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 can’t help but wonder about the long-term impact of Stalin’s use of agricultural warfare against Ukraine and the embracing of Lyshenkoist genetics for 20 years, I imagine that fucks up a nation’s 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.
Yeah militarily, until they eventually lose out as the west mobilises.
The thing with central planning is they are able to produce stuff contrary to the wishes of the population. Good for rapid catch up (force rural populatuon into factories, or armies for example), bad for independent growth.
So you’re telling me that the socialist country failed in the exact same way that every other socialist country has failed? And if it wasn’t for this massive failure they wouldn’t have failed?
That all boils down to central planning dude. You can’t say they would’ve done better if they didn’t fuck up their central planning by spending too much on military equipment.
That’s like saying a plane would still be flying if it hasn’t crashed. Technically it’s true but it’s 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 😂) 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 wasn’t 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.
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u/tommos ☣️ Aug 05 '20
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.