The End of the Union

didn't give the means of production to the workers

Is the flag ironic?

As it turns out, massive authoritarianism does not work out very well in the long term and not very mant people like to live under it Who knew!

What's with the increase of liberal teenager from reddit? Seeing more and more of these meme flags.

pdf related is the standard work about the collapse of the USSR from a leftist perspective.

The learning of history does that.

yes.

The USSR had a referendum on whether to dissolve or not and a majority of people voted to maintain it.

Yeah, they're still deluding themselves it's right around the corner, and "it's better now guise" full revisionism.

Gorbachov

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Dumb generals wanted WW2 part 2, so they demanded high military spending, which resulted in shortages in Civilian goods, which lead to some unrest. This helped corupt and greedy people like yeltsin and others + CIA to destroy the union.

The Soviet Union wouldn't have come to an end if its last leaders weren't huge anti-Stalinists

Wonder why anti-Stalinism became so easily acceptable?

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Pretty sure it had more to do with Stalins authoritarianism then Mr. Epic Cornman

Cornchev

On the contrary, Stalin is still the most greatest historical figure in Russia

Whoops, the greatest*

Planned economy.

Why didn't it immediately collapse in 1928 then?

Decentralization of power form general secretary,overt military spending and unwillingness to wage total war in Afghanistan.

Forgot to mention. Soviets should have stayed out of Afghanistan.

Because Stalin killed 38 MILLION people

The trots is set off. Everyone duck!

I would imagine that's likely mostly younger people who didn't actually experience what it was like and got brought up on Western propaganda.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Soviet_coup_d'état_attempt

And yet it wasn't the people who destroyed the state, but the political elite.

Well yeah that is congruent with what they said user. They are making the argument that the USSR collapsed because the dictatorship was not of the proletariat, but instead of the bureaucratic elite ergo the bureaucracy opted to become capitalist because they were opportunist.

That's only a possible line of reasoning for the second quoted post. The first and third are ahistorical trash that place the responsibility with the common people desiring change.

I agree the first quota was "Muh Red Fascism" but I can see the point the third post is making. The people of the USSR weren't able to democratically decide if they wanted to remain socialist(As socialist as they were) because they had no power to do so. I would call that authoritarian.

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Kind off. Majority of young people are apolitical brainlets. There is small, local pro capitalist minority, but most people vote populists and left wing. Our politicians are awful, thought.

Gorbachev created a
Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union
to diminish the power of
Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union

they had too much autonomy and power and Yeltsin used this to maneuver up until he could amend the constitution

A pizza.

Lack of internal legitimacy arising from a dissonance between rethoric and reality:
Soviet constitution promised freedom but reality was repression, internally and externally (1956 &1968)
Leadership promised better living standards and better working conditions, meritocracy, and these were achieved in limited amounts - but not to the standard of the claims made. Stagnation reduced the persuasiveness of the welfare legitimisation.
To pre-empt accusations of idealism: there are good material reasons for the repression and economic problems such as massive military expenditure due to hostile and vastly more powerful capitalist bloc led by USA. The Soviet leadership was well aware of these problems, but could never find a lasting solution. The collapse itself was due to the fact that neither the leadership nor the populace was willing to truly fight for the survival of the Soviet system - a lack of legitimacy.

I think it's impossible to deny that people wanted change, but that doesn't mean they wanted capitalist change.

Decent post.

kek

I don't think that really matters as the people had no power and the party preempted any attempt to rise up by just disbanding the system themselves.

Certain republics, mainly Baltic, wanted freedom from Russia and Nordic Style Socialism. Russians,too, wanted welfare state.

Other anons have made good points, but here's another one:

Setting overly high expectations/comparing themselves directly to the west. While Cornlord was the worst about it, the idea that high economic growth rates were sustainable and would lead to the USSR overtaking the USA (think "we will bury you) eventually caught up to the USSR. A lot of the growth of the Soviet Union was due to be it industrializing; such a phenomenon happens in both capitalist and socialist countries. When growth rates slowed in the USSR, the rhetoric didn't change.

Alongside that was the urge to dick-measure with the USA whenever and wherever possible, especially in the military sector. The USSR never had the economy to both fund a war machine and have western standards of living for its citizens. Reagan was an evil bastard but his strategy of creating an arms race worked.

So you're saying a socialized economy is inefficient and also doesn't even bring good living standards?

He's saying that centrally planned economies are great for delivering industrialization and a modest equality of basic goods and services but have historically failed at producing the largesse of consumption and luxury goods enjoyed by capitalist states. Cockshott himself discusses this when he mentions how Soviet planners couldn't keep up with constantly changing popular demand for different fashions and different types of luxury goods. Plus, all the best labor and resources went to the military, so when the Reaganites cranked up the Cold War the Soviets had to keep up, which constrained the resources available for the regular civilian economy.

It wasn't just dick measuring, the soviet leadership was genuinely terrified of American aggression either directly or via some German provocation that would drag the superpowers into a war. Since American idea of security means 'total strategic freedom' AKA absolute dominance (I guess from the period of nuclear hegemony?), the conflicting security requirements and security dilemma inevitably lead to an intensifying arms race, even when the leaders of both countries knew that any resources spent on military are essentially wasted.

It did trough
State owned MOP
State = Workers

The fact that it ailed caused the USSR to collapse.

Roses leave.

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Staggering new breakthrough in Marxist theory

It wasnt called Dictatorship of Proletariat without a reason

t.dogmatic reader of marx

During the Lenin years maybe and part of the Stalin ones, but the Party was filled with Petty-bourg revisionists and greedy opportunists after Stalin tbh.

Maybe Stalin?

If someone rename shit to jam, than you can eat it?

reminder that the ussr collapse is what happens when you buy the accelerationism meme

True in my native Republic.
Early party was amazing. Later year was bunch of apolitical brainlets who just wanted to get ahead in career and studies and traitors who are still in politics,

Man lithuania during the 1910s was revolutionary as fuck: Lenin said without the Lithuanians there would have been no bolshevik revolution.

contary to Holla Forums memes, it weren't jews but people from the baltics who were the most overrepresented amongst communists

Lack of class struggle in the Communist Party and State. The KGB was forbidden in the later years from doing regular audits, background checks and monitoring of party members, especially higher-ranked members. How do you think anticommunists like Gorbachev and Yeltsin (and their supporters) got into such high office? Stalin's theory of aggravation of class struggle under socialism meant that the security services was constantly weeding out disloyal, opportunistic of even outright anticommunists elements. Destalinization out an end to this. Wasn't just a problem in the USSR either, how did people like Milosevic or Deng Xiaoping come to power?

its not like nato was a threat or anything

But the problem is now how does one secure the party not at the behest of an authority, but as an independent force solely dedicated to revolutionary ideals? I think it is nigh impossible.

Whoops forgot to take off my shitposting flag.

funnily ennough those anti-stalinist were, for the most part, a bunch of senile fucks who got out of the wood by getting their mouths shut when Big J was around, so the nomenklatura was a shitfest of old gits and when the economy was stagnating none of them had a single idea on how to quickstart the soviet system, so they relied on the "yougest": the eternal pizza man who just decided to fuck it up for good.
The economical problems, stem them from earliest problems within the planning system, Centralism for the most part was inneficient and unresponsive towards some part of the soviet union and the system hold up because locals head of the party in those remote territory created "locals networks" in wich they shared assets and ressources to cope with the ineficiencies of the central planners that and corruption made the entire soviet economical system a jungle of arrangements, nepotism or even straight up incompetence that the soviet leaders were either unwilling or incapable to deal with at least before pizza man got into power

shoulda implemented cybersyn

It's not like Soviets had most powerfull weapon at the time nuke, and its not like tanks would be useless in WW3.

What I am saying is that Soviets had aged military doctrines because of dumb generals.

Besides, Lenin said that country doesen't need an army. It needs to have an armed population.

Completely unrealistic. Modern weapons and military organization is extremely complex and requires highly trained full-time troops. A "armed populace" wouldn't last a day against a modern army.

You know, you are actually right.
Numerous revolutions.
Soviet experience in Afghanistan.
American wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan don't prove anything. The best weapon of all time and for all times is a tank.

Basically, the USA was way too strong post WW2. It would have been nearly impossible for USA to fuck up so badly that the USSR would still be a thing by the 21st century. It probably would have happened sooner if the USA's foreign policy weren't so fucking stupid (Korea and trying to fight a Nazi masturbation fantasy with China, then Vietnam).

There are causal reasons why the USSR fell and Gorbachev did pull the pin that collapsed the whole thing, but the only way the USSR survives past 2000 is if their leadership is top-tier all throughout (no Brezhnev and gerontocracy), and the USA kept making the stupidest possible decisions (which only slowed down because the USA basically had no opportunities to seriously fuck up after the end of Vietnam). It wasn't necessarily an issue with the USSR having an inherently inefficient system (although they probably didn't have technology to do a planned economy the way they needed to, at least not until it was too late) - if the USSR were able to survive to 2010, the West would have been in big trouble as something like the Great Recession was bound to happen, while improving technology and a hopefully competent leadership would sort out the worst problems of the planned economy. But really, the USA just had to keep applying pressure and sit on their massive advantages post 1945, and avoid getting into a nuke war (which they still almost managed to fuck up thanks to stupid aggression). I don't see the Sino-Soviet split NOT happening even if you get leaders that aren't horrid like Stalin or Mao, and eventually China was going to come back to the USA to get with the side that would make them wealthier.