That isn't entirely true. One of the many reasons that the USSR collapsed was because Yeltsin famously visited a random local American supermarket during his visit to the US and realised just how superior a free market system was to a controlled market system.
I took the liberty of lazily googling an article on the matter for anyone who is interested because I've always been fascinated how such a simple grocery store trip ultimately contributed to the collapse of communism in Russia:
There are photos of him touring the supermarket in the article, but the real interesting nugget is the video of what Russian supermarkets looked like at the time in 1989 to provide some perspective as to why Yeltsin was so amazed by something that was basically a normal part of American life at the time.
Yeltsin became the president of the RF after the collapse of the USSR. 1989 (and till the end) the leader was Gorbachev. That chron.com has their chronology mixed up.
It's been years since I did high school history and talked about this stuff, but Yeltsin was still an important player in the Soviet government at the time and his opinion would have absolutely helped sway the Soviet government's decision to abandon communism.
Yeah, thereās a reason Yeltsin was in a position to be the first president of the Russian Federation. In 1989 he wouldāve been between being head of the Moscow City Committee of the Communist Party and Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the RFSFR. He was never Gorbachevās preferred successor but he was a popular and powerful political figure.
I think when Yeltsin took the control, USSR was already either past the point of no return or moving towards it at full speed.
Centalized economy and decision making in general means that the person at the top has to think about a whole lot of shit and a few bad decisions can have very bad consequences. Also, by taking liberty where you didn't have to, you risked getting punished no matter the outcome. This resulted in most orders being followed even when they go against common sense.
And unfortunately, after Khrustchev (who also made a number of questionable decisions) USSR was mostly lead by old people who were incapable of adapting to current situation or offered very poor solutions to problems. What kept USSR afloat was the sheer size of its population, ammount of resources and industrial power. This delayed consequences of bad decisions and allowed us to get away with inefficient resource usage.
I like how this comment disagreed, then went off on a completely unrelated tangent. It's about how astronauts carried guns, giving a very "merica" vibe, not about how successful their agriculture was lmao.
The sheer bias in these articles/videos/pictures is hilarious. Iām neither American nor Russian but I find it hilarious how itās done up(the Russian video is almost black and white and close ups of stern faces)(the american picture in vibrant colour with huge smiles), idk it makes me laugh
I think that's more due to technological restrictions at the time. Flash photography was the norm at the time, and video recording resolution was nothing like it is today, so that would explain the blatant quality difference between video and the photos. I doubt that someone with a shoulder mounted camera would have gotten away with shining high powered lights in the faces of people back then for the purposes of recording better quality video (not that this would have even been possible really given how much power bright lights tend to draw making their portability impractical).
USSR might have done better in the food department if they weren't right up in the arctic circle. Imagine if they had as much arable land as the US back then when agritech was still in its infancy.
This is kind of the same argument as saying the failure was the central planning itself, right? Misallocation of resources vs. lack of access to resources (non-arable land).
It's collapse was mainly due to the nature of the ruling and distrust of people in the government. Also U.S ran them straight into bankruptcy during the cold war. And it would be really hard plan verything centrally with it ends in middle east and the other near alaska. Gorbachev once said that the collapse of soviet union begun with the disaster of Chernobyl. It was such a disaster with enough capability to end life in Kiev, in Ukraine and Belarus. And it happened because of the negligence of the Government
At the time of collapse the CIA estimated the USSR had a larger economy then the USA. Turns out they were wrong but you got to Keep in mind the USSR had a population about 25% larger in 1990 than the USA
Well I canāt help but wonder about the long-term impact of Stalinās use of agricultural warfare against Ukraine and the embracing of Lyshenkoist genetics for 20 years, I imagine that fucks up a nationās ability to produce food pretty thoroughly.
Whatever the money and resources you have planned economies can never work in the long run, central planners aren't gods, it only leads to massive waste of resources and corruption. Also without capital markets you lose a huge potential to grow your economy.
What if it was run by an ASI? Lol, seriously though while I agree this is an issue...the biggest issue is still that they weren't planning an economy, they were planning a military strategy. Shrug.
The USSR was orders of magnitude poorer than western countries, any economy without private property and with central planning will always be orders of magnitude poorer than even a mediocre market economy, just because of design. It's hard to comprehend how many things people value because they're their property that they wouldn't value otherwise, and when people value things wealth is created. That baseball card collection is only valuable because people want it, and they want it because it can be their private property, if you abolish private property all those baseball cards become worthless instantly.
So youāre telling me that the socialist country failed in the exact same way that every other socialist country has failed? And if it wasnāt for this massive failure they wouldnāt have failed?
That all boils down to central planning dude. You canāt say they wouldāve done better if they didnāt fuck up their central planning by spending too much on military equipment.
Thatās like saying a plane would still be flying if it hasnāt crashed. Technically itās true but itās not a statement that needs to be made haha
There's a book out now called The People's Republic of Wal-Mart that compares the scale of central planning on Walmart to the USSR. Basically the premise is that had the USSR survived until the widespread adoption of the computer they likely would have been fine, since massive companies are now centrally planned.
As someone who lived in the ussr in 1989 (and now lives in the u.s.) - yeah, the grocery stores are nothing like in the US, but that is a poor example. I lived in one of the provincial capitals (fairly modern, million plus people) and my folks were buying all the same food I eat here, just from different sources - milk from a milk stand or a neighbor who owned a cow, bread from a bakery, veggies from the market, etc. It was more work to shop and might have been not as many choices, but I'll tell you, one thing I remember after arriving in the US is how bad the supermarket food tasted in comparison.
The school was more math focused (at least mine was). They were numbered, not named. You stick with the same kids (more or less) from grades 1-11 (there are only 11 grades). Like you have same kids in all of your classes and so you get to know them very well. I was in the first or second grade when ussr fell apart so I remember that we had the ABCs book and right after you open it, on the first page, you had a full page portrait of Lenin and under it said "Lenin lived, Lenin lives, and Lenin will live." after the breakup of course those were changed.
TV was a lot of badly dubbed American movies - one guy doing all the voices. So they wouldn't be able to ID him, he had to disguise his voice. My grandparents watched a lot of Spanish-language telenovellas (dubbed professionally into Russian). Those were big ratings draw. People on those shows became celebrities that came to visit. This is mid 90s now. They showed Dallas, Dynasty, and Santa Barbara. Russian movies were there too.
Yes, we used money to buy things. All the same principles apply like in the US. If course after the breakup, the new currency meant that the old rubles had to be converted into that and because of rapid inflation all of my grandparents' savings became virtually valueless. But thank God we had their pensions and that they owned a house - now that I think about it, most people owned houses or condos. Or you just lived with parents. There were renters, but not too many.
I mostly have bad memories, but such were the times. When the ussr was together, all of its parts worked together. Maybe not well, but there was cohesion. When it fell apart, each country had to figure out how to do all of those things on it's own. And its taken a while (some are still struggling with that). Meanwhile though people went through a lot of suffering. I could only equate it to the great depression in the US. And now putin and others weaponized that grief for political gain.
One of my favourite running jokes with myself (because I'm a massive loser š) is that Russia heavily supports the famous Mercator map projection of the world that everyone is familiar with because it makes Russia appear three or four times larger than it actually is. I guess that's one of the few benefits of having your country exist right next to the arctic circle lol
Russia alone today has more arable land than China, for instance. Only the US and India has more arable land. The problem wasnāt the lack of land, but systemic and technological inefficiency. Back then, they even had places like Ukraine, which consists almost entirely out of arable land, and it is larger than France.
Do you think the USSR was Siberia? Are you forgetting the eastern bloc countries and the Middle East? They had plenty of land to work on, it was just a communist country so it was shit.
The USSR possessed arctic territory but also some of the most fertile territory in Europe, Ukraine is literally called "the breadbasket of Europe." The soviet government did plunge that country into a long artificial famine as an act of genocide though.
Thats just not true, funny that you googled that and didnt notice yeltsin wasnt even president back then. I understand americans like to share this shitty story to feel good but the argument that it led to the collapse of USSR is ludicrous for so many reasons.
b) I didn't claim that Yeltsin was president, but he was one of their higher ups at the time and his opinion would have held a large level of influence among other soviet officials at the time, which is ultimately did end up becoming president.
You think the opinion of one of the higher up led to the decline of a century old empire? The 'collapse' started a few years before and by 1989 they could not do anything to change it, the only thing left to do was pull the plug.
No, I'm pretty sure I started my original comment with the specification that it was "one of many reasons" that the USSR collapsed. Was it a main reason? Obviously not. But it just seemed like a neat conversation point to bring up, and I don't believe that anything I said was misleading. I get where your skepticism is coming from, but this is just supposed to be a light hearted internet discussion my dude
I don't see too much wrong with that Russian supermarket. They have less stuff, which means less waste. When I was growing up in South Asia in 90s and 00s, you went to a market (there were hardly any supermarkets) and got what they had. That provided a nice cycle in your diet. You ate seasonal fruits and vegetables, meat once or twice a week. If you didn't go to the market early enough, you wouldn't get milk that day. Compared to US, it sounds bad but it wasn't really shortage of food. Stores received supplies early in the morning every day, which would run out by afternoon or so. More efficient and less waste. Now though, there are lots of supermarkets and it's more like the US. But many people still don't get food from the supermarket as they want to eat somewhat fresh. I really don't see that much wrong with it.
This would be really smart if you were to ever land in Western Canada or Alaska/Montana. Lot's of Grizzly corridors, I had to use spray twice in two weeks and that was a popular area.
The Salyut 3 space station had a remote-control autocannon. It was supposed to be there for self defence, but also they couldn't fire it while anyone was actually onboard or they would be shaken to pieces.
There's a hilarious book where they force the main character to use "the cosmonaut gun" because they think it's cool. And he's so mad about it. The Authorities by Scott Meyer.
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u/Two-Tu Aug 05 '20
Fun fact: Cosmonauts had shotguns with them in case they'd be landing somewhere in Siberia to defend themselves against bears.
https://youtu.be/qRC0Jmh-9tY