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You are a citizen working in a factory.
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You are the General Secretary.
What would you have done from both these perspectives?
You are a citizen working in a factory.
You are the General Secretary.
What would you have done from both these perspectives?
The rot was too deep
The cold war had produced a fear in both (all) citizens of a nuclear war
The Soviets were made to think that if they dropped the communism then the West would embrace Russia as a long lost friend
Instead they ratfucked Russia, propping up Yeltsin who wouldnt have been able to destroy the Ussr without US help (he dissolved parliament against the democratic wishes then took control in a coup and had to murder 3000 communists on the streets and shell parliament)
By ddoing so they caused the deaths of 12 million Russians (according the Lancet - USAs most prestigious medical journal)
The experience Russia had during the 90s was of a population in such despair as if theyd lost a war. No other country has experienced such devastation in peace time
And it was because...of the restoration of capitalism
History goes in zigs and zags its not a straight line.
There's a reason today Stalin statues are going up all over Russia
Speaking of which this one just went up in South Ossetia
https://preview.redd.it/icucqgznjfv51.jpg?width=531&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e7b8596bf83163f7d9f56cde38b6425cd202c181
Just to emphasise, the fall of the SU probably killed more people than every Soviet-era famine put together.
WW2 was a major factor as well. One could argue that despite appearances the Soviet Union never managed to completely recover from the horrendous losses suffered in that war - the loss of committed cadres, the loss of unstoppable can do optimism, the loss of innocence which made the leadership paranoid about security thus hampering a balanced economic development, every undertaking needing to simultaneously serve the secondary purpose of defence application. Had that war been won earlier, more decisively and at a fraction of the human and infrastructural cost things could have gone differently.
Yes ww2 did a number on the Ussr
The best and most committed marxist-leninsts were basically the first to die