Title states all. It can be multiple reasons or just a few. I've twiddled to down mainly to 3 reasons, "roughly" that is.

The Stalin personality cult that would subjugate various Soviet leaders to being wild conspiracy theorists and untrustworthy of themselves, their inner groups, intelligence, other leaders of the USSR, etc.

The inability for the Soviet Union to give more independence or political freedom to it's satellite states, and freaking the fuck out when states weren't following the strict set of guidelines from Moscow, (also party leadership changing the internal politics and Moscow relationship of it's satellite states every time a Soviet Leader died/changed their mind on how to operate it's states, Belarus comes to mind.)

Finally, the economy, and the Soviets too fraught with conspiracy to adopt to the global economy when the world started to surpass them on many economic fronts, along with a bloated military budget.

These are my reasons, I akin this degradation like a large column of marble representing USSR and the issues that toiled the USSR like many hammers and chisels, some are bigger than others but ultimately no one hammer or chisel brought an end to the first great socialist experiment. Thoughts?

-7DeadlyFetishes

  • emizeko [they/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Why did the Soviet Union disintegrate? Why did the Communist Party of the Soviet Union fall to pieces? An important reason is that in the ideological domain, competition is fierce! To completely repudiate the historical experience of the Soviet Union, to repudiate the history of the CPSU, to repudiate Lenin, to repudiate Stalin was to wreck chaos in Soviet ideology and engage in historical nihilism. It caused Party organizations at all levels to have barely any function whatsoever. It robbed the Party of its leadership of the military. In the end the CPSU—as great a Party as it was—scattered like a flock of frightened beasts! The Soviet Union—as great a country as it was—shattered into a dozen pieces. This is a lesson from the past!

    —Xi Jinping, 2013

    • zxcvbnm [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      I don't quite understand what Xi is saying. Revisionism ruined the USSR? Throwing Stalin under the bus undermined the party's legitimacy?

      • emizeko [they/them]
        ·
        4 years ago

        next three grafs:

        Comrade Deng Xiaoping pointed out: “The banner of Mao Zedong Thought cannot be discarded. Throwing this banner out negates the glorious history of our Party. Generally speaking, our Party’s history is still a glorious one. Although our Party has made some large mistakes in its history, including in the 30 years since the founding of the People’s Republic, even mistakes as large as the Cultural Revolution, in the end it was our Party that made the revolution successful. China’s status in the world was significantly improved after the founding of the People’s Republic of China. Only the founding of the People’s Republic of China enabled us, a big country with a population of nearly one fourth of the Earth’s total, to stand up and stand strong in the world.”[xiii]

        He also emphasized, “The appraisal of Comrade Mao and the exegesis of Mao Zedong Thought does not solely touch upon the personal issues of Comrade Mao. These things cannot be cut away from the entire history of our Party and our country. To grasp this is to grasp everything. This is not just an intellectual issue—it is a political issue. It is a great political issue, both here and at home.”[xiv]

        This is the vision of a great Marxist politician. Just think: if at the time of reform Comrade Mao had been completely repudiated, would our Party still be standing? Would our country’s system of socialism still be standing? And if it was not still standing, what would we have? A world of chaos.

        as far as I'm getting, yeah. think dialectically about your leaders, avoid liberal Great Man Theory, and build on success by learning from mistakes

          • emizeko [they/them]
            ·
            4 years ago

            you can see the influence of Deng's thinking here in the Four Cardinal Principles

            pretty much distills that shit down to a manual on how to prevent the national bourgeois, the engine he wanted to develop productive forces, from forming a political consciousness and taking control.

            same reason for Xi's expansion of CPC cadres way further into private companies