Why the Soviet Union failed - my hypothesis

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Well, right, but uncertainty is not an impact on decision-making, so it isn't relevant to the point of decision-making, and certainly not social decision-making.

Money is not the most important variable in each circumstance, but it is very important in the overall picture, and it is very important at the extremes. Luxuries, even including romance, science, and so many other things, only exist because we have an economy that can support them.

I think the Soviet Union failed because they are a useless bunch of drunken slackers.

In Germany National Socialism was a great success (except for the war)
Seriously. In 1933 Germany was a total wreck but within three or four years they had Autobahns, full employment and prosperity.

I think if the Japanese, or Swedes, or Americans or English decided to be Communist or National Socialist then they would do a good job of it.

Look at the "New World". Canada and the USA are great success stories. Mexico and South America are third world crap holes.
Why is this? All the countries have huge resources. If some countries fail it must be the quality and attitude of the people.

How about India now? They are hosting the Commonwealth Games. It is a total disgrace. The buildings are falling to bits before the games even start.

There are shops that sell Indian "craft" and furniture. My goodness! The furniture looks like it was made by a drunken monkey using an axe.

Look at Africa. A huge and rich continent. Yet all we hear from Africa are stories about starvation, disease, murder and rape and war.

I think you get my point. The success of a country depends entirely on the attitude of the people who live there.

The problem with libertarians is they think that everyone is altruistic and innately socially responsible as they are.

For example, they tend to be under the impression that the average American would donate more to charity if there were no such thing as income tax, rather than go out and spend that extra few thousand dollars on a big screen TV and a new car made in Japan. But the average American is much more apt to go buy that big screen TV and new car, for multiple reasons.

Libertarians are also under the false impression that private charities can do a sufficient job at helping the needy, while the government cannot.

I was doing some volunteer work with the homeless recently, during which I had to research the resources available to the city's homeless population.

The large majority of resources were offered by private, religious based charities. However these charities were insufficient for many reasons, and as a whole operated with the same efficiency as the USSR.

Most charities only catered to certain demographics and it was quit frequent that a person did not meet the criteria needed to receive help from the charity.

A person might have to travel to one charity to get a meal, and then go completely across town to get socks, and elsewhere to get a tooth brush.

Most shelters had limited space, were first come first serve, and people had to wait in long lines to find out if they could even get a bed, cot, or place on the floor. Most shelters were only open from 10pm to 8am and people had to be out by 8am. Many shelters were not open year around. Many people reported being assaulted in the shelters, and many shelters could not accept women, or children because they could not insure their safety.

Few shelters had access for those in wheelchairs, and many shelters refused access to those with significant medical issues because they could not accommodate them.

"Long term" shelters offered 3 day to 6 month stays for a select few who were able to meet specific criteria.

Over all, the private charities could not provide consistent, centralized, long term resources, and simultaneously introduced the added pressure or trying to convert everyone to christianity.

The government based resources included food stamps, disability, welfare, and, medi-cal, and SSI.

These programs were very consistent and offered some stability for individuals in need, however food stamps could be as low as $50 worth a month, and many people still had to seek soup kitchens, panhandle, and eat out of garbage cans to survive.

People who qualified for disability, SSI, and welfare, and were able to get government subsidized housing, faired the best even though admittedly there are many problems with government assistance programs as well.

I am not discounting money as an important asset but what guides me in my life is not money accumulation but comprehension and capability in what I choose to accomplish. To discover some project that I am working on is successful or contributes to my abilities is far more to me than anything I could buy. I do not claim everybody has or should have the same values. I merely indicate my own which is a very personal viewpoint. And some self exalted executive somewhere probably has a quite different set.

Time and again those very successful operating on a current social paradigm have generated massive catastrophes and the generously financed agencies assigned to assess and predict outcomes have been both totally wrong and devastatingly unconscious of oncoming changes. Humans are simply not very good at assessing the unexpected and survival is acutely sensitive to things not predicted or, perhaps, not predictable.

If America still had the millions of well paid manufacturing jobs that existed 30 years ago there would be little need for welfare.

If America didn't have thirty million illegal immigrants working "off the books" for less than the legal wage then all Americans would have a job.

And who do you blame for the export of all these industrial jobs? Who do you blame for underpaying agricultural work so only desperate illegal immigrants would take them? Who do you blame for sending manufacturing to China which is furiously developing and exporting not only standard products but original innovation and design? Who do you blame for all the increased value given production out of advanced technology given to the management class while wages in the US stagnate for decades which destroys the middle class? Who do you blame?

Most welfare recipients are single mothers with children. The jobs they qualify for are generally low paying and do not pay enough for daycare. When these mothers who cannot afford day care or a babysitter do work, the child often ends up becoming a latchkey kid and it's at that point that they often fall under the influence of gangs, which only produces more social problems.

While many of the homeless individuals were homeless primarily due to the current economy, the majority of them either suffer some mental health disorder, including substance abuse problems and post traumatic stress disorder, or a physical disorder or illness. There are also many people who grew up in the foster care system and were never able to obtain a stable home, and inherited that instability when they left the foster care system.

A large number of homeless individuals have physical disorders which are not well documented enough, or deemed not severe enough, to obtain government assistance, but are severe enough that they cannot perform many of the physical tasks they would be required to perform in a labor type or manufacturing job. Their illnesses often times also makes them unreliable workers as well and employers and co-workers do not want to put up with someone who cannot be reliable.

People who have been on the streets for a while are often usually weakened from exposure to the elements, lack of proper nutrition, and sleep deprivation.

Even those who have no physical or mental illness, who were just down on their luck and ended up on the street, have difficult times procuring jobs because many employers are unwilling to hire someone who is homeless and the nature of homlessness often makes it difficult for one to clean up and properly prepare for job interviews. People often times do not have an address or a way to be contacted that they can write down on applications. They frequently do not have clean clothes to wear to interviews. They may not have a way to get to the interview and many employers will not hire someone without their own transportation.
Employers generally figure that if a person is homeless there is something wrong with them, or they make poor decisions in life, and this person is usually competing for the position against people who are not homeless and so obviously appear more favorable to the employers.

[quote="Chronos"]
Most welfare recipients are single mothers with children. The jobs they qualify for are generally low paying and do not pay enough for daycare. When these mothers who cannot afford day care or a babysitter do work, the child often ends up becoming a latchkey kid and it's at that point that they often fall under the influence of gangs, which only produces more social problems./quote

Yes indeed. They will have their first baby at 14 and their second baby at 16.

By the time they are in their mid twenties they will have half a dozen children by different fathers.

They love the welfare money but most of it goes to buying crack or ice.

And we are supposed to pay for this and make excuses for their ret*d children who rob liquor stores at the age of 14.

After all, they had a "deprived childhood".

My, my. Such contempt for everybody else in real trouble.

Consider it not from the point of view of a historian with access to hindsight, but a European politician at the time. From their point of view a dangerous new social movement that nearly crippled the first war effort complains about what appears to be a very forward thinking, if slightly acquisitive new regime. Antagonising the Germans into war was the last thing people wanted after the first debacle. This new style of government is a threat to the established governments of the west, and to the very fabric of western society, not to mention a potentially very deadly threat to "bosses" and aristocrats. Once Germany begins to demonstrate exactly how acquisitive it is, a non-aggression pact starts to look a lot more "allied" than Stalin buying time. Why did Stalin fear the rise of Germany? Maybe because he was training German military officers? That's fairy "allied" as well. Enough of an alliance to get the Americans frothy about Afghanistan these days. Besides, diplomatic terminology does not always equal the reality of the situtaion. Japan and Germany were direct allies, yet provided zero mutual support, virtually zero technical or military support, and could not even co-ordinate on a strategic level.

Suggesting that Stalin was the last best hope against Nazism because "Western Europe" was defeated is a touch insulting to those of us who were not defeated, and carried on prosecuting the war for its entirety on all fronts. I can think of quite a few people who would be quite offended that you consider what they did not to be "real" fighting. Especially as Stalin USED the Nazi attacks to gain territory, which is clearly and openly supporting the Germans. Poland for sure would have been a sight harder to conquer if it hadn't been attacked on both fronts. The USSR received substantial materials of war, despite having a virtually unmolested manufacturing base. (It having been MOVED somewhere else.) Maybe the Lend-Lease materials were simply being sent where they were most required, like nations lacking a vast landmass and even vaster population? Also, the USSR did not just receive American "Lend-Lease" aid, but direct military aid from the UK.

Areas of Europe were literally given into the hands of the Soviets. The whole military strategy for the reconquest of Europe was shaped a) by Stalin's demands for a second front and b) keeping Stalin happy by letting him keep whole nations in his sphere of influence. Some of these places were well within the reach of Western power. It is fair to say that the West couldn't really have got all the way to Poland (which was always the problem) but places like Berlin were left to the soviets, not because they were closer, or better equipped to take them, but because of lines drawn on a map to keep Stalin happy. Berlin was in the decided Soviet "sphere of influence" and thus a whole raft of problems were caused..problems that a lot of the European powers already recognised.

That's at least partially a myth; Hitler was not generally viewed by other European leaders as "forward-looking." They had plenty of reason to fear Hitler. The issue is, of course, that they feared communism more, and that is somewhat understandable.


The details of the non-aggression pact were secret, but I think anyone should have realized that Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia would never have actually been military allies. I'm not sure where you got the idea that Stalin was training German military officers. I've never read or heard anything about that.


Be offended if you like, but it is true. Italy and Spain were controlled by regimes friendly to Hitler, Czechoslovakia and Austria were taken without a fight, Belgium offered only token resistance on the path to France's immediate and humiliating collapse. Britain was mostly just hanging on for dear life, and barely managed to do that. The Soviets were the ones who halted the Nazi war machine in its path, and then turned it back, and then proceeded to liberate Europe from Nazi rule. Without the fight the Soviets gave him, Hitler would have finished off Britain, and American involvement would have been meaningless if we had to fight a trans-Atlantic war with no foothold in Europe.


Stalin didn't want to fight yet (the USSR's military wasn't prepared at that point) but he did want to expand Soviet territory. Opportunism is not the same as supporting Germany. Poland would have stood no chance regardless. Their military wasn't even close to being a match against Germany.


Um... the Soviets are the ones who took Berlin militarily in the final stages of the war. Parts of Berlin were given to the Allies just to make them happy, even though they had nothing to do with capturing Berlin.

Germany traded technical expertise for training as early as 1922/23, including pilots and tank crews, as well as chemical weapons testing.

Stalin's "opportunistic" land grab against Poland is still "supporting" Germany.

German officers themselves were quoted as saying that the Polish campaign was no walkover, but a very close run thing indeed, using an ersatz panzer force of training tanks and appropriated Czech hardware. What finished the Poles was the Soviet assault in their rear. Its a myth to believe that every army in 1939 was somehow inferior to the German one in terms of technology or ability, or even tactically (Blitzkrieg is not foolproof and can go VERY wrong.) The Polish army was not under-equipped, or unmotivated (except in the obsolescence of their main fighter aircraft, which still did substantial damage to the Luftwaffe even being a technical generation behind. It has also often been pointed out that if the Czechs had made a military stand, they could well have given the Germans a solid kicking. Likewise, with a little less of a defensive mindset, the French could well have been sat in the suburbs of Berlin, so denuded were the German defenses in the West during the Battle for Poland. German military superiority is a myth based on their incredibly fortuitous use of someone else's military thinking.

For the record, the British 21st Army group was close enough to have taken Berlin before the Soviets. The fact that the Soviets DID take Berlin does not change the fact that they were "given" it by the American-led West. Removing the Wermacht from it was merely a bloody and vicious formality. A line was drawn across Europe and Western European troops were forbidden to cross it. Where they HAD, they were soon withdrawn. A line drawn predominantly by Stalin and the US.

Of course not. In 1938 the French could easily have defeated Germany. They almost certainly could have done so in 1939. Unfortunately, they never really attacked Germany, even after war was decalred, and adopted an idiotic defensive strategy that caused them to fall very quickly. The British still had little effective counter to submarine warfare, and once France had fallen they could be more-or-less contained to their island. Otherwise Britain could have given the Nazis a run for their money in land-based combat.

The Poles still didn't have a military that would have been able to stand against the Third Reich. Without the Soviet involvement on the other wing, they might have held out a while longer, but they would still have been conquered.

Except that clearly the UK couldn't be "contained" to our island, as we plainly were not, and unrestricted submarine warfare clearly failed to contain us either. As for the Poles.. they were more than capable of giving the Nazis something to think about, and did. Again, polish military equipment was no more obsolete than any other nation, and their soldiers no lesser a military force than any other in western Europe. The fact that Polish troops continued to fight (and win) throughout the war puts a lie to them being rubbish. Its quite likely that if the Poles could have held out longer, the French could have been nudged into taking the offensive, especially if they were doing so in support of a nation that could demonstrably hold its own.

Americans would not make good communists because (other than the inherent issues with communism) American mentality is individualistic.



I do agree with this. Japan has almost no natural resources and only started modernizing during WWII and they have done quite well.

One big problem with Mexico is, due to Spanish colonization, many Mexicans have a feudal mentality, especially in smaller Mexican villages. If a rich land owner approaches them and tells them they have to do something, they frequently feel they have no choice in the matter, and they do not stand up to those they perceive as above them. One massive problem with Mexico, which is the catalyst for so many economic woes and drug related issues is a large chism between the rich and poor in Mexico. A politician can make $100,000 a year, but their driver might make no more than $7,000 a year. The Mexican people have never organized/unionized effectively to demand better pay and more worker rights because you do not question your boss in Mexico.

Conversely those in positions of power in Mexico have historically been tyrants to some degree. The drug lords simply exploited this situation. The force people to become drug traffickers by putting guns to their head and $5,000 in their pocket....sometimes just guns to their head.

There is a small communist rebellion movement in Southern Mexico but I don't think their mentality is all that different. They just have bosses with different ideologies which again exploit the common Mexican villager and also rely on the drug trade for funding.[/quote]





India is improving...slowly, but the problems that continue to plague India are government corruption, the concept of the caste system....the idea that one person can be inherently superior to another, illteracy, and a resistance of many people to abandon traditional ways.

The problem with most African countries is it don't give a sh!t about their people, with the exception of a very small few.

The old, dead and departed Soviet Union was based on central planning of production and distribution. Central Planning won't work because any economy more complicated than a fish and sea shell economy is too complicated for central planning to work. The combinatorics of production and distribution will outrun any algorithm or computer program. Only non-central, market economies will work in the long haul.

ruveyn