Personally I’m of the opinion that the corruption started to appear around Brezhnev, in the middle of his control. Of course the USSR had many problems before that but that was where things really started to go downhill, and when most of the images of empty grocery stores and such started appearing. From that point forward things started getting really bad due to a major reinvestment in nuclear weapons and a dwindling economy. Gorbachev, once he took power, pretty much had two options: purge corrupt leadership and try to keep the Soviet Union together by force, or soften his stance to the west and concede. He chose the latter and it became a slippery slope leading to now. I don’t think I can fully blame him, because he had noble ideas in mind, but unfortunately it left him vulnerable.
Yeah especially with the stability of cadre thing that he introduced which basically banned purges and made a bunch of bureaucratic positions lifetime appointments the whole formula for how to keep the bureaucracy even kinda under control was destroyed. Gorby had I think the exact wrong ideas for his time period, he wanted the USSR to be an equal alliance of social democracies as opposed to a more centralized federation of socialist states and he threw himself into that mission whole hog without having fixed the economy. Like you can say the USSR should have been more democratic but making it more democratic before you make sure there's economic stability was suicide.
Personally I’m of the opinion that the corruption started to appear around Brezhnev, in the middle of his control. Of course the USSR had many problems before that but that was where things really started to go downhill, and when most of the images of empty grocery stores and such started appearing. From that point forward things started getting really bad due to a major reinvestment in nuclear weapons and a dwindling economy. Gorbachev, once he took power, pretty much had two options: purge corrupt leadership and try to keep the Soviet Union together by force, or soften his stance to the west and concede. He chose the latter and it became a slippery slope leading to now. I don’t think I can fully blame him, because he had noble ideas in mind, but unfortunately it left him vulnerable.
Yeah especially with the stability of cadre thing that he introduced which basically banned purges and made a bunch of bureaucratic positions lifetime appointments the whole formula for how to keep the bureaucracy even kinda under control was destroyed. Gorby had I think the exact wrong ideas for his time period, he wanted the USSR to be an equal alliance of social democracies as opposed to a more centralized federation of socialist states and he threw himself into that mission whole hog without having fixed the economy. Like you can say the USSR should have been more democratic but making it more democratic before you make sure there's economic stability was suicide.