The Soviet leadership at the time you go back to will absolutely follow through on your advice.
For me, I'd go back to say the early 60s and tell them to invest absolutely everything they can into computers, cybernetics, linear programming, etc; and using those tools for optimal central planning of the economy. Optimal both in the sense of economic efficiency and for greater democracy in the planning decisions. Get people to feel like they have a say in the economic plans and I think you short-circuit a lot of the consumerist drives. But ultimately, you just need that computing power to run a modern centrally planned economy.
I thought about telling them to make a Xi-like anti-corruption push in the 70s or so (and Andropov was working on that before he died). But I think if you get them to focus on the stuff I mentioned above a lot of the corruption might ultimately sort itself out.
I also thought about telling Stalin that he really needs to think about maybe approaching collectivization of the farms a bit differently. But I don't know what I'd tell him to do differently though. It was a mess at first but eventually the collective farms helped get Soviet agriculture where it needed to be, I think.
Yeah I agree that this answer is probably along the right lines. Everything in Russia always hinged on proletarian revolution in Western Europe. Lenin gets shit sometimes for gambling everything on that but there was no choice- Russia was a backwater that couldn't possibly carry the world on its own. Once revolution was crushed by reactionaries, particularly in Germany, there was no real hope anymore in the USSR for anything other than Stalin/Khrushchev's approach of just trying to hold out as long as possible. If you want real victory and lasting stability, you've got to help Rosa or Liebknecht.
I wonder if there is anything one could do that would actually change the outcome in germany. It'd be nice if Rosa Luxemburg was warned and had time to gtfo or whatever but would that have changed the overall outcome in germany? I guess you could draw a parallel and say that the spartacist uprising was sort of like the July days, but a lot of the bolshevik leadership like Lenin escaped the July days unlike spartacus. And then you could say october 1917 was similar to the subsequent revolts that happened throughout germany in various cities. Reality is more complicated than a comparison though, no idea if it was really within grasp at all.
Yeah, this is the big critique of my suggestion. I don't know enough to actually state what I would tell the Spartacist to try to change history (or if it even is plausible that it could have been changed).
Okay China is NOT GOING TO LIKE post-stalin revisionism and you're gonna need strong allies in the fight against global capitalism. DO NOT PISS OFF MAO.
My single action is i shoot krushchev in the side of the head after lining him up with the other guys :jadue-heh:
What I'm saying is that they wouldnt have to. Malenkov is an empty container you can pour policy into.
Sigh, yeah. Nothing makes you more sympathetic about the great terror than running down a list of the character flaws of the Soviet Leadership.
The great terror was the cause of the flawed leadership. Most revolutionaries perished in it.
Oh yeah, the Purges were utterly damaging and misdirected ( and I don't think Stalin did them to settle petty squabbles, though we'll never know for sure.)
But reading their constant squabbling in the early to mid thirties is quite frustrating. Fucking twitter vibes but they're running the world first worker's state
Okay holy shit soviet leadership was just terrible damn. Any sources you can recommend to read up further on it?
You seem v knowledgable on soviet stuff? Pls gimme more resources to be educated? How did the ussr work, by did it fail etc?
I just want to learn more about how the ussr worked and why it failed tbh.
Ok thanks for the recs. Maybe I’ll have more concrete asks when I’m done with this book, first. Thanks!
Invent pizza hut in Russia before it exists in the US.
Invest hard in the generation that fought in WWII, both materially and in teaching high-quality theory and critical analysis, so that the CPSU is lively and powerful enough to oppose/remove the shitty leadership it ended up with and to be flexible in the right ways, including economically and in not fucking over China.
The ability of the USSR to fail due to the decisions of a few leaders comes from systemic instabilities: they shouldn't have been leadership in the first place and should've been removed when they fucked up.
You can solve both problems by telling Stalin to sober Zhdanov the fuck up.
Yeah, look, he's not gonna go all Ultravisionary and he's basically the Soviet version of Scotty from Marketing, but he'd be able to stop Beria and Kruschev and control Molotov and Zhukov.
Unfortunately Zhdanov is one of the possible leaders for a revived Soviet Union in the HOI4 mod TNO. He tries to techbro cosmist his way into reviving the Soviet Economy, with mixed results.
So he's now an annoying meme.
Then you get Beria and the USSR becomes a US puppet.
:jesse-wtf:
:corn-man-khrush: :stalin-gun-1: :stalin-gun-2:
Also have to ask: I’m not a trot but it seems like trotsky was actually right about the USSR—but only after :corn-man-khrush: took over. Discuss.
i'd bring a giant bag of literature on media control in the west and tell them how they can let artists & political speech go buck wild if they properly account for it & do secret enough repression.
i'll teach stalin to manufacture consent :stalin-feels-good:
