Downfall of the Soviet Union [History]

[Starslasher]

This isn't anything new. This thread talks about the downfall of the Soviet Union, since i was merely curious about it.

I tried reading about how it collapsed, and the reasons i got was the failure of Communism, which was linked to struggles for independance in the other countries.

But my actualy question is: What led to the downfall of Communism? I would hve put that in the title, but it's not neccesarily true, with a few Communist countries still existing, even if in name only. But when i was reading on it, I keep on reading about the economic stagnation that the USSR suffered, but i never get to see anything more elaborate than that.

I was hoping that someone could give a more elaborate, but simple explanation on what events led to the state of economic stagnation, and other effects that the Communist government had.
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[Amyral]

Communism failed because, quite simply, it doesn't work on large scale economies.

Let's look at it through the economic theory standpoint. What capitalism does is (at least in theory) it benefits people for working harder. Workers have incentive to produce more. Under communism, that incentive is removed, people have no incentive to produce more and, in the end, people don't. In small scale economies, this might be mitigated by the desire of people to succeed for the sake of the tribe. Many American Indian tribes thrived, but worked under communism. However, the larger scale it tends to go, the less this feeling holds.

In the case of the USSR, the issues with it can be traced back to the Russian Civil War.

In the Soviet Union, the problems with communism were met early on, even before World War 2. For the Russian Civil War, the Bolsheviks instituted the policy of war communism, which essentially meant taking all land and farm stocks. It worked horribly and led to numerous workers rebellions and strikes (which is saying quite a bit, considering the penalty for striking was being shot) and there were severe food shortages that led to a migration to the countryside. As a result, Lenin instituted what was known as the New Economic Policy, which more or less reinstated capitalism for some industries, particularly farming. This returned production to pre-WWI levels and even improved them. This plan lasted until Lenin's death.

When Lenin died, the plan was replaced by the five-year-plans by Stalin, which abolished the agriculture plans in favor for the collective farms. This lead to massive famines, farmers didn't want to give up their farms but, more importantly, they would rather slaughter their farm animals than give them up to the farms. Famine was widespread during the period, but this it was still deemed a success. It improved raw material production drastically. Stalin succeeded in developing the Russian populace into unskilled laborers, which was what he needed.

More plans were introduced (11, with a break during WWII), and I could go into them, but the simple answer is that as the plans continued, the economy continued to stagnate. The second plan didn't meet all its goals, the third plan ended early because of WWII.

The war was a big problem for Russia, which was devastated by the war. Nearly 100,000 of the collective farms were ultimately destroyed over the course of it, much of urban housing and such was destroyed, raw material production suffered drastically, so on and so forth. They attempted to reconstruct after the war, but due to the immensely high numbers of casualties on the Russian side, there were labor shortages. Russia gradually began to rebuild, but progress was slow. Eventually, by the eleventh plan, the economy was stagnant.

Along came Gorbachev, who wanted to end the stagnation. Ideas were tossed around, but eventually it led to the Perestroika policy, which was meant to be a massive restructuring designed to end it. It did end it, unfortunately for Russia. The system was a strange combination of communism and capitalism, not really either. It allowed private industry somewhat, which lead to more things like shops and restaurants. It allowed foreign investment, but had strict requirements on who could run it in Russia and how much investment was allowed. The government still held the factors of production and there were still price controls, despite them allowing some private ownership. Perestroika was, to be honest, a complete disaster which was the final nail in the coffin for the Soviet Union. It led to a tumbling economy, as opposed to a stagnating one. Inflation was skyrocketing and the public faced shortages of necessary goods. Add this to foreign debts and, ultimately, the country could not recover.

Then it broke up.

Hope that helped.

[Starslasher]

Wow, thanks for that Amyral. that was really a very informative post for me.

But since it works better in a smaller scale, Would that mean that it would work for countries that have smaller populations? I'm looking at the examples of Cuba and North Korea. I don't see Cuba being on the brink of collapse yet, unlike North Korea.
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[Tullaryx]

I'm going to guess that even a nation with smaller populations like Cuba and North Korea still won't be able to support itself as a communist state in a global economy. Cuba pretty much sustains itself through loans from nations friendly to it like Venezuela and China. These are two nations who are either communist or socialist in their ideology but who have embraced non-Marxist economic models to keep their countries running. North Korea and Cuba still languishes as pure communist states just for the fact that they see no room in their political ideology to support economic models that's closer to capitalism than it is to communism or socialism.
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[Amyral]

[Starslasher]

Oh i see. Very interesting. I was wondering about how Cuba was able to just sustain itself, as well as the potential of resources in North Korea, since i'm aware that the Korean Peninsula is very much mountainous, so there is little land that could be farmed.

Somewhat related to this, i was trying to find the title The End of History and the Last Man, by Francis Fukuyama. It stated that within the future, all the countries will gradually become liberal democracies, given the result of the Cold War and such. Has anyone read it? And what is your opinion on that matter?
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