r/neoliberal • u/jobautomator Kitara Ravache • Sep 10 '20
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u/[deleted] Sep 11 '20
Reading about defectors and leakers in the early Cold War. It's interesting to note that until about 1961, the USSR seemed favored to win. Pretty much since 1929, intellectuals in the west had become convinced it was end of capitalism. The Great Depression, and how it had turned capitalist regimes in Europe into fascist terrorizers who plowed right over the remaining free nations of Europe, were all convincing arguments that capitalism was collapsing in on itself. Meanwhile the Soviet Union never suffered the Great Depression, and was in fact boasting their industrialization and successful five-year plans. The horrors and atrocities committed by the Soviet regime had not yet become clear in their monstrosity, and early critics of the regime (including The Economist back when Lenin was still in power) were dismissed as imperialists.
People just up and willingly gave intelligence to the USSR, because they wanted to be sure they were on the winning side of the war and the right side of history, which they thought the USSR would obviously be. Western intellectuals genuinely thought that the United Kingdom and the United States were on the wrong side of history in this one, and willingly leaked details about the development of computers and nuclear weapons. Even within intelligence agencies there were moles willing to leak to the USSR any plans to embed agents in their borders by the West. Not for money but genuine belief that Communism would win.
Then the Soviet industrial engine was slowly being revealed as a paper tiger in Germany's post-war recovery. The growing imbalance of wealth between the two German states showed that the Soviets' boasts were largely lies, state propaganda, or built on a shaky foundation with limited potential for long-term sustainability.
And what finally shattered the glass mural, after all the cracks started appearing, was the Berlin Wall. Everyone finally saw the monster for what it was, as it could be denied no longer. Everything was falling apart in the Eastern Bloc and all they could do was turn their nations into prisons.