crop in massive numbers.
The US can almost grow any crop on Earth. What lack in abundance is rice fields. Other than that, we have abundance in everything. Especially when it comes to corn. The entire Midwest is an endless cornfield. Fruits, nuts, vegetables, all are grown in California because of its perfect agricultural environment. Oranges, peaches, and other fruits are grown in Florida, New Jersey, and Georgia. So we can get everything all year round. The Soviet Union had that potential. However, the Soviet system was never sufficient enough to be on par with the US. A free market capitalist economy is the best way forward. A command economy is efficient to do just one thing at the cost of another thing.
@@black10872 That's ignorant nonsense. You're comparing 21st century technology and techniques (with their own set of ecological problems) with post-WW2 Soviet states - where just seeing a tractor was the equivalent of an automated robotic farm today. Further, for the US escapades from technologically similar periods look up the dust bowl, rampant alcoholism, prohibition, even the Great Depression... and that's all just before WW2 and the idea of ecology and the realization of what pesticides were doing to the biosphere. All provided by the "free market capitalist economy". In the modern era the same system has led to destruction of individual producers in favor of corporations, further ecological devastation and continuous boom-bust cycles of the global economy. FFS, modern corn is not even edible - it has to be industrially processed into starch and high fructose corn syrup before it can be consumed. Leading to a growing pandemic of a whole range of diseases - all a product of pursuit of profit. Just the other day, there was another Nestle scandal around them adding sugar into baby formula and infant food - but only in the poor countries where regulations are not as precise. But that's nothing compared to billions who will die before we manage to fix the effects of global warming alone. Also, free market my ass. There's no such thing as a deregulated or free market. Even completely illegal "products and services" are strictly regulated. There's only regulations favoring either the producers and consumers OR the middlemen and stock market parasites. "Freeing" the economy has inevitably always resulted in huge profits for the latter, the capitalists, while impoverishing or outright destroying the working class. And even if there were... look no further than the state of US economic and other conditions BEFORE there were modern regulations. From bank crises to adulterated and outright poisonous food and "medicines".
Another such affair worth mentioning is that of the Czechoslovak army general Jan Sejna, who was involved in a similar corruption scandal involving agricultural products. He defected to the US in order to avoid prosecution, the highest ranking official to escape from Cold War Czechoslovakia.
Before Uzbek cotton was Fish "Ocean" network scandal, before that was a Leningrad vegetable and fruit scandal, before that was Ryazan cattle scandal... the list goes on.
Your father must have been terrible to have lived with, always wondering if you were being used against him, must have been a very paranoid lunatic, sorry you were raised up by such evil.
@@youthoughtaboutit6946 Плановая экономика это тоже экономика. В ней есть свои законы, они не похожи на рыночные, но в плановой экономике тоже не бесконечные ресурсы.
That’s a joke about the journalist Gary Webb, who after reporting on the drug trades relations to the CIA was found with two gun shots to the back of the head and it was ruled a suicide
Just think how far this would have to go. Hundreds of thousands of tons of cotton were put on the books which didn't exist. But those amounts had to go somewhere, and industries which used that cotton knew that a good chunk was non-existent. So they were in on the ruse and had to lie about their outputs, too.
I think there was plenty of cotton, the DDR made their cars out of cotton, it was just of shitty quality. Luckily all they did was drain the Aral sea in the process, and made the world's youngest desert!
@smalltime0 They, Russian and later Soviet scientists said the Aral sea was just a waste because the water just evaporated, so why not divert it for extremely water intensive agriculture. And why line the ditches with clay or concrete, just a waste of resources, so what if 90% of the water diverted was sucked into the ground or evaporated.
@@300guy Ironically the salt being blown across the fields means the irrigated fields use even more water, why the hell anyone would go 'lets divert water flows and make a salt lake' is beyond me
@smalltime0 Short term Gains, within a 5 year plan were much more important than long-term consequences. Look at Krustchev's virgin lands initiative, definitely increased crop yields for a couple of years but without any infrastructure to support the new production a lot of it just went to waste.
I am a devoted student of Cold War history and would like to thank you for your competent coverage of that most interesting era. Thanks, and keep it up!
"Cotton picking" in Central Asian republics, just like potato picking in more temperate climate, was a mandatory thing that ALL high-school and university students participated in.
So Stalin personally just sat down and drew lines on a map to decide the borders of Muslim nations he knew nothing about, but tell me more about how the Soviet Union wasn't a colonial power.
You need to understand Russian mentality. They are a colonial power since the times of Ivan the Terrible and they started expanding eastward. And just because they had a revolution in 1917, it doesn't mean they got rid of their mentality. They were and still are a colonial power. The magnitude of that "power" is up to debate, but the will was and still is there.
In Douglas Porch's book "Wars of Empire", Russian imperialism is unique because it is intrinsically tied to national security. Them being the largest country on earth was not because they saw potential for riches in those places but rather saw potential for security in those places...
@@theotherohlourdespadua1131 it's an argument, I think at best it tells half the story. Every empire descended from Rome has justified its imperial actions through claims of self defense because that was what Rome did. Empires that weren't descended from Rome generally found other ways to justify their actions, like the Chinese and their "Mandate of Heaven". Brits sometimes argued that their empire was necessary to keep the Royal Navy preeminent, so that it could always defend the English Channel, which was the only way to keep the massive armies of Europe at bay. The US likewise defends its current informal empire as a means of "National Security". Even the Crusades were pitched as "Defensive" actions. So again, I'm not saying that Russia didn't face a unique set of circumstances, but I question if it was truly as unique as that, when other empires made similar claims.
@user-dl3nc4jx7k Every region in the Eurasian landmass has ancient civilizations and old cities. Nothing exceptional about Uzbekistan in that regards.
@@TheColdWarTV didn't anyone who watches johnny Harris if they saw a video this week about uzebeckisan? I could have swore he put out a video on that country and especially about it's corrupt government, specifically the presidents daughter who was taking tens of millions in bribes and literally torturing those who didn't pay up. crazy story
The "Uzbek affair" was indeed a big scandal but scandals of this type were common in the years 1978-1983. Things were on the books but not in reality and things in reality "went left" and disappeared somewhere. 20%-50% of every item disappeared before it went on the shelf and everyone stood in line for hours despite their city, town or Kolhoz being "supplied according to plan". Nobody gave a damn unless it involved military production.
(1:03) The very first from left is Heydar Aliyev, the current Azeri president's father. Great video as always! Please make another about Azerbaijani SSR: - The only profitable Soviet republic, except Russian Federation. - Muslim, was tolerant towards Christians and Jews. Influenced by both Turkic and Persian ties. - Reach of natural resources, its oilfields were the Hitler's major objective in Caucasus.
Just another spectacular video guys, absolutely love your work - this story is just a textbook example of what makes this channel special, intriguing, rarely explored elsewhere, and delivered brilliantly. Keep up the brilliant work guys 😊😊😊
@@anjetto1 do you even know why corporations exist? Because of the state. I mean, you seriously believe that Pepsi Co, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple and Raytheon became so big solely because of better business plans and capitalism? But then again statists will always glaze the state with their entire existence before realising too late how much damage the state does to an average person
Let’s not forget how Uzbek government got the cotton in the first place. According to some investigations the Uzbek authorities went to schools and got people out of their jobs in some days just to go and harvest cotton with zero pay, in other words , forced labor, so even when the Uzbek government was having good quotas we must bear in mind that those come up with force labor in cotton fields and yes I know how uncanny that sounds. To this day the Uzbek government exploits cotton using very weird methods. And although the Uzbek government claims they have stopped doing that practice…who’s to say that regional elites are not still forcing their citizens for that
Reminds me of 2 phrases my grandma told me (she lived 50 years under soviet occupation) "We have everything, but not for everyone." "Everyone is equal, but some are more equal."
Yep. One of the only plus of communism. My mentaly impaired uncle worked over 30 years and got a retirement pension with benefits etc. They used to task him with - " guard that hammer " and he did for a whole shift and full pay
@@kalomboC yeah , they made fun of him. Of course not the whole month's pay. I think he worked a warehouse , nothing complicated. Today he would probably on disability. Dont know if this was a + for communism or not if you look at productivity of such a person , but he got a normal pay probably. But would you hire him in private buisness ? No way
I had a czech friend who managed a cold storage warehouse for imported fruit and vegetables Because of mandatory quotas they ended up with Dumped inferior products that filled up thier space with stuff like light bulbs that just fell out of the socket or shoes that the soles just fell off within a couple steps , and they had to account all this stuff every month on penalty of being charged for theft of state property , he escaped eventually (whole nuther story)
BTW, currently the Taliban is building the new, river sized Qosh Tepa Canal to irrigate northern Afghanistan. The canal is unlined and diverts water from the Amu Darya river. PS -Amu river waters four ex-USSR republics: Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan that are downstream of Afghanistan. Water stress will cause future issues.
Thank you for another educational episode. I did know Uzbekistan became the cotton mill of the USSR before its collapse, but I don't think I knew much, if anything, about this specific incident. I look forward to future videos on the central Asian republics! God be with you out there, everybody. ✝️ :)
Completely uncomparable: Some bubbles are counted yes, but they are counted consistently and corruption itself is in fact being rooted out. All that does is a set inflation that has side effects and can be contained locally. Also it provides some economic activity even if the intent is corrupt to begin with. The 'real estate bubble' for example has ensured people can actually afford to live in and near cities. It eliminates the risk from the property development market. I've sat in on a pretty corrupt land deal in China and I own an appartment block in a small village. Wait Velsen, didn't you just say corruption in China isn't comparable? That's pretty corrupt! Well yes, the building is mostly derelict. It's worth 1 rmb and can't ever be rented out again. It's economically done but who wants to shell out for demolion? Aint even builders left to knock it down: half the village is a ruin, everybody moved to the city. But we needed my grandmother-in-law to sell it to someone so she could free a slot in the maximum amount of property she can legally own; She's reliable and you can inherit above your legal limit. Reliable, unlike a drunken uncle they previously used as a strawman who simply seized their 'his' appartment. We basically explained that nobody would buy it and surely he would help lovely grandma? Plus do you mind if we store these bottles of excellent liquor in your office fridge while we go shopping? By the by, if anything is wrong, just seize the property off me, I don't mind and you'll look good for getting free assets for the local government. With his ass covered and knowing there'd be no trace of the payment, clerk happily signed off on it. That's how I bought a 1 RMB building off an old lady for 190K RMB (that I then write off as a foreign investment loss on my taxes AND I can prove it bought something and was a loss, so that's fully legal) and the same week my grandmother in law bought property for 190K rmb in a place which I know for a fact would become Guangzhou's new expansion. Fast forward six years to now, and it is the next big thing, they'll talk your ears off at the Museum of Urban Planning. The family made a pile of money and pay us back at a rate of € 1500 per family visit so it stays within cash allowance and reporting ranges. Corrupt? Totally. Harmful to society? Naah. It basically ensured a significant private investment into a government project that otherwise wouldn't be done.
@@nvelsen1975 corruption doesn’t only mean bribery and acceptance of bribes which distort fair trade and assessment of quality, it also meant corruption of system, including government administration, which leads to diminishing returns for society and ultimatums leading to need for more corruption such as bribery, in order to keep the leapfrog the broken system.
1) Love your channel. You have some amazing topics covered. 2) This is an especially fantastic and in-depth topic. The obscurity of this to Western audiences goes without saying. I’m sure former USSR citizens would also find it obscure, though unfortunately familiar under the rubric of pervasive corruption. Keep up the great work!
A fascinating and sad (for an armchair communist) episode. The destruction of the Aral Sea is a disaster by itself. It's worth noting that such unrealistic agriculture is not limited to communist countries. Almonds and even rice(!) are still grown in California, USA (for now), and Texas, USA has just been obliged to end its 20+ year experiment growing thirsty sugar cane despite having only half the required rainfall and trying to make up the difference from the Rio Grande. I suppose that's what happens whenever the primary concern is numbers on paper, and ecology is ignored.
Well, I don't know how much governing Brezhnev was actually doing in his last several years. He wanted to give the title Hero of the Soviet Union to a TV actor that portrayed a fictional WW2 spy.
I thought the Aral Sea lost water because Badlandschugs drank the water to spread freedom and democracy in the region. The history TH-camr DocuDubery told me that.
The Derek Peterson you cited is not Derek Peterson the professor from the University of Michigan. The 2013 Master’s thesis you cite belongs to a different person, as Professor Derek Peterson has a PhD from the University of Minnesota from 2000.
Corruption and Soviet Union have the same definition but are just two different ways of saying the same thing. Holds true today with nearly all former USSR nations.
There's a great book - Berezovsky Time by Petr Aven. I can't read Russian, but I got an electronic copy and ran it through Google translate and it worked pretty well. If you want an idea of how corrupt the USSR was, man, this book is extremely revealing. Berezovksy and Aven were part of an academic institute, and Berezovsky sold academic theses to industry executives who thereby got to add academic achievements to their CV. Their biggest client was AvtoVAZ - they'd get free autoparts which they would sell. All this happening in the last decade or so of the USSR. Just corrupt as hell.
СССР разрушили не идеалисты ради свободы. Его разрушили преступники, ради бесконтрольного воровства, ради возможности легализации преступных доходов под видом бизнеса, ради возможности не скрывать иностранные предметы роскоши, ради возможности уехать с украденным за границу.
@@ФёдорМартыненко-ш1з No one said they were idealists. But the idealism of the Soviet Union lasted only through the first generation and those who had direct experience with WWII. The trouble with communism as a system is that it's not incentive-compatible. It needs almost everyone to be somewhat idealistic to work because it goes against human nature and human weaknesses. By the time you get to the 1970s, large numbers of people were either covertly or openly corrupt and it went all the way to the top - like Brezhnev tolerating the open corruption of the Muslim SSRs. Well designed economic systems must be robust to human nature, the fact people are largely self-interested, at least on the scale of national economies.
@@cv990a4 Есть большая разница между тем, чтобы дать людям возможность обогащаться с помощью труда и обогащаться с помощью воровства. Примером для молодого поколения должны быть честные, трудолюбивые, изобретательные люди, а не бандиты и мошенники. В 90-е годы каждый школьный хулиган хвалился своими связями с настоящими бандитами. Они держали в страхе каждый город, им завидовали, стремились подражать (уголовный жаргон, татуировки, спортивная одежда, в которой удобно драться и бегать). С горькой усмешкой люди вспоминали слова про частную инициативу, собственность, бизнес, права человека - самыми богатыми людьми стали преступники. Честность стала уделом слабых, неудачников. Каждый бизнесмен либо становился жертвой преступников либо сам становился преступником. Либо ты убьешь конкурентов (и компаньонов) либо тебя убьют конкуренты (и компаньоны). Крах СССР был выгоден не тем, кто хочет честно трудиться, а тем, кто украл миллиарды.
Did some forget to switch off the piano loop after the intro ? What sort of emotional response are they seeking from me - you must remember in the Soviet Union emotion was forbidden ;)
Really great channel. I kinda miss the USSR. Thats a really stupid statement i realize but as a kid there was this feeling of being like the galactic republic vs. the empire. It was scary but cool as a kid.
My dad worked in the gold mining industry in Uzbekistan. I visited and traveled all around in 2004 and there were so many huge Karimov billboards everywhere. There was so much corruption , but saw so many cool towns. But, remember walking around Zarafshan and people stopping me and talking to me because they knew my Dad ran the gold mine. But the officials where so corrupt and my Dad had so many issues with government officials.
"Corruption" is what they called stealing from the poor in communist states. In capitalist states they simply called it "lobbying", "electoral contribution", "consumption tax", or simply "law".
Uzbek cotton was crucial to the USSR for more than just clothes and trade. They used it to make nitrocellulose, aka, gun cotton. It's used to fire artillery shells, among other military uses. They made MASSIVE amounts of it to align with their military doctrine, which called for large massed artillery. A shortage could have been a real disaster for them.
2:01 Early history & Uzebek contribution to USSR economy (Cotton) 5:00 Post-Stalin -Increased emphasis & subsequent reliance on cotton under Khrushchev & Sharaf Rashidov -'Stability of cadres' under Brezhnev 17:47 Andropov'sccrackdown on corruption & aftermath
i doubt things were worse in Usbek SSR then in others. In fact it seems that they do indeed delivered most of the claimed cotton production. Saddest in all this is that all middle asian soviet republics turned into dictatorships that are simoultanously horrible and ridiculous, Borat style.
The central Asian republics were dictatorships since their establishment during the soviet era and their situation now is just a consequence of what happened back then, in a way central Asia never really changed.
@@krzysztofkolodziejczyk4335 No, not really. "Middle Asia" is a term that was invented during the colonial expansion by Russia. It is best not to be used to avoid ambiguity and colonial connotations.
Cotten is a terrible fabric for people who live as far north as they do in that part of the world. It gets wet, and you run the risk of hypothermia. Never mind that farming is very, very labor-intensive and input-intensive. The corruption part of this little bit of Soviet History is minor Compared to the destruction of the Arial and a few rivers. As usual, what sounds good on paper or in Theory is more damaging than some guys just scamming a few rubles off the top; it's pretty much what the mafia does. The whole thing from the start was a criminal and murderous enterprise, Yet people to this day think it was a wonderful thing the Soviet Union- It was hell on earth, and the stealing here with cotton was really pretty tame by Soviet Communist standards. It also shows how really stupid they all were; they could have traded for cotton, got a better product, and had more economic benefits, too. Oh wait if the did that then gee's they would not be pure in their own minds. Nope they just screwed themselves right into the collapse, no matter the same bunch is doing it again in the present day. The Russians and the other people in that part of the world can't catch a break.
Uzbekistan is rather dry (except in the mountainous areas) and has a sufficiently warm climate. Being north, or growing the plant in general, was never the problem. The need for irrigation in and due to the arid environment, was. And while life in the Soviet Union was certainly not "wonderful", "hell on earth" is really just unnecessarily overblown and unrealistic.
Another big Soviet scandal of the early 80s was the Boris the Gypsy scandal, which involved Brezhnev's daughter Galina and a diamond smuggling ring. This scandal rocked the Kremlin to its foundations and may have caused the death of Mikhail Suslov. You should do a video on that.
More accurate translation of druzjba narodov will be "friendship of nationalities", in Russia "narod" means people yes, but in this context it implies "friendship of peoples (of particular nations)".
1. I’m a farmer who currently grows 4 crops cotton peanuts soybeans and corn. 2. Cotton uses the least amount of water of the 4. 3. Cotton doesn’t destroy the soil. It’s been grown in the same fields for years in end without being rotated out although now it usually is rotated regularly. 4. The current state of the Aral Sea was because of typical Soviet disregard and mismanagement. You stated yourself 90% of the water was lost before it got to the field. Whoever your agronomist is I recommend getting a new one.
To David and the entire Cold War crew, Please let me know once you've made videos on these following topics: - Argentina during the rule of Juan Peron (and how his political and economic legacies still affect Argentina to this day) - Thailand's on-and-off military governments and lese-majeste laws (which still occur even after the end of the Cold War) - Gastarbeiters (foreign migrant workers) in both West and East Germany - Bantustans (black homelands) in Apartheid-era South Africa - The history of Quebec's Quiet Revolution (and how it led to the secularisation of Quebec's society and government) - The history of Macau during the Cold War and how it contrasts with Hong Kong's Cold War history Thank you very much and please accept my requests.
Interesting to hear about. What causes this type of corruption to prop up in Russia/USSR anyway? The USSR and modern Russian state have two different systems of government and economics but there seems to be many parallels between the corruption of the regional communist parties then and the corruption of the oligarches today.
Hi, this is an absolutely huge topic but I can try to give a reasonably concise answer (for context I'm the writer of this video and of the Soviet-themed videos on this channel). In effect, when Soviet states became independent during/after the collapse of the USSR they tried to transition from state-controlled, socialist economies to free market ones through various types of privatisation processes. However, there were broadly two issues with this. First, most ordinary Soviet citizens had never grown up in a free market economy, so were not really familiar with the concept of private property or ownership and therefore the potential benefits of them. Two, there was an assumption that creating a class of individuals with private property would encourage the development of institutions to protect property rights, for example the rule of law and a more representative political system. In reality though, these problems meant that well-connected and knowledgeable officials who controlled state-owned assets basically took advantage of the privatisation process and hoarded massive wealth for themselves (hence the oligarchs). Thus, political institutions in these countries have largely ended up protecting these individuals as they have the wealth and therefore the power, excluding those who own very little. Ukraine is a really good example of this - with the exception of Zelensky's party, pretty much every political party in the Ukrainian system remains funded or led by an oligarch and serves to advance their interests. Now, why is this corruption so difficult to get rid of? Well, in part its because of what I mentioned above (wealth = power), but its also because of how the Soviet economy operated. Basically, corruption and informality were commonplace as people sought access to goods that the inefficient Soviet economy could not provide. As such, these informal methods of economics have become pretty normalised in most post-Soviet countries and are just the standard way of doing business (with some exceptions). It is also worth noting the divergent paths of post-communist countries in Eastern Europe who were NOT in the USSR (for example, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria etc.). Their political systems were largely based on parliamentary systems due to the legacy of the interwar period, and as such their privatisation processes ended up being much more representative of the population as a whole compared to post-Soviet countries where their systems were largely presidential and thus more prone to power concentration. In Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania - which were in the USSR but managed to successfully get rid of these legacies - their success was basically because they were so desperate to get rid of any and all legacies of Soviet rule that the entire population was far more unified in doing whatever it took to do so. In Russia, Ukraine, etc., there was significant opposition to the economic transition amid the short-term suffering caused by privatisation and price liberalisation, which played into the oligarchs' hands to help them seize control of the political system. Sorry, I said this answer would be concise but its really quite hard to summarise...hope this helped though!
@@omnidroid70 Thank you very much. I really appreciate the detailed response. That's some interesting development throughout the decades. Are there any books you would recommend for some deep diving into the failures and successes of Russian/Soviet economics? Cheers.
@@legionofyuri the most accessible/non-academic book I could recommend would be Chris Miller's Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia, but if you're looking for something a bit more theoretical Henry Hale's Patronal Politics: Eurasian Regime Dynamics in Comparative Perspective is an excellent look at the post-Soviet space more broadly
isn't "the Great Patriotic War' the russian name for WWII? Is there a reason you used that name instead of World War II, the more widely known term outside of the former soviet states?
The reason is simple. The WW2 has been started by nacional socialistic Germany together with international socialistic Russia + colonies known as USSR. Hitler.and Stalin attacked Poland together and later wehrmacht and red army have common victory parade in Brest. The Great patriotic war begins in 1941, when former nazi ally attacked russia and everybody pretend, that there is no history before 1941. This is the reason.
Because the video is about the Soviet Union so it makes sense in that context? And i don't think only Russians called it that but all or most of the Soviet Union did as well.
It was always a fairy tale. Nomenclatura was the ruling class, and it wasn't going anywhere. As a matter of fact, they reinvented themselves as the masters of the new Russia.
It is not only scandal. Before cotton scandal USSR forced uzbek nation to harvest millions tons of fish in Aral Sea impulsively. That is what caused aral sea dry out
![[MV] A leap of faith...ความเชื่อใจครั้งสุดท้าย (From "Petrichor the series")](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/U1piZH2CNXA/mqdefault.jpg)
My Grandpa told me stories about Lithuanian SSR times in the mid 50-60's, when Kruschev was in power, he was in charge of a local collective farm near our village. One story he recalled will always stick with me.
When Nikita found about corn he became obsesed about growing it in the USSR, and since Lithuania was primarily exporting food directly to Moscow they quickly received orders to produce and grow insane ammounts of corn. Given the fact that he had no clue what corn is (not really a stable crop for the region back then), they did not really know how to grow it and the seeds they were provided with were not a good fit for the soil and climate, the harvest were horrid. Food started to became a problem in the region, so to not have everyone starve or get shot by the newly renamed KGB for calling the decision by the supreme secretary stupid they began to plan 1-3 meter perimeters of corn around the totally not rye or wheat fields so when inspections happened they could not see that far back.
Arbitrary decision making is a commonly phenomena in communism countries.
What a testimony, thanks for sharing.
It's crazy how they could order something to be done with little to no knowledge of what it takes to get a specific crop grown in massive numbers without considering the cost of growing that specific crop in massive numbers.
The US can almost grow any crop on Earth. What lack in abundance is rice fields. Other than that, we have abundance in everything. Especially when it comes to corn. The entire Midwest is an endless cornfield. Fruits, nuts, vegetables, all are grown in California because of its perfect agricultural environment. Oranges, peaches, and other fruits are grown in Florida, New Jersey, and Georgia. So we can get everything all year round. The Soviet Union had that potential. However, the Soviet system was never sufficient enough to be on par with the US. A free market capitalist economy is the best way forward. A command economy is efficient to do just one thing at the cost of another thing.
@@black10872 That's ignorant nonsense. You're comparing 21st century technology and techniques (with their own set of ecological problems) with post-WW2 Soviet states - where just seeing a tractor was the equivalent of an automated robotic farm today.
Further, for the US escapades from technologically similar periods look up the dust bowl, rampant alcoholism, prohibition, even the Great Depression... and that's all just before WW2 and the idea of ecology and the realization of what pesticides were doing to the biosphere. All provided by the "free market capitalist economy".
In the modern era the same system has led to destruction of individual producers in favor of corporations, further ecological devastation and continuous boom-bust cycles of the global economy. FFS, modern corn is not even edible - it has to be industrially processed into starch and high fructose corn syrup before it can be consumed.
Leading to a growing pandemic of a whole range of diseases - all a product of pursuit of profit. Just the other day, there was another Nestle scandal around them adding sugar into baby formula and infant food - but only in the poor countries where regulations are not as precise.
But that's nothing compared to billions who will die before we manage to fix the effects of global warming alone.
Also, free market my ass. There's no such thing as a deregulated or free market. Even completely illegal "products and services" are strictly regulated.
There's only regulations favoring either the producers and consumers OR the middlemen and stock market parasites.
"Freeing" the economy has inevitably always resulted in huge profits for the latter, the capitalists, while impoverishing or outright destroying the working class.
And even if there were... look no further than the state of US economic and other conditions BEFORE there were modern regulations.
From bank crises to adulterated and outright poisonous food and "medicines".
“Corruption Scandal That Shook the USSR”
Do you have the slightest idea how little that narrows it down?
Lobby congras with money is normal 😂
Tru.
"Corruption Scandal That Shook the USSR [10 hours, part 1/387]"
What are a few other notable examples?
@@Cs13762I know, not wrong, but please elaborate
Another such affair worth mentioning is that of the Czechoslovak army general Jan Sejna, who was involved in a similar corruption scandal involving agricultural products. He defected to the US in order to avoid prosecution, the highest ranking official to escape from Cold War Czechoslovakia.
Obviously a hero of freedom™️ who escaped the clutches of Godless Communism™️😉
I am from Uzbekistan, and to this day in Uzbekistan no one really talks about these events. Thank you for the informative video.
So Soviet central government sen 4 billion To buy cotton that doesn't exist 😂
Before Uzbek cotton was Fish "Ocean" network scandal, before that was a Leningrad vegetable and fruit scandal, before that was Ryazan cattle scandal... the list goes on.
Turkmenistan oil scandal now 2024
I’d like a video on that!
My father, as a KGB officer with a degree in economics, took part in the investigation of this corruption case.
Hate to brake it to you, your father was the corrupt person.
You cannot be a good person and be member of the most evil regime of all time.
i read that they used Satellites to spy on the cotton fields to see if the paper worked matched the output.
Out of curiosity, what did an economics degree in the USSR generally entail to earn?
Your father must have been terrible to have lived with, always wondering if you were being used against him, must have been a very paranoid lunatic, sorry you were raised up by such evil.
@@youthoughtaboutit6946 Плановая экономика это тоже экономика. В ней есть свои законы, они не похожи на рыночные, но в плановой экономике тоже не бесконечные ресурсы.
Boris Yeltsin criticizing corruption is, ironic.
Boris is the most corrupted leader, to the point of being a traitor.
Everyone is young once and full of idealism.
"It should have been me! Not them!"
Maybe he took inspiration from what he saw in Uzbekistan
Of course, he’s Russia. ‘Do as I say, not as I do’.
"Stabbed himself seven times in the chest"
Is this the origin of the common Russian meme "Suicide. Two shots to the back of the head."
That one’s a global meme/joke.
Russian wikipedia says 17 times...
Edit: Might be all together though
Those could be quotes from Hillary Clinton
That’s a joke about the journalist Gary Webb, who after reporting on the drug trades relations to the CIA was found with two gun shots to the back of the head and it was ruled a suicide
@@erc9468 they call that arkanside
Just think how far this would have to go. Hundreds of thousands of tons of cotton were put on the books which didn't exist. But those amounts had to go somewhere, and industries which used that cotton knew that a good chunk was non-existent. So they were in on the ruse and had to lie about their outputs, too.
I think there was plenty of cotton, the DDR made their cars out of cotton, it was just of shitty quality.
Luckily all they did was drain the Aral sea in the process, and made the world's youngest desert!
There was plenty of roubles to throw up and down the line to not rock the boat, you saw that table just piled with them.
@smalltime0 They, Russian and later Soviet scientists said the Aral sea was just a waste because the water just evaporated, so why not divert it for extremely water intensive agriculture. And why line the ditches with clay or concrete, just a waste of resources, so what if 90% of the water diverted was sucked into the ground or evaporated.
@@300guy Ironically the salt being blown across the fields means the irrigated fields use even more water, why the hell anyone would go 'lets divert water flows and make a salt lake' is beyond me
@smalltime0 Short term Gains, within a 5 year plan were much more important than long-term consequences. Look at Krustchev's virgin lands initiative, definitely increased crop yields for a couple of years but without any infrastructure to support the new production a lot of it just went to waste.
I am a devoted student of Cold War history and would like to thank you for your competent coverage of that most interesting era. Thanks, and keep it up!
"Cotton picking" in Central Asian republics, just like potato picking in more temperate climate, was a mandatory thing that ALL high-school and university students participated in.
So Stalin personally just sat down and drew lines on a map to decide the borders of Muslim nations he knew nothing about, but tell me more about how the Soviet Union wasn't a colonial power.
You need to understand Russian mentality. They are a colonial power since the times of Ivan the Terrible and they started expanding eastward. And just because they had a revolution in 1917, it doesn't mean they got rid of their mentality. They were and still are a colonial power. The magnitude of that "power" is up to debate, but the will was and still is there.
In Douglas Porch's book "Wars of Empire", Russian imperialism is unique because it is intrinsically tied to national security. Them being the largest country on earth was not because they saw potential for riches in those places but rather saw potential for security in those places...
@@theotherohlourdespadua1131 it's an argument, I think at best it tells half the story.
Every empire descended from Rome has justified its imperial actions through claims of self defense because that was what Rome did. Empires that weren't descended from Rome generally found other ways to justify their actions, like the Chinese and their "Mandate of Heaven".
Brits sometimes argued that their empire was necessary to keep the Royal Navy preeminent, so that it could always defend the English Channel, which was the only way to keep the massive armies of Europe at bay. The US likewise defends its current informal empire as a means of "National Security". Even the Crusades were pitched as "Defensive" actions.
So again, I'm not saying that Russia didn't face a unique set of circumstances, but I question if it was truly as unique as that, when other empires made similar claims.
He did, he also set up an extremely privileged regime for Georgian SSR while deporting ethnic "minorities" from it's borders.
They weren't "nations" how you think they were
The most amazing thing in this video for me is the "upt to 90% Water loss" in the canal. What a waste :(
The mistake was using a canal instead of a pipe
Even as an American born in '99, I heard about this one. Probably the only thing out of Uzbekistan that anyone outside of it even knows about
actually, this is an ancient land of civilizations, some cities there are several thousand years old
@user-dl3nc4jx7k Every region in the Eurasian landmass has ancient civilizations and old cities. Nothing exceptional about Uzbekistan in that regards.
@@макслюлюкинsure but the nation state known as Uzbekistan, is relatively new
Borat's most hated country
Corruption?
That's a paddlin
Ah another Jingles man
You better believe that's a paddlin'...
@@TheColdWarTV didn't anyone who watches johnny Harris if they saw a video this week about uzebeckisan? I could have swore he put out a video on that country and especially about it's corrupt government, specifically the presidents daughter who was taking tens of millions in bribes and literally torturing those who didn't pay up. crazy story
Stabbin*
The "Uzbek affair" was indeed a big scandal but scandals of this type were common in the years 1978-1983. Things were on the books but not in reality and things in reality "went left" and disappeared somewhere. 20%-50% of every item disappeared before it went on the shelf and everyone stood in line for hours despite their city, town or Kolhoz being "supplied according to plan".
Nobody gave a damn unless it involved military production.
(1:03) The very first from left is Heydar Aliyev, the current Azeri president's father.
Great video as always! Please make another about Azerbaijani SSR:
- The only profitable Soviet republic, except Russian Federation.
- Muslim, was tolerant towards Christians and Jews. Influenced by both Turkic and Persian ties.
- Reach of natural resources, its oilfields were the Hitler's major objective in Caucasus.
I wish more people knew how truly evil Brezhnev really was.
Just another spectacular video guys, absolutely love your work - this story is just a textbook example of what makes this channel special, intriguing, rarely explored elsewhere, and delivered brilliantly.
Keep up the brilliant work guys 😊😊😊
"As seemingly harmless as cotton"
I think the script writers forgot about something there lmfao
Cotton IS harmless.
Something like "you can totally enslave people even without communism, and indeed in a capitalist economy"
@@anzaca1the cotton industry however, not so much
Believe it or not, responsible for 53% of violent crime in America
This kind of goes into the whole object/tool vs potential uses debate.
You're pretty naive if you think that Soviet people didn't know the scale of this while it was going on. They were simply powerless to discuss it.
Love these in-depth looks into the workings of the Soviet Union. 👍
You realize the entire operation was a soup sandwich.
great episode like always
Another reason not to allow big government to operate without checks.
Yes. Privatize everything. No government. Corporate control of everything
_Nothing_ should operate without checks. Not businesses, not governments, nothing.
@@anjetto1 do you even know why corporations exist? Because of the state. I mean, you seriously believe that Pepsi Co, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple and Raytheon became so big solely because of better business plans and capitalism?
But then again statists will always glaze the state with their entire existence before realising too late how much damage the state does to an average person
Let’s not forget how Uzbek government got the cotton in the first place. According to some investigations the Uzbek authorities went to schools and got people out of their jobs in some days just to go and harvest cotton with zero pay, in other words , forced labor, so even when the Uzbek government was having good quotas we must bear in mind that those come up with force labor in cotton fields and yes I know how uncanny that sounds. To this day the Uzbek government exploits cotton using very weird methods. And although the Uzbek government claims they have stopped doing that practice…who’s to say that regional elites are not still forcing their citizens for that
Независимость республик СССР это не свобода народов. Это независимость местных элит, которые могут управлять своими народами без вмешательства Москвы.
As a Hungarian I've lived my young life behind the iron curtain - I've never heard of this thing...
Reminds me of 2 phrases my grandma told me (she lived 50 years under soviet occupation)
"We have everything, but not for everyone."
"Everyone is equal, but some are more equal."
So Russia Empire Doesn't count
Is sosialis you have money but don't have Product
In capitalis you have many tipe of Product But don't have money
Another fine episode, sir. Love these saturday mornings
We shall pretend to work, so they can pretend to pay us...
Yep. One of the only plus of communism. My mentaly impaired uncle worked over 30 years and got a retirement pension with benefits etc. They used to task him with - " guard that hammer " and he did for a whole shift and full pay
@@toudi_p did he literally guard a hammer 🤨😳
@@kalomboC yeah , they made fun of him. Of course not the whole month's pay. I think he worked a warehouse , nothing complicated. Today he would probably on disability. Dont know if this was a + for communism or not if you look at productivity of such a person , but he got a normal pay probably. But would you hire him in private buisness ? No way
Please more videos on soviet corruption
Green politics in western countries
Pick any country and you'll see a similar picture. In some, it involves invasion of other countries.
Lobbying in usa Aso
When you put all of this on top of the costs of Chernobyl and Afghanistan it amazes me that the USSR lasted as long as it did.
Tyranny to compensate for the economic limitations exposed by the US's military budget.
USA Afganistan 2.0 baby
I had a czech friend who managed a cold storage warehouse for imported fruit and vegetables
Because of mandatory quotas they ended up with
Dumped inferior products that filled up thier space with stuff like light bulbs that just fell out of the socket or shoes that the soles just fell off within a couple steps , and they had to account all this stuff every month on penalty of being charged for theft of state property , he escaped eventually (whole nuther story)
Great episode!
BTW, currently the Taliban is building the new, river sized Qosh Tepa Canal to irrigate northern Afghanistan. The canal is unlined and diverts water from the Amu Darya river.
PS -Amu river waters four ex-USSR republics: Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan that are downstream of Afghanistan. Water stress will cause future issues.
I'd no idea this was happening and really hope that the leaders of those countries are having serious discussions regarding this.
All the more reason for Kazakhstan to dam the western half of the Aral Sea as well.
@@trizvanov just use war
"how could a crop as seemingly harmless as cotton inflict so much damage" man where have I seen this one
Hell yeah, ColdWar Saturday morning . These are like my cartoons.
Thank you for another educational episode. I did know Uzbekistan became the cotton mill of the USSR before its collapse, but I don't think I knew much, if anything, about this specific incident. I look forward to future videos on the central Asian republics!
God be with you out there, everybody. ✝️ :)
Because the Soviet Union's economy was sanctioned by the United States, it was difficult to import.
Sounds like 21st CCP China’s various provinces but with land sales and real estate, with “forever growing”GDP growth targets.
USA: Hold my beer
as bad as the USSR corruption was it is not nearly the absolute scale of modern China
USA more debt
Completely uncomparable: Some bubbles are counted yes, but they are counted consistently and corruption itself is in fact being rooted out. All that does is a set inflation that has side effects and can be contained locally.
Also it provides some economic activity even if the intent is corrupt to begin with. The 'real estate bubble' for example has ensured people can actually afford to live in and near cities. It eliminates the risk from the property development market.
I've sat in on a pretty corrupt land deal in China and I own an appartment block in a small village. Wait Velsen, didn't you just say corruption in China isn't comparable? That's pretty corrupt!
Well yes, the building is mostly derelict. It's worth 1 rmb and can't ever be rented out again. It's economically done but who wants to shell out for demolion? Aint even builders left to knock it down: half the village is a ruin, everybody moved to the city.
But we needed my grandmother-in-law to sell it to someone so she could free a slot in the maximum amount of property she can legally own; She's reliable and you can inherit above your legal limit. Reliable, unlike a drunken uncle they previously used as a strawman who simply seized their 'his' appartment.
We basically explained that nobody would buy it and surely he would help lovely grandma? Plus do you mind if we store these bottles of excellent liquor in your office fridge while we go shopping? By the by, if anything is wrong, just seize the property off me, I don't mind and you'll look good for getting free assets for the local government.
With his ass covered and knowing there'd be no trace of the payment, clerk happily signed off on it.
That's how I bought a 1 RMB building off an old lady for 190K RMB (that I then write off as a foreign investment loss on my taxes AND I can prove it bought something and was a loss, so that's fully legal) and the same week my grandmother in law bought property for 190K rmb in a place which I know for a fact would become Guangzhou's new expansion. Fast forward six years to now, and it is the next big thing, they'll talk your ears off at the Museum of Urban Planning. The family made a pile of money and pay us back at a rate of € 1500 per family visit so it stays within cash allowance and reporting ranges.
Corrupt? Totally.
Harmful to society? Naah. It basically ensured a significant private investment into a government project that otherwise wouldn't be done.
@@nvelsen1975 corruption doesn’t only mean bribery and acceptance of bribes which distort fair trade and assessment of quality, it also meant corruption of system, including government administration, which leads to diminishing returns for society and ultimatums leading to need for more corruption such as bribery, in order to keep the leapfrog the broken system.
Corruption had been a key issue in the Soviet Union dating back to the Russian Civil War and in many instances back to WWI
1) Love your channel. You have some amazing topics covered.
2) This is an especially fantastic and in-depth topic. The obscurity of this to Western audiences goes without saying. I’m sure former USSR citizens would also find it obscure, though unfortunately familiar under the rubric of pervasive corruption.
Keep up the great work!
Borat was right about Uzbekistan but... this was more nuanced than ever thought.
I thought Borat was from Kazakhstan?
@@rooneytutoring Yeah he was.
Yes, and one of the Borat jokes is always to denigrate Uzbekistan
@@ftwcrazyman thx for the clarification.
@@rooneytutoring we all know what Kazakhstan's number one problem is however the lesser known number two is Uzbekistan.
So basically nothing has changed in the former USSR countries until this day .... corruption is the name of the game...
A fascinating and sad (for an armchair communist) episode. The destruction of the Aral Sea is a disaster by itself. It's worth noting that such unrealistic agriculture is not limited to communist countries. Almonds and even rice(!) are still grown in California, USA (for now), and Texas, USA has just been obliged to end its 20+ year experiment growing thirsty sugar cane despite having only half the required rainfall and trying to make up the difference from the Rio Grande. I suppose that's what happens whenever the primary concern is numbers on paper, and ecology is ignored.
Well, I don't know how much governing Brezhnev was actually doing in his last several years. He wanted to give the title Hero of the Soviet Union to a TV actor that portrayed a fictional WW2 spy.
Votka overdose :)
"Uzbeks have been drinking my battery fluid!"
"Uzbeks... the weak link in the great chain of socialism."
I thought the Aral Sea lost water because Badlandschugs drank the water to spread freedom and democracy in the region. The history TH-camr DocuDubery told me that.
Thanks!
Thank YOU!
Appreciate this learning!!
Thank you for this.
It’s really cool to learn something new about the Cold War era, the further away we get from those years the wilder it seems
Stabbed himself 7x in the heart...I was like wtf😮, then he said yeah the kgb did it😅
I would love to visit Tashkent, fergana valley and see the silk road
Once again comrade you have over produced the goals of the 5 year plan.
The Derek Peterson you cited is not Derek Peterson the professor from the University of Michigan. The 2013 Master’s thesis you cite belongs to a different person, as Professor Derek Peterson has a PhD from the University of Minnesota from 2000.
Corruption and Soviet Union have the same definition but are just two different ways of saying the same thing. Holds true today with nearly all former USSR nations.
There's a great book - Berezovsky Time by Petr Aven. I can't read Russian, but I got an electronic copy and ran it through Google translate and it worked pretty well.
If you want an idea of how corrupt the USSR was, man, this book is extremely revealing. Berezovksy and Aven were part of an academic institute, and Berezovsky sold academic theses to industry executives who thereby got to add academic achievements to their CV.
Their biggest client was AvtoVAZ - they'd get free autoparts which they would sell. All this happening in the last decade or so of the USSR. Just corrupt as hell.
СССР разрушили не идеалисты ради свободы. Его разрушили преступники, ради бесконтрольного воровства, ради возможности легализации преступных доходов под видом бизнеса, ради возможности не скрывать иностранные предметы роскоши, ради возможности уехать с украденным за границу.
@@ФёдорМартыненко-ш1з No one said they were idealists. But the idealism of the Soviet Union lasted only through the first generation and those who had direct experience with WWII. The trouble with communism as a system is that it's not incentive-compatible. It needs almost everyone to be somewhat idealistic to work because it goes against human nature and human weaknesses. By the time you get to the 1970s, large numbers of people were either covertly or openly corrupt and it went all the way to the top - like Brezhnev tolerating the open corruption of the Muslim SSRs.
Well designed economic systems must be robust to human nature, the fact people are largely self-interested, at least on the scale of national economies.
@@cv990a4 Есть большая разница между тем, чтобы дать людям возможность обогащаться с помощью труда и обогащаться с помощью воровства.
Примером для молодого поколения должны быть честные, трудолюбивые, изобретательные люди, а не бандиты и мошенники. В 90-е годы каждый школьный хулиган хвалился своими связями с настоящими бандитами. Они держали в страхе каждый город, им завидовали, стремились подражать (уголовный жаргон, татуировки, спортивная одежда, в которой удобно драться и бегать).
С горькой усмешкой люди вспоминали слова про частную инициативу, собственность, бизнес, права человека - самыми богатыми людьми стали преступники. Честность стала уделом слабых, неудачников.
Каждый бизнесмен либо становился жертвой преступников либо сам становился преступником. Либо ты убьешь конкурентов (и компаньонов) либо тебя убьют конкуренты (и компаньоны).
Крах СССР был выгоден не тем, кто хочет честно трудиться, а тем, кто украл миллиарды.
What is the name of the songs you use in the background in your videos? I find them very interesting and add a little tension to the topics covered.
Did some forget to switch off the piano loop after the intro ? What sort of emotional response are they seeking from me - you must remember in the Soviet Union emotion was forbidden ;)
Really great channel. I kinda miss the USSR. Thats a really stupid statement i realize but as a kid there was this feeling of being like the galactic republic vs. the empire. It was scary but cool as a kid.
8:16 The background music for this part sounds like someone left a key in the ignition of a car from the 1970s and left the door open over night
My dad worked in the gold mining industry in Uzbekistan. I visited and traveled all around in 2004 and there were so many huge Karimov billboards everywhere. There was so much corruption , but saw so many cool towns. But, remember walking around Zarafshan and people stopping me and talking to me because they knew my Dad ran the gold mine. But the officials where so corrupt and my Dad had so many issues with government officials.
In the u.s. we call corruption lobbying
The corruption of Uzbekistan seems similar to Putin's Russia, where the president and defense minister have wealth way beyond their salary.
Corruption in a Socialist state? Never heard that one before.
Time to report yourself to the closest reeducation center. Everyone knows the imperialist west promotes the lie of Soviet corruption.
Yeah, it's almost like it was a capitalist society.
"Corruption" is what they called stealing from the poor in communist states. In capitalist states they simply called it "lobbying", "electoral contribution", "consumption tax", or simply "law".
@@BTScriviner not real commulism?
@@Tupadre97 Freedom to be American with worsening standard of living?
Can you do a video on the soviet cybernetics program? 🤞🤞🤞
great video
Uzbek cotton was crucial to the USSR for more than just clothes and trade. They used it to make nitrocellulose, aka, gun cotton. It's used to fire artillery shells, among other military uses. They made MASSIVE amounts of it to align with their military doctrine, which called for large massed artillery. A shortage could have been a real disaster for them.
2:01 Early history & Uzebek contribution to USSR economy (Cotton)
5:00 Post-Stalin
-Increased emphasis & subsequent reliance on cotton under Khrushchev & Sharaf Rashidov
-'Stability of cadres' under Brezhnev
17:47 Andropov'sccrackdown on corruption & aftermath
i doubt things were worse in Usbek SSR then in others. In fact it seems that they do indeed delivered most of the claimed cotton production.
Saddest in all this is that all middle asian soviet republics turned into dictatorships that are simoultanously horrible and ridiculous, Borat style.
The central Asian republics were dictatorships since their establishment during the soviet era and their situation now is just a consequence of what happened back then, in a way central Asia never really changed.
"Middle Asian" was the term established during the colonialism and should really be abandoned
@@trizvanov why? it's accurate enough description of position.
@@krzysztofkolodziejczyk4335 No, not really. "Middle Asia" is a term that was invented during the colonial expansion by Russia. It is best not to be used to avoid ambiguity and colonial connotations.
@@trizvanov "not really"? it is LITERALLY description of position. as such not really an "invention".
Proud to announce that not only have i subscribed three times, i have also pressed the bell buttons five times!
Corruption in a Communist State???
Color me shocked!
In the u.s. law enforcement investigates itself and finds no wrongdoing.
No way that communists could be corrupted ...
Intriguing.
Cotten is a terrible fabric for people who live as far north as they do in that part of the world. It gets wet, and you run the risk of hypothermia. Never mind that farming is very, very labor-intensive and input-intensive. The corruption part of this little bit of Soviet History is minor Compared to the destruction of the Arial and a few rivers. As usual, what sounds good on paper or in Theory is more damaging than some guys just scamming a few rubles off the top; it's pretty much what the mafia does. The whole thing from the start was a criminal and murderous enterprise, Yet people to this day think it was a wonderful thing the Soviet Union- It was hell on earth, and the stealing here with cotton was really pretty tame by Soviet Communist standards. It also shows how really stupid they all were; they could have traded for cotton, got a better product, and had more economic benefits, too. Oh wait if the did that then gee's they would not be pure in their own minds. Nope they just screwed themselves right into the collapse, no matter the same bunch is doing it again in the present day. The Russians and the other people in that part of the world can't catch a break.
Uzbekistan is rather dry (except in the mountainous areas) and has a sufficiently warm climate. Being north, or growing the plant in general, was never the problem. The need for irrigation in and due to the arid environment, was.
And while life in the Soviet Union was certainly not "wonderful", "hell on earth" is really just unnecessarily overblown and unrealistic.
Ryazan miracle would be on the lies about numbers topic
Liked my first watch!
My college civil law lecturer took part in this investigation back then
Another big Soviet scandal of the early 80s was the Boris the Gypsy scandal, which involved Brezhnev's daughter Galina and a diamond smuggling ring. This scandal rocked the Kremlin to its foundations and may have caused the death of Mikhail Suslov. You should do a video on that.
More accurate translation of druzjba narodov will be "friendship of nationalities", in Russia "narod" means people yes, but in this context it implies "friendship of peoples (of particular nations)".
5:23 is that star lord?
Good grief.
I remember what one Soviet citizen said of this time: "They pretended to pay us, so we pretended to work."
1. I’m a farmer who currently grows 4 crops cotton peanuts soybeans and corn.
2. Cotton uses the least amount of water of the 4.
3. Cotton doesn’t destroy the soil. It’s been grown in the same fields for years in end without being rotated out although now it usually is rotated regularly.
4. The current state of the Aral Sea was because of typical Soviet disregard and mismanagement. You stated yourself 90% of the water was lost before it got to the field.
Whoever your agronomist is I recommend getting a new one.
trust me bro
We're all equal (but some are more equal than others)
I'm surprised they didn't import workers from africa
Central Asia and Caucasus was the Soviet Union´s Africa. Atleast they learned reading and writing.
To David and the entire Cold War crew,
Please let me know once you've made videos on these following topics:
- Argentina during the rule of Juan Peron (and how his political and economic legacies still affect Argentina to this day)
- Thailand's on-and-off military governments and lese-majeste laws (which still occur even after the end of the Cold War)
- Gastarbeiters (foreign migrant workers) in both West and East Germany
- Bantustans (black homelands) in Apartheid-era South Africa
- The history of Quebec's Quiet Revolution (and how it led to the secularisation of Quebec's society and government)
- The history of Macau during the Cold War and how it contrasts with Hong Kong's Cold War history
Thank you very much and please accept my requests.
I will also add india economy system of dirgism from 1950 to 1991
Начало конца СССР :(
Candace Owens revealed some interesting things about the soviet union on her twitter
Interesting to hear about. What causes this type of corruption to prop up in Russia/USSR anyway? The USSR and modern Russian state have two different systems of government and economics but there seems to be many parallels between the corruption of the regional communist parties then and the corruption of the oligarches today.
Hi, this is an absolutely huge topic but I can try to give a reasonably concise answer (for context I'm the writer of this video and of the Soviet-themed videos on this channel).
In effect, when Soviet states became independent during/after the collapse of the USSR they tried to transition from state-controlled, socialist economies to free market ones through various types of privatisation processes. However, there were broadly two issues with this. First, most ordinary Soviet citizens had never grown up in a free market economy, so were not really familiar with the concept of private property or ownership and therefore the potential benefits of them. Two, there was an assumption that creating a class of individuals with private property would encourage the development of institutions to protect property rights, for example the rule of law and a more representative political system. In reality though, these problems meant that well-connected and knowledgeable officials who controlled state-owned assets basically took advantage of the privatisation process and hoarded massive wealth for themselves (hence the oligarchs). Thus, political institutions in these countries have largely ended up protecting these individuals as they have the wealth and therefore the power, excluding those who own very little. Ukraine is a really good example of this - with the exception of Zelensky's party, pretty much every political party in the Ukrainian system remains funded or led by an oligarch and serves to advance their interests.
Now, why is this corruption so difficult to get rid of? Well, in part its because of what I mentioned above (wealth = power), but its also because of how the Soviet economy operated. Basically, corruption and informality were commonplace as people sought access to goods that the inefficient Soviet economy could not provide. As such, these informal methods of economics have become pretty normalised in most post-Soviet countries and are just the standard way of doing business (with some exceptions). It is also worth noting the divergent paths of post-communist countries in Eastern Europe who were NOT in the USSR (for example, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria etc.). Their political systems were largely based on parliamentary systems due to the legacy of the interwar period, and as such their privatisation processes ended up being much more representative of the population as a whole compared to post-Soviet countries where their systems were largely presidential and thus more prone to power concentration. In Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania - which were in the USSR but managed to successfully get rid of these legacies - their success was basically because they were so desperate to get rid of any and all legacies of Soviet rule that the entire population was far more unified in doing whatever it took to do so. In Russia, Ukraine, etc., there was significant opposition to the economic transition amid the short-term suffering caused by privatisation and price liberalisation, which played into the oligarchs' hands to help them seize control of the political system.
Sorry, I said this answer would be concise but its really quite hard to summarise...hope this helped though!
@@omnidroid70 Thank you very much. I really appreciate the detailed response. That's some interesting development throughout the decades. Are there any books you would recommend for some deep diving into the failures and successes of Russian/Soviet economics? Cheers.
@@legionofyuri the most accessible/non-academic book I could recommend would be Chris Miller's Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia, but if you're looking for something a bit more theoretical Henry Hale's Patronal Politics: Eurasian Regime Dynamics in Comparative Perspective is an excellent look at the post-Soviet space more broadly
@omnidroid70 thanks! I'll check them out.
isn't "the Great Patriotic War' the russian name for WWII? Is there a reason you used that name instead of World War II, the more widely known term outside of the former soviet states?
Yes, they renamed it to hide the fact that the USSR originally entered the war as an aggressor in 1939 alongside the Nazis.
The reason is simple.
The WW2 has been started by nacional socialistic Germany together with international socialistic Russia + colonies known as USSR.
Hitler.and Stalin attacked Poland together and later wehrmacht and red army have common victory parade in Brest.
The Great patriotic war begins in 1941, when former nazi ally attacked russia and everybody pretend, that there is no history before 1941.
This is the reason.
Because the video is about the Soviet Union so it makes sense in that context? And i don't think only Russians called it that but all or most of the Soviet Union did as well.
Indeed, "Great Patriotic War" was invented in order to conceal the aggressive and occupying nature of the Soviet involvement in 1939-41.
@@xandervk2371they were demons dealing with the devil
My dad led the investigation of this, resulting in jailing lots of top leaders.
Soviet society sank into corruption, indeed mafia-like economy, once communism as a goal was discredited after Khrushchev.
It was always a fairy tale. Nomenclatura was the ruling class, and it wasn't going anywhere. As a matter of fact, they reinvented themselves as the masters of the new Russia.
Russian story as old as time
I literally can't understand how someone can lie about production numbers! 😢
Wtf is this background music in TH-cam videos these days
Cool
I miss the Aral sea 😢
Nothing has changed since 😂
🇺🇸
It is not only scandal. Before cotton scandal USSR forced uzbek nation to harvest millions tons of fish in Aral Sea impulsively. That is what caused aral sea dry out
Drained sea of Azov