Why did Communism fail in Russia?

Why did Communism fail in Russia?

Coming over from Holla Forums, getting sick of the autistic no-source echo chamber memes and was wondering if you guys could give me a more satisfying answer to my question.

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union_referendum,_1991
revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/BlandRestoration.pdf
libcom.org/library/myth-mondragon-cooperatives-politics-working-class-life-basque-town.
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Define fail? At what point do you consider it failed? (not trying to be sarky, just interested because there are different answers based on different periods).

it's a difficult question to answer.
If you ask me it's because democratic centralism is fundamentally flawed since it allows for the unmandated creation of a bureaucratic elite, who eventually saw that it was in their best personally financial and material interest to revert to capitalism.

What do you mean by fail?
The soviet union was detroyed it didn't fall.
Remeber

It was once Communist, now it is not.
It failed.
How?

Russia was never communist

It went down the crapper for many reasons.
It was mostly due to liberalization, afghan war, and it was dissolved in an undemocratic fashion.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union_referendum,_1991
When asked if they should preserve the USSR, everyone approved overwhelmingly, but it was dissolved anyway.
Also, I wouldn't consider the USSR "communist", but I hope this helped you

It did, glad to be informed politely.

I would say mostly it failed due to extreme isolation. Even with a somewhat successful (state capitalist) economy there's not much you can do when you need to spend it all on sending dogs to space, warfare, counter espionage etc.
It's important to understand the USSR in relation to the cold war.

It wasn’t betrayed by traitors to socialism who slowly restored capitalism in the country and then finally destroyed from the inside.
revolutionarydemocracy.org/archive/BlandRestoration.pdf

This poster is also right. The “wild 90s” as the Russians call it led to millions of deaths of ordinary Russian workers and exploding crime and poverty.

Ah okay so you consider the USSR AES. It is considered by most people here that the USSR was never able to achieve economic socialism for a whole host of fucking reasons; however it was a Dictatorship of the Proletariat at its founding, that should be remembered.

As to why it fell specifically in 1991 (which btw was less of a fall but a dissolution managed by an elite in the RSFSR, Belorussian SSR and Ukrainian SSR who went against the will of those running the USSR and it's people [see the referendum that people have linked]) is down to a fusion of three reasons:
- Oil Price crash of the late '80s
- The morale erosion and monetary cost of teh Afghan war
- The attempts of Gorbachyov at reform

Now the last is blamed on its own, but without the former two Gorby could have reformed the USSR to a far more liberal (in the sense of political reform) society without the collapse of the leftist regime (using regime in the pure sense of the manner how a state functions). Gorby was NOT a Dengist, as he said: "Many of you see the solution to your problems in resorting to market mechanisms in place of direct planning. Some of you look at the market as a lifesaver for your economies. But, comrades, you should not think about lifesavers but about the ship, and the ship is socialism." Gorby wanted to save socialism, however his reforms triggered a cascade he could not prevent. If the USSR had been hit either by the cost of the Afghan war or the oil crisis dropping revenues alone it would have been fine: but both together ended the regime along wit Gorby's attempts at reform.

However, I believe the USSR failed to achieve socialism after the death of Lenin and the failure of Bukharin's clique to take control. But that is something else entirely.

Lenin was just too good for this world

Eh Chomsky is right that Lenin created the conditions for Stalin, but in he himself realised this and tried to stop Stalin's rise before it happened.

Tbh Zizek 2017 opened my eyes, the NEP was justified as it was Lenin's fallback plan since World Revolution failed. We would have FALGSC on Mars if the SPD hadn't had killed Rosa.

More like if Trotsky had managed to break Poland and link up with Bavaria, then Rosa could get guns and artillery

Bruv Rosa was dead by the time the Red Army had started winning the Polish-Soviet war.

Turns out economic planning ain't as easy as it sounds.

Seriously though, the most generous thing I can say is that their model of planning may not have been an ideal model, and that had they gone with a better system of calculation and allocation they would have had a higher standard of living, better military, etc.

And if you want to know why all the others failed, it's because they functioned the same as the USSR, on top of being dependent on them for economic and military protection.

The problem with the Soviet Union is fundamentally that they replaced private capitalists with bureaucrats. They didn't pay enough attention to what was going on in the workplace, and never abolished that fundamental class antagonism of surplus value producers and surplus value appropriators.

Got bad news for you, Holla Forums has been raiding us for weeks.

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*years

No the NEP was required to bring the USSR through the developmental stage between feudalism and socialism Hint hint, that's capitalism since the failure of the world revolution meant the USSR stood alone.

Supporting Bukharik not allowed.

What a stupid post.

Bukharin was the man the USSR needed and the man that would have saved it.

Because Communism doesn't work

:^)

unlike functional, stable capitalism.

The USSR never reached socialism in the first place. The revolution was a real proletarian revolution but after the failure of the world revolution and the death of lenin the USSR degenerated until it becamse just another component of global capital.

Viper I just canne.

Because it was a state capitalist bureaucracy.

Its pretty idealist to say that the ideas of the bolsheviks were what caused the fall of the USSR. The ideas of the bolsheviks were the end result of the conditions in russia and the USSR would have rose with or without them.

Keep in mind Marx never predicted a falling rate of profit as an obseravable empirical trend or that the falling rate of profit would cause capitalism to collapse. He predicted that the falling rate of profit could only be overcome by crisis.

what

Neither Communism nor Capitalism are good systems

Not OP, but I'm still a total brainlet
Could anyone recommend any books that would cover why it failed, or just how it progressed altogether?

this is objectively wrong

why isn't communism a good system?

The falling rate of profit is a result of any market system. It will happen in fascism.

The bolsheviks as indivuals weren't special. If lenin was never born someone else would have taken his place.

Friendly reminder that the real turd position is market socialism.

market socialism = capitalism

see

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ftfy

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and who said he was blaming Lenin?
my point is that their way of governing is fundamentally flawed and 'could have been altered'
the fact that you claim "material conditions" 'directly' influence the form of government is ridiculous and shows you completely lack an understanding of dialectical relationships.

Still better than having a boss or a state capitalism nomenklatura.

So you think the form of goverment the bolsheviks went with was completely their choice and had nothing to do with what was going on in russia?

Its probally worse than both. Co-ops force you to fuck over your freinds and co-workers for the sake of profit and exploit yourself in order to invest. It also generates false consiousness by giving workers a conflicting class interests of both workers and employers. You are your own boss in the worst possible way. Please read this: libcom.org/library/myth-mondragon-cooperatives-politics-working-class-life-basque-town. and watch the attached video. Stop fetishizing co-ops and read Marx.

Not really. Lenin noted Stalin was probably too rude for the position of Gen. Secretary, but that's about it.

Bukharin might've been Lenin's golden boy, but he noted flaws in everyone. I'd say it's pretty common among us leftists to pick out the flaws and ignore the good, although that isn't an excuse for dismissing reactionary behaviour entirely.

Nah Lenin was actively trying to stop Stalin from gaining power in the party: especially after the incident with his wife. He was even willing to give Trotsky more power, despite his fear Trotsky would become a Red Napoleon.

Capitalism cannot fail, because it just announces its winning, and that fixes it.