Did I say the soviet government was perfect in any way? No. Don't create strawmen alongside your caricature.
I was being sarcastic. I apologize for the oversight.
Really? If you disagreed that Stalin single-handed won WWII you were shot?
C'mon now...I didn't literally mean that
every individual who spoke out against Stalin was imprisoned or summarily executed. I was only engaging in a bit of hyperbole.
To be fair to all parties involved here, yes; my debating style so far has been rather "rhetorical" in nature. However, this stylistic circumstance does not make my overall viewpoint any less accurate.
You cannot deny that Stalin's propaganda machine worked overtime after the end of WW2 to paint him as the "hero" of the whole war. Several high ranking members of the Soviet military and administrative branch were actually imprisoned or even executed for virtually no other reason (regardless of whatever "trumped up" charges may have been lain against them) than that Stalin feared they might receive more credit for winning the war than he did or sully the image of "glorious victory" he wished to portray. Just look at what happened to General Molotov if you want an example.
been introduced more gradually by a leader other than Gorbachev, I see no reason to believe that the Soviet Union wouldn't still be around to this day.
The Soviet Union may have managed to survive into the current day and age under such circustances, but
Communism almost certainly wouldn't have. Things very likely would've turned out to be similar to modern day China if such a gradual shift had taken place in the Soviet Union.
Had glasnost and perestroika never been introduced,
If the Soviet Union had not reformed, it would have only continued to be gradually outpaced, outcompeted, and out diversifed by the West. As such, the USSR likely would have continued to diminish in international significance while only giving the United States and the Western world in general a further excuse to continue nuclear escalation and bully the Russians and their "Red" allies farther into a marginalized corner of the world and global economy.
Besides, this isn't really even relevant to what we have been discussing here. The viability of the Soviet state as a political entity was never the point up for debate in this conversation. The issue at hand has always been the viability of "Red" Communism as an economic and social system.
As I see the situation, and a rather large portion of modern academia would seem to concur (this isn't an "Appeal to Authority" but an objective fact), Communism was a highly inefficient system. The history of the last century has more or less proven it to be lacking on most (if not all) economic, social, and humanitarian grounds. Capitalism simply works
better in the longrun, and this is why we ultimately won the Cold War.
You are free to disagree with this viewpoint if you should so choose.
Take note of the difference in how Stas and others in the history section approach a topic, and how you do.
This isn't a history forum. We were simply having a
general[/ ] debate of the nature of "Red" Communism and how this influenced the fall of the Soviet Union. As such, I (and most of the other posters on this board) have addressed this issue on very general terms.
The Soviet Union did not collapse because of inefficient bureaucracy; in fact, it would be difficult to argue that its bureaucracy was any more inefficient than the United States' various bureaucracies.
Well, Mr. Dark Lord and master of the Sith, sir, I'm afraid that I'm going to have to respectfully disagree. 
The United States may have its own problems with bureaucracy, but they are a far cry from what the USSR propagated. Just look at the current state of the Ural Sea, or what the Soviet petroleum industry did to Siberia to see what I'm talking about. Soviet industry was always a slipshod and "half-assed" schizophrenic mix of paranoid over regulation and blatant recklessness.
Sure, it may have technically worked well enough to keep things from totally falling apart, but this is really no great accomplishment. Far worse systems have managed to survive and even thrive in the past (Feudalism, Absolutist Despotism, ecta). It simply didn't work well enough to allow the Soviets to come anywhere near "winning" the Cold War.
Millionaires in Moscow, people eating dirt in other parts of the country.
As you pointed out yourself, overclasses are hardly a unique feature of "capitalist" societies.
China has shown that social and political repression are not intrinsically linked to either communism or capitalism. It has successfully transitioned to a capitalist economy, yet it still as repressive there as it was under communism.
I never claimed that there was an intrinsic link between "Communism" and tyranny. I only stated that there happens to be a rather direct link between "Red" Communist ideology and tyranny. It is an intrinsically "totalitarian" system.
I suppose that we could quibble around the details of whether it was meant to be this way or not, but the fact of the mtter remains that nearly every "Red" Communist regime on the planet has eventually ended up devolving into oligarchy and repression.
Additionally, while China still may be rather repressive, it is certainly better than it was before.
Pinochit proved that even more effectively. He went all the way neoliberal and he made people disappear.
The fact that a military dictator who paid lip service to the "Free Market" (while leaving several industries nationalized BTW) utilized the same "repressive" measures that other "totalitarian" regimes have utilized in the past really doesn't say a whole lot.
Dictators will behave as dictators are wont to do. "Red" Communism simply seems to spawn such dictators more often than most other ideologies.
How do you mean? If there was some aspect of the Soviet government or their approach to economics and foreign policy that worked just perfectly that Samuel and I have missed, you are welcome to bring it to our attention.
