Question by T Mac: Why and how did communism fail in the USSR?
Why and how did communism fail in the USSR?
Answers and Views:
Answer by .
goes against human nature
people like to own stuff
people like to be able to earn and advance based on their own hard work, diligence, creativity, etc. When they are not allowed to, bad things happen.
communism, socialism, and fascism are some of the most depressing things I can think of. they also kill prosperity.
propogandists will tell a different story. drink it in if you like, but beware. some poisons taste soooo sweet….
reading assignment: ‘Atlas Shrugged’ by Ayn Rand (very long)
‘Anthem’ by Ayn Rand (very short)
Read all the answers in the comments.
What do you think?
fallenaway says
Soviet failures became evident in the 60s. In the 70s a workable alterantive appeared amongst the other experiments in Easter Europe that the Soviets extinquished.,
The Soviets failed to follow the Chinese model to foster economic liberalization, tolerance for a private shere, and a policy of opening and learning from the West.
"You can become rich. We will remain your political rulers."
hkyson says
The USSR was slowly going bankrupt even before the Reagan administration. The process accelerated with Reagan's "Star Wars Program."
This program proposed placing a lot of missiles in orbit and launching them from space once we detected a Soviet missile taking off and heading for the United States.
The program was to be completely automated, and the software to control it would have to be very complicated. Unfortunately, there was no way of testing this software under realistic conditions and debugging it, so it could never be relied on and writing it would be a humungous waste of money.
Also, it would have to work at the launch of the first missile. Many American technologists knew that the program was idiotic and would never work, and they refused to help develop the Star Wars system.
Star Wars, then, was really a bluff. The Russians were understandably too paranoid to believe this (they thought we would use these missiles for a pre-emptive strike) and started building their own system to counter it. This cost them gazillions of rubles and almost bankrupted them completely. (Our strategy was to get them to spend themselves into disintegration.)
When Gorbachev succeeded Chernenko in power, he knew that the Soviet Union did not have the money to defend against Star Wars, and he started to reach out to the United States and inaugurated a program of restructuring the Communist system with free-market elements (perestroika), coupled with a second program of glasnost (openness).
He stopped censoring the media, but he had unleashed a tidal wave of criticism, which he couldn't contain, and the Soviet Union soon fell apart.
Margaret Thatcher, who was the British prime minister at the time, sensed that Gorbachev was going to do this, and she really liked him.
Gorbachev also felt that it was aggressively stupid for both the United States and the Soviet Union to have enough ICBMs to destroy each other twenty times over, and proposed during an Iceland conference with Regan to eliminate all of them.
Reagan almost went for the deal, but his assistants at the conference successfully warned him away from going for it. But he and Gorbachev did reach a deal to greatly reduce the number of missiles the two countries had pointed at each other.
In time, there was a revolt by the orthodox communists against Gorbachev, but Yeltsin was able to keep them from succeeding. The Soviet Union then disintegrated and formed a confederation with the states it had previously annexed.
After this, Gorbachev came to the United States and was welcomed as a hero, and at about this time both countries stopped pointing their missiles at each other.
Right now, Gorbachev is allied with Putin because he feels that the United States has been irresponsible in wielding its power on the world stage. Increasing numbers of Americans are starting to agree with him, but so far not enough people in the Untied States have shown the political will to do anything about it.
The Democrats in the House are powerful enough to start pulling our troops out of Iraq by cutting off funding for the war, but they are scared shitless of doing this.
(Eventually we will have to do this, of course. But when we do, we will establish a power vacuum there that most likely will lead to civil war that will involve even more killing than is going on there right now.
(I think it is likely that the Shiites will eventually take over the country and start royally screwing both the Sunnis and the Kurds.
(Unfortunately, there will be nothing we can do about this. We won't have the money to keep our occupation of Iraq going for all that much longer–especially since we are financing it primarily by borrowing money from the Chinese.)
Harleigh Kyson Jr.
JRB says
Mr. Kyson, I was appreciating your comment as a nice summary of recent history that took me back to those curious days that were to me so unbelievable I thought it must surely be a communist trick. You also filled in details of which I was unaware. But you spent your intellectual capital in the fourth paragraph from the bottom. Vulgarity is pointless in intelligent discussion…or even in small talk. If you want to be appreciated for you knowledge and understanding and recollection by everyone, please consider that “you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar”.
SS says
It wasn't technically communism, it was socialism, in which the state owned and controlled everything. Some socialist governments do rather well (or rather, governments that have some socialist elements) but others, like in the USSR, catered to a decrepit elite that controlled goods and services and left the workers (those who supposedly the revolution was fought for) out in the cold. This is never a good mix, either in a capitalist system or socialist system.
So when Gorbachev came to power in 1985 (or 84?), he wanted to reform the socialist system. Glasnost (opening) and perestroika (restructuring) were essential elements to reform the old system. The problem with perestroika was that it would create economic growing pains (which it did) and because of glasnost (opening), people's frustrations were out there in the open.
There were lots of critiques of society in the 1980s, but not all against the USSR. There were many posters created that asked the younger generation to remember the sacrifices of the older generation in the great war–in fact, I specifically remember a poster that showed an old hand with a cane and in the other hand a sack of potatoes. you didn't see the face, but you saw the many decorations from military service (at that old, the person would have been a vet from WWII, or what they called the Great Patriotic War). In the background is a youth skateboarding.
So, jump to 1989. Gorbachev was pretty open about the other Eastern European revolutions, particularly the crumbling of the wall (there's an interesting "documentary" culled together from ABC news snippets called "The Fall of Communism" and you can get a sense of Gorby's reactions, albeit from the US press). 1991 Gorbachev and his wife Raisa were put under "house arrest" by a group of hard liners who thought his policies were taking Russia too far away from communism. These guys staged a coup d'etat to reinstate hardline communism. This was when Boris Yeltsin stood in his symbolic place on the white house steps and said the Russian military would not penetrate the government offices. But as far as I know, the soldiers had absolutely no intention of doing so. The hardliners didn't really have the military support they were counting on. This was the beginning of the end. By the end of the year, you had the Former Soviet Union (FSU) becoming the Commonwealth of Independent States and the move towards democratic elections.
So, I guess I'm suggesting that Gorby's policies, combined with a decrepit political system combined together to lead to the 1991 dissolution of the USSR.
Oh, and communism isn't gone, I don't think. Someone more knowledgeable might correct me, but isn't there a communist party still active in Russia?
Mike D says
Communism is an ideologically that can never succeed as a form of government. On paper it can look great but in reality it forgets the most important element in the equation – people. Did the USSR ever meet true communism as Marx would have it – no and I don't think they ever came close.
The Soviet Union was constantly in debt. It was poorly run and since everything was run by state, things happened at a slow place. It also led to mass corruption and poorly run programs. Think about this for a second – the Soviet Union has some of the most fertile farnland in the world – enough to feed the entire planet, yet year after year they were reduced to buy US wheat every year. Poor planning and communal farms resulted in food lines that went around the block in Moscow – can you imagine waiting for 5 hours for a loaf of bread and when getting it was moldy. Well that was the norm. Waiting in lines was a profession.
The government generally made sure people always had food, water and a place to live. The living situation was based on where you stood in the hierarchy of the communist party. If you didn't work for the party – most likely you lived in an apartment with your cousins, aunts, uncles or grandparents. I have heard nightmare stories about regular folk living condition. If you were a mid-party manager, you and your family would get a one bedroom walk up in the 8th floor (not the elevators worked anyway).
As gloomy as I'm making this sound – I am not exaggerating. Combine this with the fact your movement within your country was greatly restricted. Check points on the road were a common thing – random check points. Personal privacy was a joke and didn't exist.
Ronald Reagan had a lot to do with the fall of the Soviet Union. As the United States decided to revamped it's military, the Soviets want to keep pace. For years the Soviets and put out false numbers of the size of it's military and number nuclear tipped ICBM's. Well, as the US started spending billion on military equipment, the Soviets tried to match.
The Soviet Union eventually couldn't keep up with the US in production of weapons. The USSR simply was becoming bankrupt. As the older leadership was dying off – the new party leader came in control. Gorbachev came to power and realized the USSR was going to go totally under if they didn't try and repair relations with the west. This and the internal freedoms implemented (Glasnost) by the new Soviet government began the domino's toward the fall of the USSR.
Soviet satellite countries like Poland, East Germany and Yugoslavia were slowing breaking away from there grip. Once East Germany fell and the Berlin Wall came tumbling down – that was pretty much it. The Soviet Union was done – the people had enough of living like there parents had and wanted change.
Now, I just tried to give a quick over-view of what happened and I'm sure other people will mention other reason. Really it's putting them all together – the people got sick of what they were dealing with. Eventually once that happens, it's just a matter of time.
Today it's funny. Back in the 70's and 80's we knew who the bad guys were. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the bad guys look much different and play much differently (as seen on 9/11).
dman63 says
Communism failed in the USSR because it is so contrary to real life. Besides that, the Russian people woke up and realized they had been lied to since 1917, and they saw how much better off the West was. It was time to stop seeking inspiration from a corpse in Red Square and time to stop living a life centrally planned by a fossilized Moscow bureaucracy.
ARKdeEREH says
It was stricken in the late 80s because of Gorbachev's policies including Glasnost and others.
Although the Soviet Union's satelite countries in Eastern Europe switched to capitalism in 1989, the Soviets themselves hung out until shortly after Gorbachev's resignation and that of the Supreme Soviet in 1991. The Supreme Soviet was their version of a legislative branch.