The fact that Gorbachev, who was basically a self avowed socdem, was able to become fucking General Secretary tells you all you need to know about how rancid the party had become by the late 80’s.
The wildest thing is that all the "hardliners" and people Gorbachev would later smear as "stalinists" for any amount of dissent or even just insufficient enthusiasm in supporting him, they all worked with him when he was working for Andropov and after Andropov's death they all thought so highly of him as to support his appointment to General Secretary. Like at that point he doesn't even seem to have been a crypto-sucdem yet, and for several years he carried on with the same reforms Andropov had been overseeing with a few hairbrained ideas of his own tossed in. It's only after he started bringing in more outspoken "reformers" that he started doing shit like putting an anticommunist in charge of the state media, talking about his "wot if social democracy from the left?" nonsense, and actively working to hamstring and isolate the Soviet communist parties at every level.
So either Gorbachev was an incredibly sneaky and skilled fanatic sucdem who managed to trick a bunch of dedicated communists into thinking he was one of them for decades of his career, or he was actually just a kind of dumb and impressionable but likeable bureaucrat who wound up in way over his head and chose the worst allies he possibly could have in trying to keep up the appearance of knowing what he was doing and having a plan. I personally think it's the latter, or something like that: clearly Gorbachev was at least a competent bureaucrat and charismatic enough to get where he was without anyone going "hey why is this dipshit with all these bad ideas continuing to get promoted?", but once he actually had to lead what did he do? He kept doing what his predecessor had been doing but tried to mix in his own ideas too, and his own ideas were terrible and blew up in his face so he went looking for other people with bold ideas and then just did what they suggested to absolutely catastrophic effect, at which point he just sort of panicked and couldn't commit to any plan of action to salvage the situation. It's entirely possible that if he'd never become General Secretary he'd just have continued going with the flow and been forgotten as just a generally competent bureaucrat.
But then there's also a systemic failure of the Soviet education system to actually educate people on how the global economic worked, so you got a generation of liberal professionals who'd listen to fucking Radio Free Europe broadcasts and buy western media on the black market who came to the conclusion that market liberalization would mean they get as many treats as Americans got, without comprehending that American consumption habits were only enabled by imperial extractive mechanisms in subjugated periphery states, and by America's larger industrial base (which the Soviets would have reached parity with in the 70s or so if it weren't for someone's "wot if instead of making industry to build treats, we just made a few treats now?" policies).
Then they got their free market and not only did they not get their treats they also lost stable access to even basic necessities. :surprised-pika:
Honestly I think Gorby was just a complete fucking idiot. He was like any bureaucrat or engineer who had extremely detailed and sophisticated knowledge of a highly specialized area of expertise, the mastery of which gives a massively inflated sense of ones general knowledge. He spent a huge amount of time in the west and, because he was extremely poorly educated in foundational Marxism and general economics, he bought the propaganda bullshit. I cant remember where I read it, but I remember reading he believed that if the USSR just adopted western style "democracy" the the USSR would be welcomed into the 'brotherhood of western nations' with open arms, and was completely shocked when Capital ripped the USSR apart like rabid wolves.
The wildest thing is that all the "hardliners" and people Gorbachev would later smear as "stalinists" for any amount of dissent or even just insufficient enthusiasm in supporting him, they all worked with him when he was working for Andropov and after Andropov's death they all thought so highly of him as to support his appointment to General Secretary. Like at that point he doesn't even seem to have been a crypto-sucdem yet, and for several years he carried on with the same reforms Andropov had been overseeing with a few hairbrained ideas of his own tossed in. It's only after he started bringing in more outspoken "reformers" that he started doing shit like putting an anticommunist in charge of the state media, talking about his "wot if social democracy from the left?" nonsense, and actively working to hamstring and isolate the Soviet communist parties at every level.
So either Gorbachev was an incredibly sneaky and skilled fanatic sucdem who managed to trick a bunch of dedicated communists into thinking he was one of them for decades of his career, or he was actually just a kind of dumb and impressionable but likeable bureaucrat who wound up in way over his head and chose the worst allies he possibly could have in trying to keep up the appearance of knowing what he was doing and having a plan. I personally think it's the latter, or something like that: clearly Gorbachev was at least a competent bureaucrat and charismatic enough to get where he was without anyone going "hey why is this dipshit with all these bad ideas continuing to get promoted?", but once he actually had to lead what did he do? He kept doing what his predecessor had been doing but tried to mix in his own ideas too, and his own ideas were terrible and blew up in his face so he went looking for other people with bold ideas and then just did what they suggested to absolutely catastrophic effect, at which point he just sort of panicked and couldn't commit to any plan of action to salvage the situation. It's entirely possible that if he'd never become General Secretary he'd just have continued going with the flow and been forgotten as just a generally competent bureaucrat.
But then there's also a systemic failure of the Soviet education system to actually educate people on how the global economic worked, so you got a generation of liberal professionals who'd listen to fucking Radio Free Europe broadcasts and buy western media on the black market who came to the conclusion that market liberalization would mean they get as many treats as Americans got, without comprehending that American consumption habits were only enabled by imperial extractive mechanisms in subjugated periphery states, and by America's larger industrial base (which the Soviets would have reached parity with in the 70s or so if it weren't for someone's "wot if instead of making industry to build treats, we just made a few treats now?" policies).
Then they got their free market and not only did they not get their treats they also lost stable access to even basic necessities. :surprised-pika:
Honestly I think Gorby was just a complete fucking idiot. He was like any bureaucrat or engineer who had extremely detailed and sophisticated knowledge of a highly specialized area of expertise, the mastery of which gives a massively inflated sense of ones general knowledge. He spent a huge amount of time in the west and, because he was extremely poorly educated in foundational Marxism and general economics, he bought the propaganda bullshit. I cant remember where I read it, but I remember reading he believed that if the USSR just adopted western style "democracy" the the USSR would be welcomed into the 'brotherhood of western nations' with open arms, and was completely shocked when Capital ripped the USSR apart like rabid wolves.