Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Ike 2K# on January 14, 2003, 05:35:10 PM
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Give reasons on how did USSR Collapsed (give hard facts and let your ignorance, and jokes out just for this thread)
(http://poster.s.cz/big/1240.jpg)
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OK I'm letting my ignorance out: :)
Soviets had no concept of economics. They made up for it with hard work motivated by either patriotism (Great Patriotic War) or fear (of barbaric leaders like Stalin). Once these motivations were gone, the inferiority of their economic practices caused inevitable failure.
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to quote a line from a old song.."people everywhere just want to be free"
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The Internet became available to more and more and the free exchange of information.. communism's mortal enemy, helped bring them down.. also.. they ran out of money trying to 'one up' the US
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Fundamentally, it was a change of attitude in the West. We decided to stand up to bullies. It started with the Falklands in 1982 and later with the American invasion of Grenada; then the West started supplying the Mudjahideen (sp?) in Afghanistan, causing the Red Army to be shown for what it really was; while Reagan made use of the Soviet leaders' paranoia and outspent them on defence (aided to a small degree by Mrs T buying Trident) greatly assisting in the collapse of the Soviet economy. Of course, if you believe the Mitrokhin Archive, the SU was largely governed by paranoia.
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Economic woes:
1) Too much money spent on weapons over consumer goods
2) In his move to try to combat alcohol abuse, Gorbachev shot himself in the foot by limiting vodka (and iirc most alcoholic) production, thus denying a large amount of state revenues from the taxation of alcohol (consumption did not decrease due to the reactionary increase in black market alcohol). This increased economic problems.
Political change:
1) In order to try to give the economy a boost, Gorbachev started opening up the Soviet Union both politically and economically by giving more rights to people to express their views as well as giving some people the right to start their own capatilist-stle businesses
2) Along with greater expression, mistakes that were made by the government were actually admitted to, such as the Chernobl disaster
3) For the first time since the October revolution, the people stood up against the coup d'etat. What sealed the fate of the Soviet Union was the fact that the military backed the protesters.
Obviously there is more to it than this, but these are some of issues involved.
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None of the above. Soviet was not an economics-based society. The socialist non-market system certainly cannot satisfy people's various needs in an efficient, let alone optimal way - but there was a simple solution for that. We were told what our need where. If you live in prison, you can actuall plan successfully.
The resources were there. The enforcement was there and the nuts were not even close to being tightened all the way. People were not dying of starwation and even if they were, it woulod not have caused any political upheaval.
The strenght of the west would have mattered only if one side desired to attack another which was not the case. Whatever standing up to soviet bullies the west did, the population had no idea about it. As far as we knew, the peace in Afghanistan was being prosecuted successfully with undisclosed but minimal casualties and could continue to be conducted in the same way for generations.
There was certainly no internet access and few shortwave radios - successfully jammed at that.
Basically, SU did not have to crumble for natural reasons like economic collapse or extinction of population. Not for centuries, et least. The living conditions were far better than N. Korean or Cuban and the people were used to 70 years of oppression rather than mere 30 or 40.
The truth is that M. Gorbachev decided to tinker with the system and play liberal as early as 1986 rather than go back to stalinist methods and kind of released it from above. It was very gradual with people cautiously trying the limits of what they could say or do without getting whacked.
Of course Reagan and Thatcher deserve all the praise they get. But Soviet Union certainly toppled by itself.
miko
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I totally agree with you, miko. My opinion is that Gorbachev loosened state control in an attempt to combat what he saw as a stagnating economy/society. In the end, when he thought he had gone too far, he tried to reverse what he had done, but it was too late.
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Corruption helped kill Communisim in a big way...unfortunatly, corruption isn't specific to just Communisim and the collapse of the USSR hasn't stoped the corruption there one bit.
Should be a lesson learned but corrupt politics is self perpetuating no matter what political ideal you subscribe too.
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Originally posted by MrLars
Corruption helped kill Communisim in a big way...unfortunatly, corruption isn't specific to just Communisim and the collapse of the USSR hasn't stoped the corruption there one bit.
Should be a lesson learned but corrupt politics is self perpetuating no matter what political ideal you subscribe too.
yep, especially during the period of stagnation (Leonid Brezhnev was the president of that time)
i also heard that some of brezhnev's relatives were in monetary scam.
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Originally posted by emodin
I totally agree with you, miko. My opinion is that Gorbachev loosened state control in an attempt to combat what he saw as a stagnating economy/society. In the end, when he thought he had gone too far, he tried to reverse what he had done, but it was too late.
gorby reacts slow as a snail. he could have withdraw his troops as early as 86
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The Premier ran out of toliet paper.
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The fall of the Soviet State started after the first bottle of Coke Cola was sold in Moscow. It was all over after that.
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:confused: did that happen during the gorby times?
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rock and roll destroyed the USSR
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yup, the Zeppelin went to moscow and the whole town shoooked and Lenin woked up in his masoleum for 79 years of hibernation
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my own suspicion is gorby sabotaged it, by loosening gov't control & knowing what the results would be...alas russia is a nation of slaves - see how quickly the KGB won back control? abit of fear mongering & (fake?) terrorists - it only took a few years...
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i think the biggest mistake that he did was the implementaion of glastnost and perestroika
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when did the western world knew that USSR is unraveling??
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The assumption that the internet had any effect on the USSR is laughable. I was in Russia in late 1990, and I can tell you there weren't many people with internet connections. By then, the USSR was very much on its way out.
One of the kids there, about my own age, had a Sinclair Spectrum ZX-81. I think that was quite unusual at the time.
That trip was amazing - it was very exciting for an 11 year old from a decadent Western power to be somewhere so different. The people were good though - especially the kids at the English speaking school we visited. I often wonder if they are all ok. Moscow and Leningrad (as was) are amazing cities, and I reccommend a visit to anyone - you get a real feeling of history. Of course, back then, they still had the PA systems on street corners. Even as a kid, that was a bit unnerving or alien.
It started with the Falklands in 1982 and later with the American invasion of Grenada...
That's completely untrue. They had absolutely nothing to do with the fall of the SU.
then the West started supplying the Mudjahideen (sp?) in Afghanistan, causing the Red Army to be shown for what it really was...
Even the death of 100,000 men was not a dent in the Red Army. Like Miko2d said, that war could have lasted for a hundred years, with no real impact on the USSR.
I agree with Miko2d - Gorbachev began the process with a spark. Socio-economic conditions outside the USSR merely fanned the flames.
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Originally posted by Dowding
The assumption that the internet had any effect on the USSR is laughable. I was in Russia in late 1990.
:confused: i thought the internet (for home PCs, not for the DoD) started in '95