1. You are a citizen working in a factory.

  2. You are the General Secretary.

What would you have done from both these perspectives?

  • HarryLime [any]
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    4 years ago

    All this, plus building more rail to remove industrial bottlenecks, replace aging Stalin-era megafactories with smaller, efficient factories with modern machine tools, removing price controls on low-margin spare parts and certain consumer goods, make it policy for ethnic Russians to learn local languages and when they immigrate to other SSRs, crack down on radical nationalists while maintaining the traditional policy of having members of native ethnicities head their local parties, loosen restrictions on intra-party discussions and criticisms of the party while maintaining the party's leading role, revitalize the Soviets so that they provide genuine feedback and oversight and not a rubber stamp on policy, cutting military spending and changing the policy on the cold war to maintaining deterrence while sacrificing polarity, and make ending the Sino-Soviet split the #1 diplomatic priority. Also order a safety review of RBMK nuclear reactors, and research thorium reactors and nuclear fusion.

    • kristina [she/her]
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      4 years ago

      imagine if we had a strong china and ussr right now. 2 super powers vs 1. no im definitely fucking mad. all they had to do is the fucking waiting game and they couldnt do that right

      • HarryLime [any]
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        4 years ago

        Exactly, they only had to hold out until the 2010s! The Soviets lost faith in their ideology because they expected another great depression after WW2 and underestimated the resources of the capitalist world to keep the system going, but the systemic crises they were waiting for is happening right now!

        • kristina [she/her]
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          4 years ago

          like my opinion is big things like great depressions only occur due to massive outbreaks of diseases, they didnt have anything super huge outside of maybe polio post ww2. like if coronavirus happened pre ww2 i actually think it would have been worse than the spanish flu

        • weshallovercum [any]
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          4 years ago

          The Soviet Union didn't collapse due to "loss of faith in ideology", it was straight up dismantled by opportunists.

          • HarryLime [any]
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            4 years ago

            The opportunists got their opportunity to dismantle the union because the ideological coherence and faith was deeply shaken in many sectors of the Party and some sectors of society by the mid 80s, a phenomenon that started with Khrushchev's secret speech. It's why Gorbachev had the political capital to take the Union in a revisionist, capitalist direction.