I was taught that communism is when all property (including toothbrushes) gets taken by the government and redistributed personally by one leader who has total control, and it failed because no one did any work (as they got paid anyway)
I was taught that communism is when all property (including toothbrushes) gets taken by the government and redistributed personally by one leader who has total control, and it failed because no one did any work (as they got paid anyway)
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And in the USSR scientists were in the highest wage bracket alongside other highly educated professionals, above politicians and bureaucrats (although politicians and bureaucrats often made more by interacting with the "second economy," the quasi-legal private market that the Soviet government began tolerating under Khrushchev and which served as a persistent drain on their economy and a massively corrupting influence on both their leadership and the more privileged and educated sectors of society which served as the backbone of Gorbachev and Yeltsin's liberal counter-revolutionary blocs).
Where could I read more about the effects of the second economy?
Socialism Betrayed: Behind the Collapse of the Soviet Union covers it to some extent, though it has a greater focus on the major figures of the 1980s and the events immediately preceding Yeltsin's coup.