After the Soviet collapse- A globe redrawn

[ray245]

Economist

TO RUSSIA’s once and possibly future president, Vladimir Putin, the collapse of the Soviet Union—two years after the fall of the Berlin Wall—was “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century. It set off shocks that were felt across the globe. Russians who lived through the ruinous inflation and currency woes of the early post-Soviet years paid a heavy price. Yet few ouside Russia lamented the passing of the century’s last failed empire.

Even Russians had seen worse. For them, the 20th century had already brought the first world war, with the Bolshevik grab for power, followed by Stalin’s self-induced famine, which killed millions. By contrast, the end of the cold war was hardly devastating. The post-1945 nuclear stand-off between the Soviet Union and the West had brought a perilous stability, but had generated proxy wars from Korea and Vietnam to Angola, Central America and Afghanistan—a continuation of cold war by more traditional bloody means. Indeed the collapse of Soviet influence around the world went unmourned outside Russia, except by those who had relied on it to seize and hold power. Yet how had the end come so fast? And how would it refashion a world forged over four decades of superpower domination and rivalry?

Some credit Ronald Reagan’s “star wars” dream of a missile-defence shield with engineering the Soviet demise: superior technology had threatened the Kremlin with a new, unaffordable arms race. Yet the Soviet Union could still have overwhelmed such defences simply by turning out ever more rockets—one reason the defences were never built. In many ways it was the Soviet Union that lost the cold war, rather than America that won it.

Aside from raw military might, every other source of apparent Soviet strength had been hollowing out for years. Central planning worked when progress could be marked in tonnes of steel or cement, or tanks and rockets. But its perverse incentives also led to factories churning out stuff no one wanted, while shops were empty of the things they craved, from fresh meat to fridges. Subtracting value—producing goods worth less in real terms than the materials used to make them—could not go on for ever. Meanwhile, shortages created a crime-ridden black economy that, by some estimates, was worth as much as 30% of the real one, perhaps more.

Even without the fall of the Berlin Wall, and under Mikhail Gorbachev’s new management, the Soviet Union would have struggled in vain (Russia struggles still) to adapt this behemoth to the information age and the microchip. Abroad, the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, Comecon, a trading block melded from the Soviet Union, seven European satellites, Mongolia, Cuba and eventually Vietnam, functioned only with massive Soviet subsidy and in worthless soft currencies. Imperial overstretch—financing guerrilla movements in Africa, Asia and Latin America and supporting cash-strapped and unloved regimes from Angola to Afghanistan—increased the strain.

Other recently expired empires, such as the British, Dutch, French, had left some residue for locals grudgingly to admire: habits of administration, a legal system, even just a useful language. Not the Soviet one. Its traces were quickly swept away as east Europeans dashed for freedom and free markets. But with it went a pattern of global order based on competition between the Soviet Union and America, and also in part on a battle for influence with a rising China within the communist and non-aligned worlds. As the Soviet Union deserted both battlefields, no corner of the world was left unchanged.

First the few pro-Soviet regimes, particularly Cuba and Vietnam, took a severe economic knock as friendship prices and raw-material subsidies first dwindled, then disappeared overnight. Trade links snapped. No longer able to sell its sugar, nickel and oranges at vastly inflated prices, or import artificially cheap Soviet oil, Cuba plunged into severe recession. By the mid-1990s its economy had shrunk by a third. Because it was bankrupt, Cuba was forced to stop propping up the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. It had to watch the fizzling of other Central American leftist insurrections. Funds were cut to Marxist movements throughout the continent.

Africa also felt the jolts. Cuban troops, originally shipped and airlifted in and sustained by Soviet military planners, were pulled out of Ethiopia in 1989 and two years later from Angola, where they had kept Marxist regimes in power. The communist threat collapsed across southern Africa as the war in Mozambique wound down. Concluding that communism, for long the great bogeyman of South African politics, no longer posed a threat, the country’s whites-only regime released Nelson Mandela from prison. It then allowed the free elections that swept away apartheid.

Yet if Africa had had too much big-power attention for its own good in the 1980s, after the Soviet collapse, arguably, it had too little. With the tussle for influence over, the world largely looked away as Rwanda was engulfed in genocide and Congo sank into interminable internal strife. Thus began a debate about who should keep the peace when there was none to keep.

In Asia, too, the proxy wars were over, but the thawing of the cold one still brought big changes. One loser was North Korea. In search of hard currency for its oil and weapons, Russia had already established new ties with more prosperous South Korea just before the Soviet collapse. A pragmatic China quickly followed. In Vietnam, loss of its Soviet backers led the regime to explore economic reforms and better relations with its neighbours—even, later, with America, its old enemy.

India had depended heavily on the Soviet Union for military hardware and political support against both China and Pakistan. America and China, with which India had once fought a disastrous border war, both had close ties to Pakistan. It took prickly India a long time but, having opened up to more Western investment, it then improved relations with America: a needed counterweight to a China that loomed larger as Russian influence and largesse fell away.

North-east Asia, meanwhile, was left trying to manage an awkward five-way balance between a rising China, a weakened Russia, a distracted America, an aspiring South Korea and an uncertain Japan. Despite healthy trade links, it still is.

In that cockpit of superpower rivalry, the Middle East, Soviet arms sales to Syria, Iraq and others had done nothing to advance the cause of peace between the Arab states and Israel. Now it was America’s moment: 1991 saw not only the success of the American-led coalition in the first Gulf war, but also the beginning of serious peace talks. Even the Palestinians’ leader, Yasser Arafat, realised there was no alternative now to American mediation, although Syria, Iraq and Iran rejected it. In the end Arafat too balked at a deal. Disappointment and then the September 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, took America’s attention, as the world turned upside-down once more.

And the supposed unipolar moment, when America was left to bestride a single-superpower world? To successive American administrations in the 1990s, dealing with Somalia, Rwanda, a nuclear-capable North Korea, UN Security Council divisions over weapons inspections in Iraq, the spreading violence of al-Qaeda and the rise of China, the new world order seemed more like chaos and disorder. With hindsight, a confusingly multipolar world was in the making even then.

[K. A. Pital]

For them, the 20th century had already brought the first world war, with the Bolshevik grab for power, followed by Stalin’s self-induced famine, which killed millions. By contrast, the end of the cold war was hardly devastating.

500,000 dead from nationalist wars in 1991-1996 alone (of them 177 thousand in the USSR proper) (World Bank poverty report), and over 1 million deaths which causes are attributed by medics to results of said collapse and privatization, is "hardly devastating"? The Economist must have had their head stuffed into their ass for so long they can't even think to describe factual consequences of the collapse. Now, this deathtoll is quite a bit larger factoring in the Second Chechnya war, the ongoing crises in the Caucasus, the year 1997 in the Tajikistan civil war, the new Russo-Georgian war, and quite certainly doesn't fit the "hardly devastating" description.

Subtracting value—producing goods worth less in real terms than the materials used to make them—could not go on for ever.

By that logic modern Russia should already be bankrupt.

Meanwhile, shortages created a crime-ridden black economy that, by some estimates, was worth as much as 30% of the real one, perhaps more.

Really? "By some estimates"? My grandma told me? Is that "The Economist" or the "Giant Lizard-Men Attack Daily"?

Even without the fall of the Berlin Wall, and under Mikhail Gorbachev’s new management, the Soviet Union would have struggled in vain (Russia struggles still) to adapt this behemoth to the information age and the microchip.

How much of U.S. GDP is generated by microchip production? Last time I saw, the Fortune 500 had oil giants composing a large fraction of US GDP. But silly me.

Other recently expired empires, such as the British, Dutch, French, had left some residue for locals grudgingly to admire: habits of administration, a legal system, even just a useful language. Not the Soviet one.

Oh, I guess the reinstallation of Sharia in Central Asia was a move for "freedom and free markets". But hey. What do I know.

Let's dash for DEATH and free markets.

I guess this graph doesn't fit the Economist's little feel-good article.

Its traces were quickly swept away as east Europeans dashed for freedom and free markets.

So far as I know even Poland still has universal healthcare. What a load of self-serving righteous crap. And how about Central Asians, you Western-centered fucktards?

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

The Economist is well known for its very English centered point of view that is anachronistic and harks back to the time of the British Empire.

Some people just can't live with the times.

[Starglider]

How much of U.S. GDP is generated by microchip production? Last time I saw, the Fortune 500 had oil giants composing a large fraction of US GDP. But silly me.

Virtually every first world industry is heavily dependent on computers. Widespread, cheap microcomputers and embedded microprocessors are responsible for a lion's share of the 80s and 90s productivity growth. Microprocessor production has no economic value on its own (unless the chips are exported), but the benefits on the rest of the economy are immense. They are of course also critical for many modern military systems. By the time the USSR fell, its capabilities in this area were trailed the west by about two decades. The US was embargoing export of most relevant technologies to the USSR quite effectively (not that it had the hard currency to pay for them anyway), and the develoment of the IT industry was something particularly suited to the US hyper-capitalist Sillicon Valley startup-culture and unsuited to the USSR's design bureau system.

[K. A. Pital]

Virtually every first world industry is heavily dependent on computers.

Producing computers and being dependent on them is not the same. How many Third World nations without a computer embargo against them achieved a life level similar to that of the USSR? I am merely saying that judging by the amount of high-tech production in a nation is a piss poor way to discern it's social stability.

Many nations of the Third World are fucking stone age, and North Korea which is technologically in the late 1940s is still standing on it's foot. The USSR, a nation with superior life standards and and superior high tech industry (to those nations) collapsed.

Therefore, the explanation of lacking high-tech industry is basically a cheap cop-out in answering a complex question.

The US was embargoing export of most relevant technologies to the USSR quite effectively (not that it had the hard currency to pay for them anyway), and the develoment of the IT industry was something particularly suited to the US hyper-capitalist Sillicon Valley startup-culture and unsuited to the USSR's design bureau system.

I'm not disputing that.

Oh, and another nice illustration for that Economist ignoramus.

Perhaps it could explain just why those stupid Russians keep lamenting the Soviet collapse which he thought was "hardly devastating".

[Starglider]

I am merely saying that judging by the amount of high-tech production in a nation is a piss poor way to discern it's social stability.

High-tech is necessary to maintain growth in productivity. The USSR was already crippled by central planning, failure to develop high-tech turned the gap between its industrial output and the West's into a yawning gulf (as well as making military obsolesence invitable). Ironically, sophisticated information networks could actually have made central planning work efficiently, though they could do little to stem the endemic corruption, so even that fantasy is unviable.

Many nations of the Third World are fucking stone age

Third world nations do not pretend to be the equals of the First World. The USSR did. The theory that the USSR's fall is attributable to economic problems assumes that the citizens of the USSR looked at the West and said 'we could have that level of propsperity, if only we were not living under Communism'. Although that sentiment is correct, I do not personally subscribe to that theory (that individual dissatisfaction with economic growth was a primary cause of the fall of the USSR). Rather, the obvious economic weakness and looming military weakness of the USSR emboldened activists whose primary motivations were political (for the most part, opposition to various forms of Soviet oppression).

North Korea which is technologically in the late 1940s is still standing on it's foot. The USSR, a nation with superior life standards and and superior high tech industry (to those nations) collapsed.

North Korea isn't occupying a large empire of vassal states. Furthermore, as a tiny country it can present merely resisting foreign invasion as a propaganda victory. The USSR set the bar so high that it had to win against US influence on the world stage to score propaganda victories.

Perhaps it could explain just why those stupid Russians keep lamenting the Soviet collapse which he thought was "hardly devastating".

The article claims that it was not devastating compared to a world war, or Stalin's purges. Which is correct; the human and economic damage, while severe, was not on the scale of those calamaties.

[Teebs]

The Economist is well known for its very English centered point of view that is anachronistic and harks back to the time of the British Empire.

Some people just can't live with the times.

To be fair, it's a British magazine published in Britain and I assume most of its sales come from Britain despite its international standing. I don't see why it's anachronistic for it to ahve something of a British focus.

[K. A. Pital]

High-tech is necessary to maintain growth in productivity.

Do you hear what I am saying? I am talking about a government and a social order remaining stable.

Third world nations do not pretend to be the equals of the First World.

That is irrelevant, they have not collapsed. They are likewise uncompetitive versus the First World, and they have no high tech industry to speak of. Yet they are stable.

The USSR set the bar so high that it had to win against US influence on the world stage to score propaganda victories.

That is a little more complex than "US microchips = WIN", isn't it now? Perhaps if the USSR was more satisfied with having a local dominion a-la China and not a global empire, it could've well existed in it's corner of the world. I will re-iterate that for you: "Therefore, the explanation of lacking high-tech industry is basically a cheap cop-out in answering a complex question."

The article claims that it was not devastating compared to a world war, or Stalin's purges. Which is correct; the human and economic damage, while severe, was not on the scale of those calamaties.

The article makes no differentiation between that era and the modern age. In the modern age, in absence of World Wars, and in relatively industrialized areas, such calamities were quite unprecended. Losing 170 000 men in the early XX century is pebbles, especially for larger powers involved in wars, etc - hard to find a nation that didn't lose that much. Losing 170 000 men in the post-1980s era is not pebbles. It's a very high deathtoll for the time, and the level of economic and industrial development achieved.

Hence my comment that "hardly devastating" is a ridiculous and false description of events. Should I compare the 2009 financial crisis in India with consequence of the Bengal famine? No? Why the fuck does the author feel inclined to make such comparisons? It's bad writing at best.

[Starglider]

High-tech is necessary to maintain growth in productivity.

Do you hear what I am saying? I am talking about a government and a social order remaining stable.

You are ignoring the bulk of my post the same way that you ignore the bulk of the original article, focusing on single sentences you can strawman and wall-of-ignorance. This is in fact why I didn't bother to critique the rest of your knee-jerk original response - the comment on microprocessors stood out as so obviously ludicrous that I knew you would have no support for it other than wall-of-ignorance.

Third world nations do not pretend to be the equals of the First World.

That is irrelevant, they have not collapsed.

Ditto. Actually I'm going to give you a taste of your own medicine and declare everything you say from now on 'irrelevant', because apparently you can't follow a chain of logic that spans over more than one sentence, and thus you aren't worth debating with.

Losing 170 000 men in the early XX century is pebbles, especially for larger powers involved in wars, etc - hard to find a nation that didn't lose that much.

Yes, that is the point the author was making.

Losing 170 000 men in the post-1980s era is not pebbles. It's a very high deathtoll for the time, and the level of economic and industrial development achieved.

A 30 year gap is a blink of an eye in historical terms. Events of comparable death toll were ongoing in Africa, Cambodia etc, and I see no reason to make this a special case.

[Sarevok]

If the USSR survived to the 90s would not they have developed their own version of IT ? The soviets may not have marketing buzzspeak and powerpoint slides but they had lots of real engineers and mathematicians. I wonder what they would have produced once they gained access to 90s computer tech. The internet, databases, cellular networks etc could be very effective tools for soviets centralised system for running the country.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

The Economist is well known for its very English centered point of view that is anachronistic and harks back to the time of the British Empire.

Some people just can't live with the times.

To be fair, it's a British magazine published in Britain and I assume most of its sales come from Britain despite its international standing. I don't see why it's anachronistic for it to ahve something of a British focus.

You mean the right wing British focus? It's not unknown to much of the world that the British elite still subscribe and cling to many old ideas, which is why they often share the same foreign policy goals as America does.

[K. A. Pital]

You are ignoring the bulk of my post the same way that you ignore the bulk of the original article, focusing on single sentences you can strawman and wall-of-ignorance. This is in fact why I didn't bother to critique the rest of your knee-jerk original response - the comment on microprocessors stood out as so obviously ludicrous that I knew you would have no support for it other than wall-of-ignorance.

You know, if "the bulk" of your post had any sense in it, I'd not ignore it. But then, it had none (other than claiming a necessity of having high-tech industries for a nation, which in the 1980s was not the case for, let me see, probably around 90-85% of the world's population).

A 30 year gap is a blink of an eye in historical terms. Events of comparable death toll were ongoing in Africa, Cambodia etc

Have I claimed it to be a special case? Your point is what? That the collapse of the USSR was as disastrous and devastating as African civil wars? Thanks for admitting that it was one of the most horrific examples of mass suffering in the 1980s. I claimed nothing more, if you bothered to read my post.

Let's return to your original "response" post:

Virtually every first world industry is heavily dependent on computers.

First World is what, 15% of the world's population or less? The number of nations existing and continuing to exist in the 1980s without any high-tech industries outnumbers the First World by an order. The existence of high tech industries is not necessary for national survival. Let's repeat: the existence of high tech industries is not necessary for national survival.

Widespread, cheap microcomputers and embedded microprocessors are responsible for a lion's share of the 80s and 90s productivity growth.

Which is related to my statement how?

Microprocessor production has no economic value on its own (unless the chips are exported), but the benefits on the rest of the economy are immense.

Which is related to my statement how?

They are of course also critical for many modern military systems. By the time the USSR fell, its capabilities in this area were trailed the west by about two decades.

Which is related to my statement how?

The US was embargoing export of most relevant technologies to the USSR quite effectively (not that it had the hard currency to pay for them anyway), and the develoment of the IT industry was something particularly suited to the US hyper-capitalist Sillicon Valley startup-culture and unsuited to the USSR's design bureau system.

Which I never disputed in the first place, and which is related to my statement how?

See, Starglider, when you learn to actually reply to another person's post, instead of making your own statements that you just wanted to speak out, but which were largely irrelevant, and in no way actually disputed by me (show me where I disputed a single statement of yours here?), maybe then I will consider having a discussion with you.

I have no desire to hear Starglider's "Artistic Monologue on how important IT is for the First World" - guess what, the sky is blue and everyone knows that, including myself. That is not relevant in any way to the point I was making, which was a perfect ability for survival for nations without high-tech industries. Not "increasing productivity". Not "becoming First World". But surviving. Got that?

And my statement about a large fraction of U.S. GDP - and especially that of the 1980s - being composed of non high-tech industries, is an illustration that non-high tech sectors can be large enough to be a large economy on their own. Which once again leads to the same idea that high-tech industries, while critical for progress, are absolutely irrelevant for survival. A national baseline industry is sufficient for survival. End of story.

[Edi]

Starglider, you are hardly doing yourself any favors here. You answered to a minor quip in Stas's first post and ignored the point he was making about social stability. You then harped some more on economic growth and production even when that was at best tangential to the subject and then get pissy when your irrelevant tangent gets dismissed as irrelevant.

WTF is your malfunction?

[K. A. Pital]

I don't understand how "important for First World productivity growth" transforms to "critical for national survival" in Starglider's mind. Those are things so different it's hard to pair them. Here's the original claim to which I replied:

Even without the fall of the Berlin Wall, and under Mikhail Gorbachev’s new management, the Soviet Union would have struggled in vain (Russia struggles still) to adapt this behemoth to the information age and the microchip.

What is "in vain"? If by "in vain" he means that Russia would suffer a far milder economic crisis, or that many hundreds of thousands of men wouldn't end up dead in local wars, and over a million due to the rapid collapse, well, that's "in vain". I guess a nation can't exist without microchips, or what? Or non-high tech industries cannot support a large economy? What did the author mean?

Starglider, if you're out to defend that bullshit part of the bullshit article, I'm all ears. How is "information age" and "microchip" suddenly making all other economy irrelevant, and why a technologically less advanced economy could not simply linger on, with far less disastrous consequences? Many economies of the 1980s had no high-tech sector to speak of, and were not just decades behind the West, but simply lacking own aerospace, computer industries. They continued without such major hurdles, regardless of technological backwardness and complete absence of such industries. Meanwhile the USSR had it's own aerospace and computer industries, which, regardless of inferiority to the First World, were superior to the Third World nations that had none such industries whatsoever and yet for some reason those nations still had an economy, you know.

Hence, First World technology is not important for national survival or for continuation of economic develoment. Ouch.

As for Starglider's claim that "the USSR was already crippled by central planning", I'd love for him to explain just what he meant by that? Perhaps the fact that the USSR rapidly improved Russia and Central Asia from what was more like an Indian or Chinese model of development into an industrial, more European-style model of development? I'll quote:

The second axis is international comparisons. These are the only way to see Soviet performance in perspective. The Bolsheviks measured the USSR against the United States, and during the Cold War the Americans did the same. I compare the Soviet Union to the advanced capitalist countries, too, but I emphasize comparisons withless developed countries as well. In many respects the Soviet Union in the 1920s had morein common with Asia, the Middle East and Latin America than it did with Germany or the United States. These similarities underlay the attraction of Soviet development models to leaders of Third World countries in the 1950s,1960s and 1970s: if the USSR could transform itself from an agrarian backwater into a superpower, maybe their countries could to the same.

Indeed, when compared to poor, Third World countries, Soviet performance was extremely good, even taking account of the post-1970s growth slowdown. This record prompts one to look for policies and institutions that worked well rather than the usual cataloguing of reasons why the system was bound to fail. It also raises the question of whether there are positive lessons to learn from the Soviet experience.

[...]

Third, the division between the rich countries and the poor countries has been exceptionally stable. Very few countries have switched groups. Japan is remarkable for outstripping the poor countries and joining the rich. Possibly, Taiwan and South Korea, Japan's former colonies, are doing the same thing. In contrast, the southern cone of Latin America - Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay - has gone the other way. In the late XIX century, they were as rich as the advanced countries of Europe and were closely integrated into the world economy. Subsequent growth has been slow, and they have fallen into the company of poor countries. Otheriwse, the divisions have been stable.

Fourth, the Soviet Union grew rapidly in comparison to the other countries of the world. This stands out for the 1928-1970 period, when the planning system was working well, and also obtains - less dramatically - when comparisons are made over the whole 1928-89 period. [...]

Russia started from a lower base and did not catch up, although the Soviet Union grew faster than the West after 1929 and cut the gap that had opened up at the start of the planning period.

[...] The rest of the world is poor and has an unimpressive growth record. Figure 1.4 compares Soviet income levels to those in Latin America. The southern cone (Argentina, Chile and Uruguay) had a European standard of living in the late nineteenth century, but has achieved only limited growth since. By 1989, these countries were surpassed by the USSR. The rest of Latin America started off poor in 1820 and grew at about the same rate as Russia and the USSR to 1928.Thereafter the Soviet Union grew faster and realized a higher level of income in 1989.

Soviet performance is much more impressive when the rest of the world is the standard. In the late nineteenth century, South-East Asia (Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines) grew, like Russia, through integration into the world economy. Growth then slowed until the very recent years. The Middle East (here represented by Turkey, Egypt and Morocco) and China made little progress for much of the century but have also begun to grow in the past generation. GDP growth in South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Burma) was more lethargic and almost neglible in Black Africa, which remains at pre-industiral income level. As Figure 1.5 makes clear, the Soviet Union grew rapidly since 1928 and had achieved an income level in 1989 several times taht of any of these regions.

This point can be buttressed by comparing incomes in Soviet Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyztan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan) and the north Caucases republics (Armeia, Azerbajan and Georgia) with those in adjoining parts of the middle East and South Asia. These Soviet republics were in a pristinely premodern state in the 1920s that was no more advanced than neighboring regions outside the Soviet Union. In 1989, these republics were still poorest of the USSR, but they had attained a per capita GDP of $5257 per year. This exceeded incomes in most developing neighboring states - for example, Turkey with an average income of $3989 or Iran with an income of $3662 - to say nothing of the poorer neighbors like Pakistan at $1542 or war-torn Afghanistan which Maddison guessed had an income of $1000 per head. The Soviet populations in Central Asia and the north Caucuses experience substantially more income growth than their counterparts in neighboring countries who started the XX century in similar circumstances.

[...]

Outside of the OECD, few countries had made much progress. In most countries, about three quarters of the population was agricultural. This was the proportion in teh Russian Empire in 1913. Industrial collapse during the Civil War (1918-21) pushed it up to 82 percent in 1926 (Davies 1990, p. 251). In keeping with their higher incomes at the time, the agricultural fraction was much lower in Argentina, Chile, Venezuela and Czechoslovakia.

In the XX century, countries where the non-European pattern predominated had population explosions that have frustrated development efforts and contributed to the divergence in per capita income. The demographic patterns c. 1900 suggest that Russia's destiny was closer to India's than to Germany's.

[...]
The tsars did not lay the groundwork for the rapid, capitalist development. In the absence of communist revolution and the Five-Year plans, Russia would have remained as backward as much of Latin America or, indeed, South Asia.

So is the high life standard achieved an example of "ruin" or what in Starglider's view? Or is he just being dense?

Here are the illustrations:
USSR vs. the First World (USA and Europe)
USSR vs. the First World (Asia)
USSR vs. Latin America
USSR vs. the rest of Third World
Clearly the USSR has surpassed many nations by 1989. Computers are not critical for national survival or attaining a high standard of life, neither are they a critical reason of collapse.

[PeZook]

To add insult to injury, the poverty level only began dropping in 2005, edging down by 2% from the "magic number" of 20% it was stuck at since 1995.

There are no newer poverty data available so far, but income has been growing by about 8% since, around 3% higher than typical inflation rates. So it took almost two decades to really start recovering (socially) from the fall of communism.

Of course, I don't really agree that the PRL was viable in the long term. The constant economic crises kind of shoots the idea right there, but it doesn't change the fact it still took two decades to recover, despite the fact that 1989 was already a year of economic hardship (which were, after all, the principal reason for the fall)

[K. A. Pital]

Of course, I don't really agree that the PRL was viable in the long term.

I don't think Soviet-backed East European states were viable either. Forcing a huge political hammer on Eastern Europe that demanded of these nations to follow every Soviet advice was the largest blunder of Soviet foreign policy and perhaps the worst of them. It made the US pressure on the USSR relentless, while other nations could've rested in their backyards, and the situation inside the Soviet bloc unstable. The USSR would've been better off letting those nations go and follow their own way. Milder foreign political pressure a-la USSR-Finland or USSR-Yugoslavia was a better model and required far less effort on behalf of the superpower itself, including financial effort as well.

I mean, even without Soviet pressure in the wake of WWII, many of those nations would most likely fall under Soviet influence.

And indeed, what the article completely overlooks is that Gorbachov's ill-devised attempts at both economic improvement and political reform at the same time sent a nation into an economic crisis which worsened the situation even vs. Brezhnew era. 1987's reforms ushered a number of crisis trends in the Soviet economy previously unseen (rapid inflation and thus sharpening deficit were one of them).

Instead it focuses criticism on the "zastoi" period of the USSR, which was nothing but a period of mild extensive growth, and clearly not a reason for the abrupt collapse. The heat-up of the late 1980s' nationalism is also completely ignored as a factor. Lackluster and primitive carboard statement about "First World triumph" actually fail to demonstrate the real reasons of said triumph, which were far from the First World's overwhelming economic advantages, and mostly lie inside the Second World nations themselves. And those reasons weren't all as simple as "lack of high tech" or "imperial overstrain with wars in Afghanistan and Africa", but far more, and really more complex. *sighs*

Starglider's idea that "First World productivity growth" is required for a nation's government to survive is simply not supported by evidence. For example, here's Mexico. Labour productivity growth from 1992 to 2008: 0.1, -1.6, -0.1, -6.5, -1.3, -0.3, 4.9, 0.3, 6.1, 1.2, -2.8 , 2.3, 1, -0.6, 2.7 , 2.1, -2.1. Not a stellar record by any means, but clearly the government was afloat. And it had far less means to stay afloat than a superpower. Less internal order, less military power. More prone to riots. Basically, the USSR as it was, with it's military machine and political order, could've persevered into the 2000s with little needed for that but political will of the government to supress nationalist sentiments and possible riots.

Sure, Eastern Europe would've collapsed, but by no means "economic determinism" required exactly such a collapse in the USSR proper. The British Empire collapsed, but it's metropole, nearly bankrupt as it was for the World War, still survived and lingered on. When we speak of economic determinism, usually it's a plethora of possible outcomes, which are decided by politics more than economics in the end. The implosion of many nations was neither unavoidable, nor "destined" to happen the way it did.

[Big Orange]

On a related note there was a poll taken on the Neoliberal "Free" Market and the collapse of the Soviet, with largely unsurprising results:

Free market flawed, says survey
Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a new BBC poll has found widespread dissatisfaction with free-market capitalism.

In the global poll for the BBC World Service, only 11% of those questioned across 27 countries said that it was working well. Most thought regulation and reform of the capitalist system were necessary. There were also sharp divisions around the world on whether the end of the Soviet Union was a good thing.

Economic regulation

In 1989, as the Berlin Wall fell, it was a victory for ordinary people across Eastern and Central Europe. It also looked at the time like a crushing victory for free-market capitalism. Twenty years on, this new global poll suggests confidence in free markets has taken heavy blows from the past 12 months of financial and economic crisis.

More than 29,000 people in 27 countries were questioned. In only two countries, the United States and Pakistan, did more than one in five people feel that capitalism works well as it stands. Almost a quarter - 23% of those who responded - feel it is fatally flawed. That is the view of 43% in France, 38% in Mexico and 35% in Brazil. And there is very strong support around the world for governments to distribute wealth more evenly. That is backed by majorities in 22 of the 27 countries. If there is one issue where a global consensus seems to emerge from the survey it is this: there are majorities almost everywhere wanting government to be more active in regulating business.

It is only in Turkey that a majority want less government regulation. Opinion about the disintegration of the Soviet Union is sharply divided. Europeans overwhelmingly say it was a good thing: 79% in Germany, 76% in Britain and 74% in France feel that way. But outside the developed West it is a different picture. Almost seven in 10 Egyptians say the end of the Soviet Union was a bad thing and views are sharply divided in India, Kenya and Indonesia.

BBC

And here's a graph on opinion about collapse of the USSR:

No surprise there.

And here's a graph on deregulated Capitalism:

It's not surprising how inverted Mexico and America are, but I'm mildly surprised about France.

[MKSheppard]

The Economist is well known for its very English centered point of view that is anachronistic and harks back to the time of the British Empire.

Some people just can't live with the times.

Actually, the Economist is actually a pretty good magazine. My late friend who was quite liberal leaning, and who also worked in the CIA at an analyst used to send me clippings of it at semi-regular intervals; usually relating to the "Good Old Days" of the Evil Empire.

My favorite was the one detailing how fucked up the STASI was, with it's huge files on everyone.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

The Economist is well known for its very English centered point of view that is anachronistic and harks back to the time of the British Empire.

Some people just can't live with the times.

Actually, the Economist is actually a pretty good magazine. My late friend who was quite liberal leaning, and who also worked in the CIA at an analyst used to send me clippings of it at semi-regular intervals; usually relating to the "Good Old Days" of the Evil Empire.

My favorite was the one detailing how fucked up the STASI was, with it's huge files on everyone.

It has good articles.

But when it comes to ideological leanings, you start to see their bias which rankles.

[Shroom Man 777]

Angolan regime? How can they call the faction backed up by USSR and Cuba a regime when the opposition factions like UNITA was backed up by fucking Apartheid South Africa? Didn't frickin' Nelson Mandela actually support the Cuban intervention? Hell, UNITA lost and the MPLA won.

EDIT:

Yeah, totally backing up a regime, all-fucking-right.

[Darth Wong]

TO RUSSIA’s once and possibly future president, Vladimir Putin, the collapse of the Soviet Union—two years after the fall of the Berlin Wall—was “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century. It set off shocks that were felt across the globe. Russians who lived through the ruinous inflation and currency woes of the early post-Soviet years paid a heavy price. Yet few ouside Russia lamented the passing of the century’s last failed empire.

Why should it be important that few people outside Russia lamented the passing of the Soviet Union?

Even Russians had seen worse. For them, the 20th century had already brought the first world war, with the Bolshevik grab for power, followed by Stalin’s self-induced famine, which killed millions. By contrast, the end of the cold war was hardly devastating. The post-1945 nuclear stand-off between the Soviet Union and the West had brought a perilous stability, but had generated proxy wars from Korea and Vietnam to Angola, Central America and Afghanistan—a continuation of cold war by more traditional bloody means. Indeed the collapse of Soviet influence around the world went unmourned outside Russia, except by those who had relied on it to seize and hold power. Yet how had the end come so fast? And how would it refashion a world forged over four decades of superpower domination and rivalry?

If the author's only point is that Putin engages in excessive hyperbole by describing the collapse of the Soviet Union as the worst geopolitical disaster of the 20th century, then it's a slam dunk. The 20th century contained some truly horrific disasters and atrocities. However, I get the feeling he's not going to be satisfied with this point, and will instead use it as a springboard for a bunch of generic "communism bad, capitalism good" writing.

Some credit Ronald Reagan’s “star wars” dream of a missile-defence shield with engineering the Soviet demise: superior technology had threatened the Kremlin with a new, unaffordable arms race. Yet the Soviet Union could still have overwhelmed such defences simply by turning out ever more rockets—one reason the defences were never built. In many ways it was the Soviet Union that lost the cold war, rather than America that won it.

Aside from raw military might, every other source of apparent Soviet strength had been hollowing out for years. Central planning worked when progress could be marked in tonnes of steel or cement, or tanks and rockets. But its perverse incentives also led to factories churning out stuff no one wanted, while shops were empty of the things they craved, from fresh meat to fridges. Subtracting value—producing goods worth less in real terms than the materials used to make them—could not go on for ever. Meanwhile, shortages created a crime-ridden black economy that, by some estimates, was worth as much as 30% of the real one, perhaps more.

Yes, I remember reading about the thriving black market in the USSR. Having said that, "churning out stuff no one wanted" is hardly a specific feature of communism. In fact, capitalist economies tend to do this in spades; chronic over-supply is part of the capitalist model (it is, in fact, required in order to make its pseudo-Darwinian competition system work as intended). It could in fact be argued that capitalism is inherently wasteful as a result of encouraging chronic over-supply, albeit not prone to shortages.

Even without the fall of the Berlin Wall, and under Mikhail Gorbachev’s new management, the Soviet Union would have struggled in vain (Russia struggles still) to adapt this behemoth to the information age and the microchip. Abroad, the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, Comecon, a trading block melded from the Soviet Union, seven European satellites, Mongolia, Cuba and eventually Vietnam, functioned only with massive Soviet subsidy and in worthless soft currencies. Imperial overstretch—financing guerrilla movements in Africa, Asia and Latin America and supporting cash-strapped and unloved regimes from Angola to Afghanistan—increased the strain.

(emphasis added) If Russia continues to struggle to adapt to the information age, then doesn't that undercut the point the author is making about its failure to do so earlier being due to communism? It is difficult to transform an entire economy; the so-called "rust belt" portions of the United States are testament to this fact. Entire regional economies in the "rust belt" struggled to adapt to higher-tech information age manufacturing, and many show no signs that they will ever recover. What if that kind of transition is simply very difficult and painful for practical reasons, which a writer in the Economist might not understand because he doesn't actually know jack shit about manufacturing, and his idea of "production" is to sit at a keyboard and tap out articles?

Other recently expired empires, such as the British, Dutch, French, had left some residue for locals grudgingly to admire: habits of administration, a legal system, even just a useful language. Not the Soviet one. Its traces were quickly swept away as east Europeans dashed for freedom and free markets. But with it went a pattern of global order based on competition between the Soviet Union and America, and also in part on a battle for influence with a rising China within the communist and non-aligned worlds. As the Soviet Union deserted both battlefields, no corner of the world was left unchanged.

That's obviously because of sheer duration.

First the few pro-Soviet regimes, particularly Cuba and Vietnam, took a severe economic knock as friendship prices and raw-material subsidies first dwindled, then disappeared overnight. Trade links snapped. No longer able to sell its sugar, nickel and oranges at vastly inflated prices, or import artificially cheap Soviet oil, Cuba plunged into severe recession. By the mid-1990s its economy had shrunk by a third. Because it was bankrupt, Cuba was forced to stop propping up the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. It had to watch the fizzling of other Central American leftist insurrections. Funds were cut to Marxist movements throughout the continent.

News flash: global instability causes regional changes. This is virtually a tautology. What the hell is the point of even saying it? If anything, it suggests that it would have been far less destructive if the Soviet Union had undergone a controlled change to a freer market economy (as China is doing) rather than the violent shift that occurred. While Putin may be overstating the issue by describing the Soviet collapse as the worst geopolitical disaster of the entire 20th century, this guy is increasingly making his point for him by showing how a great many people needlessly suffered as a result of it.

Africa also felt the jolts. Cuban troops, originally shipped and airlifted in and sustained by Soviet military planners, were pulled out of Ethiopia in 1989 and two years later from Angola, where they had kept Marxist regimes in power. The communist threat collapsed across southern Africa as the war in Mozambique wound down. Concluding that communism, for long the great bogeyman of South African politics, no longer posed a threat, the country’s whites-only regime released Nelson Mandela from prison. It then allowed the free elections that swept away apartheid.

Yet if Africa had had too much big-power attention for its own good in the 1980s, after the Soviet collapse, arguably, it had too little. With the tussle for influence over, the world largely looked away as Rwanda was engulfed in genocide and Congo sank into interminable internal strife. Thus began a debate about who should keep the peace when there was none to keep.

See above. Again, this guy seems to be undercutting his own point. The Soviet Union's collapse had many global geopolitical ramifications, some of which were arguably very harmful. And the idea that South African apartheid was toppled as a result of the fall of the Soviet Union seems like it requires much more supporting evidence than this guy's say-so.

In Asia, too, the proxy wars were over, but the thawing of the cold one still brought big changes. One loser was North Korea. In search of hard currency for its oil and weapons, Russia had already established new ties with more prosperous South Korea just before the Soviet collapse. A pragmatic China quickly followed. In Vietnam, loss of its Soviet backers led the regime to explore economic reforms and better relations with its neighbours—even, later, with America, its old enemy.

Oh, come on. The reason for limited trade with the US prior to 1995 was not Vietnam's prior reluctance, but the fact that the US was still smarting over losing the Vietnam War, and had trade sanctions in place. Obviously, losing a major customer for export goods will be terribly destructive to a nation's economy in the short term, but again, that only feeds the argument that the rapid collapse of the Soviet Union was actually a bad thing. A more gradual transition would have been less painful for all involved.

India had depended heavily on the Soviet Union for military hardware and political support against both China and Pakistan. America and China, with which India had once fought a disastrous border war, both had close ties to Pakistan. It took prickly India a long time but, having opened up to more Western investment, it then improved relations with America: a needed counterweight to a China that loomed larger as Russian influence and largesse fell away.

North-east Asia, meanwhile, was left trying to manage an awkward five-way balance between a rising China, a weakened Russia, a distracted America, an aspiring South Korea and an uncertain Japan. Despite healthy trade links, it still is.

Again, we're back to the tautology that rapid global change results in local change as well; virtually a tautology. I'm not even sure what point he's making here, except to hear himself talk.

In that cockpit of superpower rivalry, the Middle East, Soviet arms sales to Syria, Iraq and others had done nothing to advance the cause of peace between the Arab states and Israel. Now it was America’s moment: 1991 saw not only the success of the American-led coalition in the first Gulf war, but also the beginning of serious peace talks. Even the Palestinians’ leader, Yasser Arafat, realised there was no alternative now to American mediation, although Syria, Iraq and Iran rejected it. In the end Arafat too balked at a deal. Disappointment and then the September 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, took America’s attention, as the world turned upside-down once more.

Wait a minute: he feels that the collapse of the Soviet Union made the Middle East more amenable to peace, even though hostilities between America and the Middle East have been steadily rising since that moment? What evidence does he present in favour of this assertion, other than the fact that some (typically fruitless) regional peace talks were held in the early 1990s, as had happened many times before? He seems to think that 9/11 turned the world "upside-down", as if all trends pointed toward peace and love until 9/11 suddenly turned them around. That's indescribably stupid bullshit; 9/11 was a culmination of trends, not a singular act which somehow reversed all existing trends.

And the supposed unipolar moment, when America was left to bestride a single-superpower world? To successive American administrations in the 1990s, dealing with Somalia, Rwanda, a nuclear-capable North Korea, UN Security Council divisions over weapons inspections in Iraq, the spreading violence of al-Qaeda and the rise of China, the new world order seemed more like chaos and disorder. With hindsight, a confusingly multipolar world was in the making even then.

It seems like this guy is inadvertently agreeing that the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union was actually a bad thing.

[MKSheppard]

Angolan regime? How can they call the faction backed up by USSR and Cuba a regime when the opposition factions like UNITA was backed up by fucking Apartheid South Africa?

You know, not to derail this thread; but if we go by the metrics that Comrade Stas is using; shouldn't we be rooting for Apartheid South Africa to survive? They were brutal S.O.B.s, but if you look at what South Africa became after Apartheid, with criminals and rapists literally running the new government; and crime spiralling out of control (can we say flamethrowers mounted in cars to defeat criminals like some sort of neo-dystopian NEW DETROIT from ROBOSHROOM?); they were clearly better than the alternative.

BTW; I wouldn't be so quick to lionize Nelson Mandela. In 1985; the government offered to pardon Mandela if he would renounce armed struggle against the state -- aka brutal marxist guerilla war -- and of course, Mandela turned it down. He also had a class AAA wife; who supported the practice of necktieing as a method to fight against the evil apartheid reigme.

For those of you who don't know what necktying is; it's placing a used tire over someone's head; filling it with gasoline, and then lighting a match.

[K. A. Pital]

You know, not to derail this thread; but if we go by the metrics that Comrade Stas is using; shouldn't we be rooting for Apartheid South Africa to survive?

We could debate that in the SA Thread in History, Shep. And in any case, Shroom was speaking about Angola. Had the South Africa-backed faction of the Angolan Civil War any merits that could justify it's support vs. the Soviet-Cuban faction? Just wanna know. I'm no specialist on Angola Civil War (I like their Civil War songs though...).

[MKSheppard]

Yes, I remember reading about the thriving black market in the USSR. Having said that, "churning out stuff no one wanted" is hardly a specific feature of communism.

The big problem with communism's "churning out stuff no one wanted" was that it was very inflexible; laid out in multi-year plans that had to be adhered to -- it was a great system for producing large masses of concrete and steel; but concrete and steel are stockpileable commodities; you can use them three, four years later without any concern; but this didn't work very well with consumer goods -- which even in the 1960s and 1970s were starting to accelerate at ever increasing rates of development -- witness the transistor revolution allowing semi-pocket radios in the sixties, and then desktop calculators which steadily shrunk in size throughout the 1970s.

It is difficult to transform an entire economy; the so-called "rust belt" portions of the United States are testament to this fact. Entire regional economies in the "rust belt" struggled to adapt to higher-tech information age manufacturing, and many show no signs that they will ever recover.

It's also important to note that much of the "Rust belt" areas of the US are pro-union strongholds; while the areas with the strongest industrial growth in the last 20~ years in the US have been in the southern states, which are anti-union; what with foreign car manufacturers, etc setting up shop in the South; and with the recent decision by Boeing to build their second 787 line in South Carolina after the local Everett, WA union were a total bunch of tools.

It's kind of hard to adopt hi-tech industrial methods which can produce the same amount of widgets with just half of the workers; if the workers are respresented by a union which demands that 85% of the workers remain on the job, even with technology advancements.

This sort of ties into something my late friend used to say -- the collapse of the Soviet Union resulted in Russian heavy industry being tossed from it's 1950s/1960s existence into the 1990s quite suddenly; and where it's traditional advantages -- being able to produce massive quantities of mid-grade steel yearly were negated by the fact that you could now buy steel that was of better quality for cheaper from overseas steelmakers.

Yet if Africa had had too much big-power attention for its own good in the 1980s, after the Soviet collapse, arguably, it had too little.

In the bad old days; you could get guns and shit by simply proclaiming your undying fealty to the world marxist revolution or to capitalism and the free market. Now, you have to pay for it. Hence the term "blood diamond". The big problem is that there was so much shit stockpiled during the Cold War, that munitions can be got for cheap. This is a part of the world where using anti-tank mines against cattle to starve out an enemy tribe by blowing up their cows is an accepted part of warfare. (this is because a large part of a tribe's wealth is in it's livestock).

Wait a minute: he feels that the collapse of the Soviet Union made the Middle East more amenable to peace, even though hostilities between America and the Middle East have been steadily rising since that moment?

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Arab regimes lost their biggest supplier of cheap munitions -- though, by that point, the Soviets had already turned off the "free tanks and aircraft for nothing" spigot; which is one reason why there hasn't been a middle east war since 1973 -- because now the regimes in power know that they can't get their tanks and aircraft replaced for cheap -- so they have to preserve their militaries for internal security.

It seems like this guy is inadvertently agreeing that the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union was actually a bad thing

Of course it was; I want my 768 ATFs and 132 ATBs.

[K. A. Pital]

This sort of ties into something my late friend used to say -- the collapse of the Soviet Union resulted in Russian heavy industry being tossed from it's 1950s/1960s existence into the 1990s quite suddenly; and where it's traditional advantages -- being able to produce massive quantities of mid-grade steel yearly were negated by the fact that you could now buy steel that was of better quality for cheaper from overseas steelmakers.

Actually steel industry was one of the more or less weathering-the-storm industries, as most raw resource or primary reprocessing industries of Russia. However, the Russian plane, ship, et cetera industries, which now could - according to your claim - use better and cheaper steel for their goods - went belly up straightaway. That despite their production being more than okay for the domestic market; hardly any Third World nations sport an aviation industry par se.

The damage dealt was done excessively, and extremely, to the most high-tech portions of the Soviet industries. Particle acceleration, superconductivity, and all other large-scale research was annihilated financially and literally (ravaged installations), and shipbuilding, aviation building and motor transport building seriously kicked the bucket - a very large portion of it, anyway.

Meanwhile the most primitive and raw-resource industries like oil, oil processing, ore mining and ore processing, including steel and iron industries, weathered the storm far better. Your picture does not fit reality, Shep - the primitive industries survived when advanced processing industries were simply annihilated.

Crude industries:

Steel production, RSFSR and Russia, million tons. Black metals, RSFSR and Russia, ,illion tons.

Advanced industries production:

Trolleybus production, RSFSR and Russia. Truck production, RSFSR and Russia. Rail carts, RSFSR and Russia.

Steel cutting plants. Steel cutting plants with CPUs.

There. Steel barely suffered a 50% decline. Advanced industrial production was WIPED OUT.

I specifically chose advanced industrial items which are not cheap consumer goods, and many of which are specific to Russia (like trucks and metro rail carts). The fact that their production abruptly ended when steel processing survived and even grew after the shock means that the most primitive resource industries were actually best fit to weather the crisis. What an observation, eh? Quite unlike the big high-tech bullshit Starglider was peddling.