Fuck, I wish the Soviet Union was still here.
Every single leftist who is anti-China would have been anti-USSR 35 years ago.
Yeah, didnt many anti-soviet socialists cheered when the USSR fell, and said that it was a victory for socialism? Bet they look like fools now
They thought it would be easier to argue for "real" socialism with the USSR gone.
Yup. I'm not saying that you can't critique China (they have legitimate problems to attack then from the left, like their atrocious LGBT+ record), but all the anarchists and SocDems that unironically think Biden is a lesser evil than Xi also would have thought Nixon was a lesser evil than Brezhnev
It's called anti-capitalism. Both China and the USSR exploited its people and repressed socialists.
the right-wing coups of 1989 were an unmitigated disaster for the world
Soviet Union did not fail, it was brutally murdered.
Putin came up under this guy, remember that. Tell liberals that Bill Clinton gave you Putin by interfering is Russia's elections to get Yelstin in office.
the Soviet Union didn't "collapse", it was couped by Yeltsin with US backing
yeltsin sold out the ussr and still died a sad, hated drunk. he didn't even die in luxury as far as i know. talk about selling out your country for... nothing?
maybe there is a god!
notices Pizza boy is still alive
Or maybe not
Yeltsin is a truly incredible historical figure- I can't think of any other national leader who so thoroughly sold out his country to its mortal enemies, for the benefit of so few. And it's not like Russia was invaded or occupied either.
Gorbachev I'm pretty sure went on record saying he should have gotten rid of Yeltsin
And that Greek family's descendant? Cum Town podcaster Stavros Halkias.
Radio War Need just did a four part(?) Series on the Yeltsin coup and holy shit it was so infuriating to listen to (good eps, just fuck Yeltsin and clinton with bokoblin bats)
If the Soviet Union didn't collapse, I'm not sure what would have happened with modern China. The Deng reforms started before 1992 and Deng refused to also open up politically to the capitalists and stuck to just the economy in that time. With the USSR around maybe the PRC feels the need to differentiate themselves further by allowing some political reform, or maybe that doesn't matter and we just keep the USSR and PRC as both strengthening powers still on the rise in the 2000s and 2010s. I guess it depends on how the USSR survives, if Andropov didn't die of kidney problems and Gorbachev didn't get control I think the USSR would still be around.
If the 91 coup succeeded, I think the USSR would've struggled through the 2000s but I think they would still be around today. People were in favor of sticking in the union and the coup leaders were still hardliners, they'd probably match the path that China did post-Deng, but instead of economic and military parity in 2030/2035 we'd get it in 2020 with the Soviets first. Imagine a world with a weakened backfooted USSR living surviving through the new millennium - the Gulf War still happens and the following rise of wahabbism backed by western power and money. 9/11 or something like it probably still happens in response to US meddling in the middle east and with a withdrawn USSR to provide a counterpole people may still feel they have to take action on their own terms. Saddam cutting off trading its oil for dollars in favor of Euro and Ruble (still as necessary after the Gulf War) probably still leads to the Iraq invasion and the forever war still goes through. China still rises because of neoliberal offshoring but the USSR probably gets some foreign investment and offshoring of manufacturing as well. 2008 would've been an election still about Iraq and the US housing crisis (that was baked in before the USSR collapsed because of banking liberalization, inevitable as profit still declines under capitalism even with the USSR around. Capital still seeks new frontiers of profit but is only able to find fictitious capital is capable of increasing rate of return). But now we have the same an incredibly weak US mired in a forever war that has no glamor of invincibility with the end of the cold war, the economy is on fire with some sort of financial crash, and instead of just China on the rise we still have the Soviets around to provide a viable alternative where growth is rational and equality and employment is guranteed in the constitution. The alt timeline version of Occupy Wallstreet would be incredible because they'd have something to point to and say "we can be like them" and they'd have concrete goals to work towards. Although the propoganda machine never stops, maybe it would've killed Occupy in its crib because socialism would've stayed as dirty a word as the 80s. The USSR collapsing in the 90s definitely seemed to have helped with the level of acceptance of it in the west with no need to constantly propagandize against in the 90s and 00s as they had in the 20th century.
