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edit: GUYS fuck stalin and fuck tankies, period. i understand that this community is more sensitive than most to pro-stalinist vibes, and i apologize for unintentionally twinging that nerve, but you need stop calling each other (and me) slurs.
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edit: GUYS fuck stalin and fuck tankies, period. i understand that this community is more sensitive than most to pro-stalinist vibes, and i apologize for unintentionally twinging that nerve, but you need stop calling each other (and me) slurs.
If you're bored, I'd like to hear more about this. I don't know much about specific USSR history and development outside of the usual talking points
At some point I’ll make an effort post about it, although I think instead of listing my criticisms I may just focus on the one that I think did the most long term damage to the project of socialism in the USSR (the purges).
In brief, while I could get into the morality of purging cadres - whether we’re talking expulsion from the party or all the way up to getting killed - who didn’t actually do anything to deserve it, in the end I’m not really interested in passing any sort of moral judgement of Stalin. I’m only concerned about how that affected how that affected the Soviet project.
And IMO, it was damaging long-term. The party lost so much leadership, power, and influence by losing so many members. That loss created a vacuum that was filled by the bureaucracy. And those bureaucrats (particularly bureaucrats involved in the economy and production) led using the tools they had at their disposal, which was (to greatly oversimplify) to just do whatever you had to do to hit a production target. Source your production inputs however you can, just make it work. And that actually works great for the crash industrialization that helped the Soviets win the war!
But the problem is, you can’t run the economy that way forever. Eventually, in a socialist economy, you need more rational planning. But the bureaucracy under Stalin was actually hostile to things like cybernetics. Khrushchev tried to get around the problems this was creating (bad ideas but he was trying and was limited by the fact he was in charge in a time just before computers and linear programming and stuff like that entered the scene) but by that point bureaucracy was actually stronger than the party. The bureaucracy that cut its teeth under Stalin and was empowered by him knew one way to do things, and they weren’t going to listen to what the party thought needed to be done. In a way the ascension of Brezhnev was the bureaucracy reasserting itself over any further reforms. Things weren’t going to change and it’s no surprise that when you hear about the Soviet economy in the 80s, there’s all sorts of industrial shortages and inefficiencies, and I think you can draw a line back to Stalin for a that.
In an alternate reality where the purges are much smaller, you could have a stronger party with more diverse and better ideas leading the charge. I imagine a not dead Bukharin would have successfully pushed for adoption of cybernetics early in the game to manage the economy, and the USSR would be around today.
I wanted to caveat all this with: this is all my opinion. I am still learning and am open to challenges on any of this.
I think it's challenging to talk about the Soviet economy in the 1980s when the West was just coming out of a period of stagflation through massive financialisation and created an investment bubble that has continued to be propped up through stimulus spending since.
The ideological foundations were also so obviously weaked by the time of Gorbachev that would lead him to think that the US would do for the USSR what they did for Western Europe. After living through Vietnam, countless actions in South America and Afghanistan.
Of course, I totally agree. My comment was very broad and intended to just tell one part of the narrative. There was a lot going on and I for one think even as late as 1985 or 1986, the Soviet economy could have been rescued.
The problem with USSR’s economy wasn’t cybernetics/computerization.
No amount of automation or computerization could save the Soviet economy from its critical defects. Khrushchev defaulted the state mandatory bonds set up under Stalin in 1957 has done more to stifle the progress of Soviet economy (I’m not even saying this was a primary driver, but merely one of the many that Khrushchev dismantled). The liquidation of artels (collectively owned enterprises) in 1960 destroyed the domestic light industry base, because Khrushchev wanted to use “state planning” to compete with Western consumerism, which was yet another crucial mistake (there is a reason why China moved away from central planning for its light industries, for the same reason).
I am a minority here but I’ve always said that the problem with the USSR was always financial in nature, more precisely, the continued adoption of liberal economics to solve problems within a socialist state/system.
Why is it that no country in the history of humanity has ever matched the economic growth under Stalin’s Five-Year Plans? Not even China came close to that, considering how much they lowered their labor wages/working conditions and took advantage of huge foreign capital investment to propel their economy. Stalin’s USSR didn’t have much of that (the post-war Soviet workers enjoyed much the same working rights as Western European workers). I claim that’s because Stalin understood the role of money and debt - Stalin understood finance better than any other world leader at the time (most were still stuck on gold standard). And yes I am digging up old Soviet materials wherever I can find to examine and prove this thesis. One day, I will prove it.
I've seen this theory reputably repeated by a lot of political economists but I still have yet to find a concise resource that can definitively prove evidence for the theory. If you ever do put something together definitely post it
I think you might be my favorite poster, lol. Always interesting reading your posts!
The purges were far less damaging than the genocidal war in which so many good Communists were martyred. The principled and fearless Communists rushed to the frontlines while the opportunists and cowards find compelling reasons to be stationed in Siberia. The war pretty such self-selected the most worthy to die and the least worthy to survive and drive the party off a cliff decades later. Fundamentally, post-Stalin CPSU started sucking because Stalin wasn't able to rebuild the party like Mao did after the Long March. And this wasn't the fault of Stalin since Stalin himself recognized this problem and started to rebuild the party. But at this point, he was far too old.
bukharin was literally proto-gorbachev, he deserved it
Also bukharin had some extreme views on LGBT people, even for the time. He was criticized by the party for saying gay people are the root of fascism, and would regularly conflate pederasty with being gay. In fact, he was censored by the party shortly after making this public statement