I think there were probably two fundamental failure points in the USSR: the shift from focusing on economic development to trying to chase the west on consumer goods that started in the 50s, and the failure of their education system to properly teach why and how the privileged classes of the western imperial powers had the abundance they did. The former fucked the USSR economically and the latter led to multiple generations of educated people not understanding that the wealth of the US was not some systemic strength but rather relied on stealing from periphery countries, so towards the end the educated populace of the USSR genuinely believed that they could enjoy the same abundance if they liberalized the economy, that they could basically do social democracy from the left instead of the right.
These problems were rooted in material causes and involved a lot more people signing off on them than just a handful of leaders. That's not to say that those leaders didn't have pronounced effects, but it's not like Gorbachev was some mastermind of liberalization who was lurking in the shadows waiting to take power: he was just sort of a generally likeably and competent bureaucrat who wasn't very good at leading in his own right so he relied on others to come up with policy for him, and there was a large bloc of liberals eager to make use of that.
multiple generations of educated people not understanding that the wealth of the US was not some systemic strength but rather relied on stealing from periphery countries
There were quite a lot of people who understood that, but who wanted to become exploiters like the US. Of course, there wasn't any place for new exploiters.
Can’t blame him there. I don’t think the Soviets had any way of knowing that the west actually didn’t have that many nukes and that it would take them a while to make more.
Even then, they were exhausted and suffered enormous casualties. No way Stalin was going to convince his people that they needed to spill even more blood to liberate the rest of Europe. Especially since most of Western Europe would just end up resenting Soviet occupation.
Even under Stalin the Soviet education system was a haven for liberalism. Many of the officials who'd go on to do revisionism and liberalization were educated during the Stalin era or shortly after, so there had to already be fundamental issues with how people were being taught at that point.
Not sure how to avoid problems like that, since China had similar problems with the children of good revolutionaries growing up to be revisionist, elitist little shits too.
I think the counterargument to this is if your system depends on everybody with influence being good, it's not a very good system.
I think there were probably two fundamental failure points in the USSR: the shift from focusing on economic development to trying to chase the west on consumer goods that started in the 50s, and the failure of their education system to properly teach why and how the privileged classes of the western imperial powers had the abundance they did. The former fucked the USSR economically and the latter led to multiple generations of educated people not understanding that the wealth of the US was not some systemic strength but rather relied on stealing from periphery countries, so towards the end the educated populace of the USSR genuinely believed that they could enjoy the same abundance if they liberalized the economy, that they could basically do social democracy from the left instead of the right.
These problems were rooted in material causes and involved a lot more people signing off on them than just a handful of leaders. That's not to say that those leaders didn't have pronounced effects, but it's not like Gorbachev was some mastermind of liberalization who was lurking in the shadows waiting to take power: he was just sort of a generally likeably and competent bureaucrat who wasn't very good at leading in his own right so he relied on others to come up with policy for him, and there was a large bloc of liberals eager to make use of that.
There were quite a lot of people who understood that, but who wanted to become exploiters like the US. Of course, there wasn't any place for new exploiters.
:corn-man-khrush: right opportunism in action
tl:dr everything went to shit after Stalin
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Can’t blame him there. I don’t think the Soviets had any way of knowing that the west actually didn’t have that many nukes and that it would take them a while to make more.
Even then, they were exhausted and suffered enormous casualties. No way Stalin was going to convince his people that they needed to spill even more blood to liberate the rest of Europe. Especially since most of Western Europe would just end up resenting Soviet occupation.
Even under Stalin the Soviet education system was a haven for liberalism. Many of the officials who'd go on to do revisionism and liberalization were educated during the Stalin era or shortly after, so there had to already be fundamental issues with how people were being taught at that point.
Not sure how to avoid problems like that, since China had similar problems with the children of good revolutionaries growing up to be revisionist, elitist little shits too.