Hate when you fail into developing a country that was 70 years late to the industrial revolution into a industrial powerhouse, win a war against satan and send people who where peasants 2 generations ago into space
Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin failed because they didn't forsee Yeltsin and Gorbachev selling off the country to the West. Silly dummies:very-intelligent:
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.
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.
trying to chase the west on consumer goods that started in the 50s,
:corn-man-khrush: right opportunism in action
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.
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.
almost all the old bolsheviks died of old age in a socialist country
to them, that is a success. what happened after is ultimately immaterial to their experiences, because they no longer existed
almost all the old bolsheviks died of old age in a socialist country
Goals :bloomer:
Much as I love Stalin, I wouldn't say most old Bolsheviks died of old age. That and a sadly high number of premature deaths due to sickness killing them that they could have survived if they didn't dedicate every moment to their projects like poor Sverdlov with the influenza. But yeah those excesses sure as hell had nothing to do with the USSR falling.
Every leader of the SU, save Gorbachev, died when they were younger than Biden is now.
I was agreeing that the Bolsheviks didn't get a chance to see old age because of their commitment to the revolution. Poverty, starvation, exile, war...it took a toll. Only Malenkov and Molotov got past their 70s
Ooh, yeah its really sad how few lived long. Then again how many would've ended up like Molotov, sitting there watching everything they built destroyed
A lot of old Bolsheviks died young in the civil war and that should be taken into account.
I think this was not insignificant to the struggles of the USSR in later decades.
They launched the October Revolution in the expectation it would trigger a world revolution. It only did in part and was defeated everywhere else. From there on out the only available paths forward for the USSR were very dark and difficult ones.
I don't know about betrayal. They were hardly in good terms to begin with.
amazing to know that somehow american propaganda is even more white supremacist than this.
Disaster: That word I definitely attribute to a place that eradicates illiteracy, hunger, homelessness, elevates life expectancy, and overall quality of life.
Beevor's the little shit that did a 'both sides were evil' thing with Red Army mass rape rumours once they entered Berlin in 1945. He also has some affiliations with the Hoover Institution and has done some Radio Free Europe interviews. So no surprise he's churning this nonsense out.
Prediction, the take is that the February revolution was a beautiful blossoming of true democracy and liberalism that was derailed by the sneaky ratlike Bolsheviks committing an undemocratic coup and seizing power(undemocratically), establishing an authoritarian(not democratic very bad) no good regime.
Its only real democracy if you continue sending your grandkids into the meat grinder of the Eastern Front.
As soon as the Russians exited the war, they became enemies of all right thinking people.
This is sad and awful. Hope Russia has another socialist revolution and it sticks this time!
